I.

Introduction

Vicente Fox or Fox, Vicente, born in 1942, president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, who made political history when he defeated the presidential candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). It was the first time the PRI had lost the presidency since the party was formed in 1929. Fox’s election ended the PRI’s dominance, the longest single-party dominance of a country in the 20th century.

Vicente Fox Quesada was born in Mexico City of a Spanish mother and a Mexican father. His paternal grandfather was an Irish American immigrant from Ohio who moved to Mexico for health reasons and eventually purchased a ranch in the state of Guanajuato. Fox’s father continued to work the ranch, and Fox was raised there. He attended Jesuit schools in León, Guanajuato, and then pursued university studies in business administration at Ibero-American University, a Jesuit college in Mexico City.

Fox began his career working for the Coca-Cola Company in the 1960s. He rose through the ranks, and from 1975 to 1979 he served as president of the company’s Mexican and Latin American division. In the early 1980s Fox ran his own company, Grupo Fox, which specialized in agriculture and shoe manufacturing.