Vicente Fox visits San Diego

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Mexico’s globe-trotting former president, Vicente Fox, visited San Diego yesterday for an awards ceremony where he talked tough against the proposed U.S.-Mexico border fence and took a veiled swipe at his old nemesis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Fox has kept a busy public schedule since leaving office five months ago. He came to San Diego after giving a speech at the European Parliament. At the U.S. Grant Hotel ballroom downtown, Fox got several standing ovations and accepted an award from the Institute of the Americas for his commitment to democratic principles.

Fox plans on building the first Mexican presidential library and said he will “ride his horse of democracy” to South America to promote social policies. Though he praised some South American leftist presidents, he criticized “messianic, dictatorial” leaders.

“I don’t accept demagoguery as an easy answer to poverty,” said Fox, in an obvious reference to Chavez, with whom he had tense relations. The former president saved his most impassioned remarks for U.S. plans to build a fence along the border.

He noted that his own grandfather, a Cincinnati-born U.S. citizen who moved to Mexico, embodied the immigrant experience that enriches nations. “I can’t understand why a democratic nation, the champion of democracy and freedom, is building a wall,” said Fox.

Posted by Richard Marosi in San Diego