Mexico

The inauguration of Vicente Fox in December 2000 promised a “new dawn” for democracy in Mexican politics. He promised to make the alleviation of poverty and elimination of government corruption priorities for his administration. In addition, one of his first acts was to forward to Congress the bill of Indian rights that had been negotiated as part of the peace with the Zapatista rebels in 1996. In March 2001 Subcomandante Marcos led a 15-day march from Chiapas through 12 states to Mexico City to raise support for the bill. The government passed the bill but it was rejected by Marcos, who declared that it did not go far enough; he pledged to continue the uprising in Chiapas.

President Fox appointed a special investigator to look into the disappearances of left-wing activists in the 1970s and 1980s and in June secret security files were released on killings in the same time period. One of the most prominent people to be questioned about the deaths of student protesters in 1968 was the former president Luis Echeverría, interior minister at the time. He was finally cleared of the charges in 2006 after the chief judge ruled that the statute of limitations on the crime had expired.

The election for Fox’s successor in 2006 was closely fought, with Felipe Calderón of the PAN winning nearly 36 per cent of the vote against Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution gaining just over 35 per cent. Obrador challenged the result but in September, two months after the poll, Calderón was declared president-elect. He was sworn in in December.