Has Fox helped Mexico? His countrymen here are split

Miguel Estevez came to the United States in the years before President Vicente Fox's caravan for change swept into power in Mexico.

His opinion of the tall, charismatic leader is shaped by what he reads in mainstream American newspapers and what he sees on TV.

Estevez's mother, before she died two years ago, was a loyal Fox supporter — encouraged by the promise of change the former Coca-Cola executive symbolized. Fox's election in 2000 ended 70 years of one-party rule that were marked by corruption and economic turmoil.

Estevez believes Fox's ability to keep his campaign pledge to increase jobs and reduce poverty has been hampered by his party's lack of control in the Mexican Congress.

"The bad thing about the Mexican economy is that it's hard to compete with its U.S. neighbor," said Estevez, 36, who does asbestos-removal work, and lives with his wife and children in West Seattle.

Fox, he said, has brought real democracy to Mexico, allowing open criticism of his government in a way previous leaders did not. "I don't blame him, I blame the politics. I'm thankful for things he did."

But many of Estevez's compatriots living in Washington state — longtime residents and recent immigrants, legal and illegal — don't agree with him.

They say Fox, who begins a two-day visit to Washington on Wednesday, has fallen short on his promise for real change that reaches deep into the trenches of poverty.

The failure, they say, is evidenced in the record number of Mexicans who daily risk their lives pouring north out of their homeland. Ten years ago, 260,000 illegal immigrants from Mexico were entering the U.S. each year. That number is now estimated at around 500,000.

Many of them are small-business owners who were forced out of work when big American corporations, such as Wal-Mart, moved in. Or rural farmers who lost their jobs after highly subsidized imports from the U.S. flooded the Mexican markets.

"It's not just farmers but young people who finish school or drop out who see nothing for themselves there," said Erica Dahl-Bredine, country manager for Catholic Relief Services Mexico, based in Tucson, Ariz.

She said Fox continued a trend that began with the previous administration of focusing support on the country's export sector and on foreignowned manufacturing plants along the border, called maquiladoras, at the expense of local industries, small businesses and farmers.

"There's a growing inequity in Mexico: the gap between the very wealthy and the rest of the population," she said.

Desperate for change

A political conservative whose term ends this year, Fox had pledged to help almost everyone when he was elected in 2000: more housing and subsidies for the poor, better schools for all children and friendly relations with businesses.

Such are the promises of politicians everywhere. But Mexico's huge peasant class — desperate for a change — had believed him.

Six years later, those who left under Fox's rule and those with family still in Mexico say the only people who appear to be thriving are the very wealthy. In a country of vast natural resources, about 40 percent of Mexicans live in poverty, according to international studies and the Mexican government's own estimates.

"His idea of controlling poverty is to export it," said Palmira Figueroa, 32, who works for a nonprofit Seattle agency that helps mostly Latino workers.

Figueroa was living in Mexico City in 2000 and voted for Fox. Now, she says she believes he squandered his opportunity for change.

She and her husband transferred legally to the U.S. with his job four years ago. "Our move here is part of the really bad things that are happening in the country," said Figueroa, who had worked at a major bank in Mexico before coming here. "The talented people are leaving to other places."

While Figueroa has heard the reports about economic growth and monetary stability in Mexico, that's not what she sees when she visits family back in Mexico City.

"I have a lot of family members and friends looking for jobs, more than at any other time," she said.

Still, economists praise Fox for shoring up foreign confidence in his country. Experts say that under his leadership the Mexican economy has stabilized, the peso has remained strong and the Mexican stock market is seeing sustained gains.

But many of the improvements might be occurring at a level the masses, desperate for work or struggling under poverty, can't see, or the changes may simply be too subtle to notice, said Pedro Celis, an engineer at Microsoft, who grew up and was educated in Mexico.

"I think the review on Fox is mixed; he definitely has not lived up to the expectations," he said. "But keep in mind the expectations were very high."

Speaking by phone last week from a research summit in Mexico sponsored by Microsoft, Celis pointed out that the movement of manufacturing jobs to China affects Mexico at a much greater level than it affects the U.S.

"Companies that used to set up offshore plants in Mexico now find it cheaper to send them to China," he said.

But Celis said the Mexican economy has kept growing. "It's not like there's a disaster that his policies have effected."

"Part of the problem"

Washington is home to more than half a million Latinos, about 80 percent of whom are of Mexican heritage, according to the U.S. Census.

Many live in Eastern Washington, where they work mostly on fruit and vegetable farms. The majority now live in Western Washington, where they have found work in construction, landscaping, restaurants and hotels.

Mexicans represent about 7 million of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., according to a statistical analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors immigration control. They also represent the largest share of foreigners who immigrate legally to the U.S. each year.

Census 2000 figures show that 19 percent of Mexicans here had at least a high-school education, compared with 87 percent of state residents overall. The median income for the Mexican population is nearly $32,000, compared with $46,000 for the overall population.

A good part of what they earn here, Latinos send to their families at home. Mexico is the largest recipient of such remittances from the U.S., with $20 billion sent in 2005. This money is critical to the survival of millions struggling on the edge.

Ricardo Ortega, an organizer with an immigrant support group known as El Comité, led two recent demonstrations that drew thousands to Seattle streets.

His group is planning a Wednesday evening protest outside the Westin Hotel, where Fox will stay and is scheduled to speak.

"Fox is not part of the solution to immigration, but part of the problem," Ortega said.

"There are entire towns in Mexico where the men have left to find work and only the women, children and old people are left," Ortega said. "That's the devastation of immigration from Mexico."

He said while the Fox administration talks a good game about immigration reform and human rights for Mexican immigrants in the U.S., the Mexican government's treatment of immigrants traveling from Central and South America through Mexico to the United States is troublesome.

Jaime Mendez, who hosts a morning program on KKMO Radio Sol in Seattle, said most of his listeners are Mexicans who are hugely disappointed in their government.

"Right now I sense a bitterness toward the Mexican government; that's the flavor of the calls I'm getting right now," he said.

"People came here to escape misery, poverty and abuse ... No one came here because they were happy back home."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or seattletimes.com">lturnbull@seattletimes.com