cannabisnews.com: Fox Seeks New Cooperative Era For N. America 





Fox Seeks New Cooperative Era For N. America 
Posted by FoM on August 14, 2000 at 13:51:17 PT
By Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan
Source: Washington Post
President-elect Vicente Fox said today that a closed and often fortified border between the United States and Mexico has failed both countries and that the time has come for Americans to see Mexican workers and resources as an "opportunity, not a threat."Fox, who meets with President Clinton at the White House next week, proposed creating a European Union-style partnership in North America, in which the United States and Canada would help create jobs and raise income levels in Mexico.
"We must be better friends, we must be better neighbors, we must be better partners," Fox said at his family ranch here in central Mexico in his first interview with American reporters since his landmark election July 2. His comments during the wide-ranging, 90-minute conversation represented the most detailed description to date of his vision of U.S.-Mexican relations."By building up walls, by putting up arms, by dedicating billions of dollars like every [U.S.] border state is doing to avoid migration is not the way to go," said Fox, the first opposition candidate to win the Mexican presidency in 71 years. "It has not been the way to go in the whole 20th century. Instead of solving the problem, it grew." Throughout the interview, conducted in fluent English, Fox spoke with a farmer's passion about the problems of Mexico's 40 million poor people and with a business executive's vocabulary about the need for "long-term planning" and "synergy" in building a new, cooperative cross-border relationship.He said his top priority would be to reduce the gigantic economic gap between the United States and Mexico, the sad reality that is driving an estimated 300,000 Mexican migrants across the border each year, legally and illegally, to seek work in the world's most prosperous economy. As many as 7 million migrants now live in the United States, a number equivalent to about 7 percent of Mexico's population."It's not possible to have a harmonious, stable border; it's not possible to solve the migration problem as it has been up until today if we don't solve that gap problem where a worker in Mexico earns $5 a day and a worker in the United States earns $60 a day," said Fox, who got an early taste of the nation to the north as a boy selling vegetables from his family ranch to buyers along the U.S. border, and later during his 15-year career with the Coca-Cola Co.Fox noted that Portugal and Greece have been brought closer to economic parity with the more prosperous countries of England, France and Germany over the past 25 years though cooperation in a common European market. In the same way, and with the help of Canada and the United States, Mexico one day, too, could be a more equal economic partner, he said. Fox said he would like to see creation of a development fund through the North American Free Trade Agreement, similar to the $35 billion-a-year European Union development fund, which helps create jobs and increase income in poorer countries.Fox criticized recent vigilante activity in the American southwest, where ranchers have been capturing and detaining illegal Mexican migrants at gunpoint. One Mexican was killed by a rancher's bullet in May when he asked for a drink of water. "Mexicans are being killed, and that's not fair," Fox said. "We are better and more intelligent" than to allow that to continue.Speaking just after attending Roman Catholic Mass with his 81-year-old mother, Fox vowed that his strong religious convictions would not affect public policy. Although Mexico is more than 90 percent Catholic, it has enforced for more than 150 years some of the world's strictest laws separating church and state.Fox has been stung by critics who say he will use his office to press his views on such issues as abortion. The legislature in his home state of Guanajuato recently extended the local ban on abortion to include rape victims. That provoked a tidal wave of outrage and raised new fears about Fox and his pro-Catholic party, the National Action Party (PAN), which controls the Guanajuato legislature.Fox said today that he believes "life begins at the moment of conception," but he vowed never to "impose that on anybody."Fox also pledged to end the impunity that he said the country's drug traffickers have enjoyed and to do away with the relatively luxurious jail cells convicted drug dealers often command. He promised, too, to fight the corruption that has permeated the highest levels of Mexican government and law enforcement.Fox, wearing black jeans and a new pair of cowboy boots given him by Argentine President Fernando de la Rua, made time today for a horseback ride. His big gray quarter horse, July 2--named for Fox's birthday and the day he won the presidency--pulled up lame, so he clopped along the cobblestones of his family compound on a different mount, stopping to chat with several dozen fans who cheered him from the wrought-iron front gate.Fox is a local hero. He grew up as one of nine children on his ranch here, just across from the church in the San Cristobal town square. His family still works the ranch, raising broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, and making leather boots.Fox's interaction with the crowd at the front gate marks him as a new kind of Mexican president--a man who mixes U.S.-style campaigning and business sense with down-home appeal. He said he plans to spend as much time as possible out of his office and to travel across Mexico to press his ideas. "I want to be a promotional president," he said. "I want to inspire people."Reclining in a deep leather chair in an open interior courtyard of the Spanish-style hacienda--just outside the bedroom where he slept as a child--Fox said the United States needs Mexican development. The United States is Mexico's main trading partner; Mexico is the second-largest U.S. trading partner after Canada.Fox said that the booming U.S. economy has relied on Mexican gardeners and manual laborers, but that a new breed of Mexicans is emerging from universities with highly technical backgrounds in software engineering. He said he hopes those engineers could help solve America's severe shortage of high-tech workers and take their place alongside immigrants from India and Bangladesh."The United States knows very well that you need people to grow," Fox said. "The United States economy cannot grow at rates of 5 percent or more if you do not have Mexicans there." He said he did not understand why Mexicans should be so unwelcome in a country that was built by immigrants."What I propose here is that we build up a plan, an intelligent, creative, innovative plan, whereby we look for economic convergence . . . to start narrowing gaps on all fronts, in inflation, in interest rates, in income," Fox said. "We will never be that good neighbor, that good friend, that good partner, as long as Mexico is lagging way, way behind on development."Fox said he also plans to spur Mexican economic growth by seeking out new foreign investment, with the aim of doubling it to $20 billion annually within three years. That, combined with even more emphasis on Mexican exports, could bring an annual economic growth rate of 7 percent in coming years, he said.Fox said also that his most difficult task over the next year will be fiscal reform. He needs money to fund his ambitious plans to increase spending on education and social programs, but he was harshly criticized recently when an adviser said publicly that Fox was considering a tax on staple foods and medicine. Fox said today that he will work to to increase Mexico's tax collection rate--one of the lowest in Latin America--to help pay for his programs.On illegal drugs, Fox declared that drug dealers in Mexico too often are confident they will not be arrested and that if they are they are able to bribe their way free. Fox said his proposals to streamline federal police functions would reduce those problems.He added that he believes drug traffickers deserve severe punishment and that he would be willing to extradite suspected drug dealers wanted in the United States.Overall, Fox asserted, the illegal drug trade must be fought by a multinational effort, and he said he would ask the United States to end its unilateral drug certification process. That process--which ties U.S. foreign aid to an annual judgment by Washington on whether certain countries are doing enough to fight drugs--is seen throughout Latin America as arrogant and unfair."It is not fair, it's not working, and it doesn't serve a purpose," Fox said.Contact: letterstoed washpost.com Address: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htmBy Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, Washington Post Foreign ServiceMonday , August 14, 2000 ; A01 © 2000 The Washington Post Company Related Articles:Mexico's Fox May Call Halt to Military's WoDshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6591.shtml Head of U.S. Drug Policy Sees End of Certification http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6659.shtml
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Comment #1 posted by MikeEEEEE on August 14, 2000 at 17:03:09 PT
Fair???
"It is not fair, it's not working, and it doesn't serve a purpose," Fox said.Isn't that what the drug war is all about?
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