Fox Calls for Free Market in Mexico

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox spoke about Mexico’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy to a packed crowd at the John F. Kennedy Forum last night, saying that Mexico’s best chance for the future is a free market economy tempered by a responsible government and redistributive social policies.

Fox said that Mexico needs leaders who think big and who will govern the nation with consistency.

“The shortest path between two points is a straight line. We in Latin America like to go to left for six years, right for six years, then back to the center,” said Fox.

He called it a “zig-zag” situation where “it takes a long time to get where you are going.”

Fox lamented the fact that Latin America had seen the lowest rates of economic growth of any region during the 20th century. He added that he understands the call for populism in Latin America because governments have been unable to ensure a basic standard of living.

“People won’t wait, and they are right,” Fox said. “They have needs.”

Fox began his remarks with a call for solidarity with Mexican immigrants in the United States. “I am with them all the way. They are only looking for a better life for them and their families in this great nation.”

Fox noted that everyone at the Forum is a descendant of immigrants, and that his own story involved immigration in the opposite direction.

“My grandfather was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and he migrated to Mexico looking for his American dream,” said Fox, drawing laughs.

Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive and member of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), broke the 72-year stranglehold of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) on Mexico when he was elected in 2000. He was succeeded in 2007 by fellow PAN-member Felipe Calderón, a graduate of the Kennedy School.

Fox said that Calderón, who spoke at the Forum in February, is “going to be a great president, maybe the best Mexico has had, because he graduated here”—a line that drew hearty applause.

Kennedy School economist Jeffrey A. Frankel, who first met Fox in 1999 and who taught Calderón when he studied at Harvard, said that he sees a positive trajectory in Mexican governance. (Fox was preceded by Yale-graduate and PRI-member Ernesto Zedillo, who helped to dismantle PRI’s political monopoly.)

“Fox was the first outsider to be able to take advantage of the new system [and] to challenge the entrenched powerbrokers successfully,” Frankel said.

But, Frankel continued, while Fox had difficulty getting his policies passed by the Mexican Congress, Calderón has had more success.

Mexican national Alejandro Rocha, a student at Harvard Business School, said that Fox was evasive during the question and answer session.

“It’s great to see someone who changed the 72-year ruling party, [but] I think he didn’t really answer any questions,” Rocha said.

But Cecilia Venegas ’11, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico, called Fox captivating and sincere, adding that “he answered questions well.”