Fox's Hunt.

A NEW PRESIDENT TARGETS PEACE AND PROSPERITY FOR MEXICO

Talk about an inaugural speech. When the new President of Mexico took his oath of office in December, hostile members of the country's Congress kept their seats as he entered the room. As soon as he opened his mouth to speak, they started hooting and jeering. One shouted: "Liar!"

And you thought President Bush has it bad. In fact, Mexico's charismatic, newly elected President, Vicente Fox, a 58-year-old rancher turned businessman, faces political and economic problems that dwarf those of America's President. Fox is the first Mexican President not to come from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish initials as "the PRI." The PRI had ruled Mexico for 71 years, controlling the presidency, all other political institutions, and the media--and was far from ready to give up power. Besides his political opponents, Fox faces severe economic problems, widespread crime, deeply rooted corruption, and the Zapatista rebel movement (see "The War Within"). And that doesn't even include immigration and trade issues with the United States.

Mexico, a country roughly three times the size of Texas, with 94 million people, has long lagged behind the U.S. in economic development. Many Mexicans still live on the equivalent of $2 a day. Millions of its citizens have fled, often illegally, to seek better lives in the U.S.

Fox has made it clear that he means to break with past policies, announcing within hours of his inauguration that the Mexican government's seven-year war with the Zapatistas was over. He pulled back military units and said he would negotiate with the guerrillas. Meanwhile, he warned that corruption will no longer be tolerated. In a first, he required his cabinet members to take their oaths of office publicly and promise not to take bribes. He also issued a stern warning to the drug dealers who have made Mexico a center of drug traffic into the U.S.

Fox may be able to deliver on promises to keep the economy from faltering, helped in large part by banking reforms of his predecessor and by the North American Free Trade Agreement, the treaty that eliminated trade barriers among the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. In Mexico, NAFTA has been a huge success, adding 3.3 million jobs in the last five years, and helping the economy grow by an average of 5 percent a year for the last four years. Other changes will be tougher, since they require help from a Congress still controlled by the PRI.

Fox's victory has boosted the morale of many Mexicans. After years in which opposition candidates were routed, sometimes by outright electoral fraud, Mexicans were shocked to find that their votes for Fox mattered. "I never thought that Fox would win, even if all the votes were for him, because the PRI was so powerful," says Juan Quiroz Romero, who runs a fruit stand in Mexico City. "The people finally showed that we are more powerful than any political party, even a dictatorship like the PRI. Now the people are in control."