- guardian.co.uk, Sunday June 30 2002 03.55 BST
He was meant to be Mexico's Tony Blair, a 21st century politician, a friendly giant of 6'4", who commanded press conferences and spoke in sound bites. He was an international figure, a friend of George W Bush. He wore cowboy boots. But President Fox, the former marketing executive for Coca-Cola whose election should have delivered Mexico from the political dark ages, has been accused of failing to deliver on campaign pledges, and receiving illegal donations.
The donations row is mostly a red herring. During his 2000 campaign he may or may not have taken money from foreign donors, which is illegal in Mexico. The federal court ruled on Monday that his accounts should be handed over for inspection. But this was no great shakes to an electorate that has grown accustomed to extreme political corruption. If nothing else, Fox can take solace in the fact that prosecutors are also investigating his main rival party, the PRI, over an alleged $166m (£110m) party funding fraud.
The real problem for Fox is that Mexico is fed up with of waiting for his miracles to materialise.
When he swept to power, ending the seven-decade rule of the PRI party, he was seen as a reason for hope. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the PRI had waged a savage campaign against leftist elements in its own people - the so-called 'dirty war' that saw demonstrations suppressed, and the routine disappearance of government opponents. Fox pledged to end that phase of politics and punish the guilty elements of the former regime. So far progress has been slow.
"Change, and especially results, do not happen over night," Fox said this week in an interview with the news agency AP, hastily called to pre-empt criticism. "I know in public opinion and the news media, there is an urgency to see change, but anyone who saw Mexico 2 years ago and comes back today, will certainly see that things are different in important ways."
To be fair, Fox has had some successes. He was the first Mexican president to allow human rights observers into the country, and earlier this month he passed the country's first freedom of information bill. Moreover, a special prosecutions team appointed by Fox has just summoned the 80-year-old former president Luis Echeverria to give evidence about his involvement in two notorious massacres that took place 20 years ago.
But timing hasn't been on Fox's side. On Thursday a judge ordered the arrest of his brother in law over an alleged $170,000 theft from an art gallery. On top of this, a number of high-profile cases of police corruption have torn Fox's promise of police-reform to shreds. Earlier this month eight officers were told that they would stand trial for murder after a suspect died in their custody. A post mortem revealed that he had been tortured and choked to death. This was closely followed by the case of officer José Luis, arrested after shooting a teenager dead for drinking on the street, and then allowed to escape by his former colleagues. A national manhunt was launched and Luis' superior was dismissed, but the damage had been done.
For the average Mexican on the street it all adds up, and for all his sound bites and international standing, Fox's popularity at home continues to plummet. "His promises of change got my attention," Juan Ventura, a 27-year-old Otomi Indian, told AP this week. "But now I see that he's the same as all the other politicians. There's no difference at all."
So in black and white: too much spin, not enough substance. Mexico's increasingly vocal electorate has lost faith in its great liberal reformer, and started grumbling about the lack of real change after years under rightwing rule. Maybe these foreign shores aren't so different from our own after all.
A dose of reality
But distraction from Mexico's leadership woes was in ample supply with the climax of the country's first series of Big Brother. It was Mexico's first exposure to reality TV and predictably the show demolished all previous viewing records. After 106 days in the house, a 26-year-old former business student called Rocio Cardenas walked out £150,000 richer, and was immediately whisked off on a luxury trip to Paris.
It was a massive departure for Mexican television, which usually comprises a solid diet of game shows, lowbrow comedy, and cheap soap operas. Reality TV, claimed the show's producers, Televisa, would show 'real Mexicans in real situations'. However the show proved to be anything but that. In a country where more than half of the population don't finish primary school, Mexico's big brother house was made up of light-skinned, beautiful youths from the middle and upper classes.
One contestant, Patricio Zambrano, was a relative of Lorenzo Zambrano, a millionaire who sits on Televisa's board. Patricio, who races sports cars for a living, was moved to tears a few days into the show after his parents hovered over the set in their private helicopter to wish him luck.
Endemol Holding, the Dutch company that devised Big Brother and still has a hand in every series, says it tried to persuade Televisa to cast more of a cross-section of Mexican society. But their Mexican co-producers were against mixing the country's vast underclass with its wealthy minority, as it was thought that poorer members of the house would slip into the role of servants for the richer contestants.
That may be the reality in Mexico, but not across Latin America: the winner of the Brazilian version of the program sold coconuts on the beach for a living, and in Argentina, the winner was a woman from a Buenos Aires slum.
Country club prisons
But it seems that similar discrimination exists for Mexico City's real-life prisoners. A report about the capital seven jails released this week found that dozens of inmates enjoy special privileges, such as the use of tennis courts and gardens, while thousands of others live in substandard conditions, without access to medical facilities, and often in cells with no running water. Chronic overcrowding in the capital's Southern Prison means it is common to find 12 to 15 prisoners crammed side by side in a cell built for four. The report estimated that 2,800 inmates have to sleep on the floor and wash in the corridors.
And yet amidst this squalor 87 prisoners are apparently enjoying a country-club lifestyle, strolling in the grounds, or playing tennis while the other inmates cook, clean and tend gardens for them. Guards at the prison claimed that such privileges were only enjoyed by elderly inmates, but according to the report all 87 men were between 25 and 40.
Perhaps it's no wonder President Fox is having such a hard time cleaning it up.
