Vicente Fox Quesada (born 2 July 1942) was President of Mexico from 1 December 2000 to 30 November 2006, succeeding Ernesto Zedillo and preceding Felipe Calderon. Fox, a member of the Christian democratic National Action Party of Mexico, was the first non-Institutional Revolutionary Party president of Mexico in 71 years, and he served as president for six years.
Biography[]
Vicente Fox Quesada was born in Mexico City, Mexico on 2 July 1942 to a father of German-American and Hispanic ancestry and a Basque immigrant mother. Fox graduated from the Universidad Iberoamericana and the Harvard Business School, and he rose from being a Coca-Cola delivery driver to being the company's chief executive in Mexico. Later, Fox was placed in charge of all of Coca-Cola's operations in Latin America, and he made Coke the top-selling soft drink in the country and increased its sales by 50%. Fox left Coca-Cola in 1979, and he became involved in politics in 1988, when he joined the National Action Party of Mexico. That same year, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, representing the Third Federal District in Leon, Guanajuato. In 1994, he was elected Governor of Guanajuato; he served from 25 September 1995 to 25 September 1999, succeeding Carlos Medina Plascencia and preceding Ramon Martin Huerta. Fox gave a clear, public, and timely account of the finances of his state, and he pushed for the consolidation of small firms, promoted the overseas sales of goods made in Guanajuato, and created an extensive system of small loans to help the poor open a small shop and buy a car and television.
In 1997, the opposition parties of Mexican politics overtook the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Chamber of Deputies seats for the first time, motivating Fox to run for President of Mexico. Fox had the backing of both his own PAN party and the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico, and he won the election with 43% of the vote, winning the election on 2 July 2000, his 58th birthday. Fox was the first President of Mexico not to be a member of the ruling PRI in 70 years, ending "the perfect dictatorship".
Vicente Fox's presidency was marked by good relations with the United States, the start of the Mexican Drug War, and uneventful politics. Fox was well-liked for his cowboy style and charisma, wearing jeans and boots as he travelled across Mexico. Fox had an approval rating of 70% upon leaving office, owing to his popularity among voters. However, he failed to take charge in politics, failed to set priorities, and ignored alliance building. Fox maintained macroeconomic stability inherited from his PRI predecessor Ernesto Zedillo, but he failed to triumph against organized crime, and only 1.4 million formal-sector jobs were created, leading to massive immigration to the USA and an explosive increase in informal unemployment. He left office in 2006, with fellow PAN member Felipe Calderon succeeding him.
After leaving office, Fox remained in the spotlight as a public speaker, and he resided in Guanajuato with his wife, Marta Sahagun, and their family. In 2007, Fox was accused of illegally enriching himself after pictures of his renovated ranch were released, but Fox claimed that he had purchased the ranch in 1999, before he became President of Mexico. In 2013, he was expelled from the PAN for endorsing PRI candidates throughout the 2010s, and his political views shifted towards the left; he became a vocal critic of Republican Party presidential nominee (and later President of the United States) Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.