Mexico’s former president rebukes critics of his wealth

Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, wants his fellow citizens to know that he’ll never abandon his beloved rancho in central Mexico, which his opponents and the media have attacked as a gaudy display of opulence rarely seen in a country racked by poverty.

Currently on a tour of the United States to promote his autobiography “Revolution of Hope,” Fox is under fire at home for the wealth he appears to have accumulated during his six years as president. Fox handed over the reins to fellow conservative Felipe Calderon last year.

In a telephone interview Monday with The Times, Fox blamed the controversy on detractors who are angry because he refuses to act like other former Mexican presidents: He won’t allow himself to fade into obscurity, as did his predecessor, Ernesto Zedillo, or to be pushed into ignominious exile, the fate of Zedillo’s predecessor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

“My enemies are trying to stop me in my path,” Fox said from his New York City hotel. “I have absolutely nothing to hide. I am the only president to make his wealth public, and to open his home to everyone.”

The issue of Fox’s wealth exploded into the public discourse last month, after the magazine Quien published a glossy spread of Fox and his wife, Marta Sahagun, at San Cristobal, the couple’s ranch in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.

Quien depicted Fox walking with his herd of cattle and sitting at a desk in his library with several equine-inspired decorations. It showed off his collection of dolls of Mexican presidents (including one of himself), and a large pond stocked with fish, which a caption described as “an enormous lake.”

To an American reader, it might have seemed a relatively harmless display of post-presidential comfort. But to many observers in this country, where nearly half the population lives in poverty, the pictures were offensive. Former Fox aide Lino Korrodi called it a “cynical” display of wealth. There were calls in Congress for an investigation of Fox’s finances.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg of the corrupt practices that will surely come to public light,” said Antonio Ortega, a legislator with the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.

Fox said such statements have perplexed him, since his home has always been open to visitors. He said speculation about his wealth is being fed by a traditional distrust of politicians in a country where a single party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party -- known in Mexico as the PRI -- dominated politics for 71 years. Fox’s victory in 2000 ended the PRI’s political supremacy.

“In that twisted culture of the PRI dictatorship, an ex-president had to shut up, he had to disappear, usually because he was charged with corruption,” Fox said. “I am changing that culture with my actions.”

Fox broke a kind of taboo with the Quien photo shoot: Few people could recall an ex-president purposefully drawing so much attention to himself. And in the weeks since, the Mexican press corps has gone after Fox with a vengeance.

The investigative magazine Proceso hired a helicopter to photograph the rancho, describing it and other Fox properties as a “fiefdom.” One newspaper traced the red Jeep that Fox drives in the photo shoot to a businessman who registered the vehicle to the address of Fox’s Vamos Mexico foundation. The businessman said he’s lending Fox the vehicle.

Perhaps most seriously, Mexico’s high auditor has announced that it will examine Fox’s presidential expenses.

Asked if he might consider living abroad in the face of repeated questioning of his finances, Fox grew angry.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Rancho San Cristobal has been my home, it is my home and will continue to be my home. . . . It’s where my roots are, my inheritance, my family. What I love and adore is there.”

In a press release last month, Fox’s publicists said the property has been in his family since 1914. The future president is said to have built much of the home himself, over the course of several decades.

“My body will rest there one day, and that’s where I’ll be buried, in San Cristobal,” Fox said in the interview.

Fox’s book tour included an appearance Monday at New York University. He will be reading from his book next Tuesday at Caltech in Pasadena. He said he looks forward to discussing the book’s central theme: his long fight to make Mexico a more democratic country.

“Like all humans, there were mistakes and successes,” he said of his rule. “But the country is moving forward and will continue to advance under Calderon.”

hector.tobar@latimes.com