ABSTRACT
Vicente Fox Quesada, President of Mexico for the term 2000-06, was born in 1942 in León, Guanajuato, and pursued business studies at the Ibero-American University, Mexico City, and Harvard Business School. The son of a wealthy farmer, he managed a 450-ha ranch in Guanajuato, raising cattle and ostriches for export, before joining the Coca Cola Corpn in 1964 and rising to become its president for Mexico and Central America. In 1988 he won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies for the opposition Partido Acción Nacional, contested the governorship of Guanajuato in 1991 and won it with a large majority at his second attempt in 1995. Nominated by his party to contest the presidency in the 2000 elections, he defeated an undistinguished government candidate and broke the monopoly of power that the Partido Revolucionario Institucional had held since 1929. As President he has been handicapped by the lack of a supporting majority in Congress, but has favoured free-market solutions to Mexico’s problems and was the first head of state to be invited to meet US President George W.Bush.
