A COUNTRY THAT MATTERS :

SOUTH OF THE BORDER (Michael Barone, US News)

Two years ago, Vicente Fox was elected president of Mexico in a blaze of hope-the first time the ruling PRI had been defeated in 71 years. The conventional wisdom today is that Fox has been a disappointment. He spent much of his first year dealing with the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, only to have his settlement rejected by the Zapatistas. He has failed to get his tax plan and reform of the state oil company, Pemex, through the Congress, in which neither his PAN nor the PRI nor the leftist PRD has a majority. In recent weeks he has had to deal with violent protests of plans for a new Mexico City airport. "Changes in Mexico are not taking place at the intensity and with the velocity that some people expected," admits Communications Director Rodolfo Elizondo.

But this is not the whole picture. Economic growth has slowed in Mexico-inevitably, given its close ties with the United States. But the peso remains strong, the banking system is solid, and Mexico has gone through its first election cycle since the 1970s without a currency devaluation. As Elizondo says, "I think the government has succeeded in maintaining macroeconomic and fiscal discipline. In spite of the crisis in the U.S. and around the world, we are doing well when we are compared with the rest of Latin America."

Even more important, Fox seems to be making progress in changing the culture of corruption in law enforcement.

Forget Europe, here's a country that has a future and that matters to ours, so long as reformers like Vicente Fox can succeed. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 30, 2002 11:45 PM