This week, the former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, has come to UNM as part of an effort to give his legacy a makeover. Fox is slated to give a talk advocating the U.S. pass immigration reform, including a guest-worker program.
Because Fox’s neoliberal economic policies did not create jobs in Mexico, impoverished laborers had to flee their homes to find work here. This sad reality doesn’t make Fox look good, so Fox has come to revamp his image.
A centerpiece of Fox’s legacy-enhancement project is his private presidential library, Centro Fox. UNM has agreed to help Fox with his legacy by entering into exchange agreements with Centro Fox, even though Centro Fox has illicitly used public funds.
To give balance to the way Fox and UNM administrators portray Fox’s history, here’s a more critical look at Fox’s time in office.
In a contribution to the U.S. immigration debate, Fox said, “There is no doubt that Mexicans — filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work — are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States.”
Giving his two cents on the thousands of layoffs in Michigan, Fox told downtrodden autoworkers to “get over it” and prepare for integration with Mexico.
In conversation with an illiterate peasant, Fox said she would have “a happy life” because of her illiteracy. Maybe his overestimation of the benefits of marginalized education for poor women is why illiteracy increased in Mexico during Fox’s tenure.
In addition to his racism, classism and sexism, Fox engaged in anti-democratic practices throughout his presidency. In 2000, Fox’s campaign apparatus illegally collected sums of money from abroad and laundered it the way drug traffickers do. During his time in office, Fox’s wife and her sons pilfered from the public purse. When a journalist wrote an account of it, the reporter found herself under house arrest.
In response to social protest at San Salvador Atenco, federal police under Fox beat and detained hundreds of people, systematically raped dozens of women and killed two citizens, according to Amnesty International. Fox said that his administration would “see that the space for investigation of any (official wrongdoing) would be totally open.” But he did not seem to notice when his own secretary of public security rejected the incriminating findings of Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission and stonewalled further inquiry.
When the teachers and indigenous citizens of Oaxaca mobilized in protest of their corrupt governor in 2006, Fox said, “We will continue to insist on … reaching an agreement and resolving everything in that manner.” But the federal police he deployed to Oaxaca contributed to racking up 1,200 official complaints of human rights violations, according to Amnesty International.
Notwithstanding the aforementioned human rights abuses, press censorship and money laundering, Fox’s most memorable sin may have been his election tampering.
A proponent of democracy, Fox wanted to make the presidential selection process easier for Mexicans by clearing the field of candidates of unnecessary clutter, so he stealthily tried to have the popular mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, arrested and disqualified from running for president. Fox later asserted that “to promote democracy … it was important to detain López Obrador.”
To stop López Obrador, Fox had an unprecedented secret visit with the chief justice of the supreme court to discuss how the judicial and executive branches could collude in keeping López Obrador out of the race. When Fox’s attorney general brought trumped-up charges against López Obrador, Fox declared that the “culture of legality implies a certain cost … that people assume responsibility.” Continuing his antidemocratic behavior, Fox pressured legislators and party leaders to vote against letting López Obrador mount a candidacy.
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The entire affair shocked the masses of Mexico City and the international media. Once they saw that one of Fox’s costs of democracy was democracy itself, they flooded the streets and editorial pages in protest.
López Obrador stayed in the presidential race, and, to everyone’s surprise, so did Fox. Even though Mexican law prohibits incumbents from campaigning or taking sides in the succession process, Fox announced he would “promote the ideals, values, proposals and political project” of his party in the 2006 election. The Federal Election Institute admonished Fox for this illegal partisanship, both before and after the contested election (which Fox’s candidate won by less than half a percent).
From racist, sexist and classist statements to looking the other way on human rights violations, from misusing security forces to causing mass migration with corporate economic policies, Vicente Fox’s legacy is clearly in dire need of revision.
Given the lowered literacy levels, high inequality, public corruption and election meddling marking Fox’s presidency, it is surprising that UNM is recognizing Fox for contributions to “democracy and development.”
In this time of state-budget shortfalls, why is UNM using public resources to help Fox rehabilitate his personal legacy?
Max Fitzpatrick is a UNM graduate student.
