Former Mexican President Vicente Fox Urges Students to Develop Leadership Skills

Vicente Fox, president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006 kicked off a new forum named for him that will bring world leaders to campus in the coming year. Photo courtesy of The TCU Magazine

Fort Worth, Texas

12/1/2011

By Kathryn Hopper, The TCU Magazine

The world's leaders haven't been able to solve problems such as drug violence and economic imbalance so it's up to the next generation to develop new ideas, former Mexican President Vicente Fox told high school and college students who gathered on campus for the kick-off of forum designed to bring world leaders to campus.

"We seem to have conflicts most everywhere, so today it's time for leaders," said Fox, who served as Mexican president from 2000 to 2006. "You will have to build that future that is coming, you will have to be the leaders starting as of today and the leaders of mañana and this is a great responsibility."

His speech served as the kick-off of the Vicente Fox Forum of World Leaders at TCU, which will bring high-profile leaders from across the globe to North Texas in 2012 with the goal of inspiring the next generation. Among the speakers scheduled to participate are former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, former Prime Minister Jean Chretien of Canada, former Prime Minister Lech Walesa of Poland, former President Alvaro Uribe Velez of Colombia and former President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel.

Fox also stages a similar forum in his home region of Guanajuato, Mexico at Centro Fox, a state-of-the-art presidential library and learning center that is Fox's life project. He came to TCU through a connection with Juan Hernandez '78 (MA) (PhD '81), co-founder of the Hispanic Leadership Alliance, a Texas-wide organization.

Fox encouraged the students to spend five minutes at the beginning of every day to center themselves and focus on what they want to accomplish. He also stressed the importance of education, saying the U.S. higher education system is the envy of the world.

"Those of us who come from abroad, when we see the university system in this nation, we know that this nation will have the capacity to lead into the future, that this nation will be generating the compassionate, heroic leadership that we need to meet the challenge of the future," he said.

Fox also noted that the current wave of anti-immigration sentiment in the United States doesn't recognize that immigrants can be a powerful resource because they are, by their nature, people who are striving for something better.

"No other nation should know better the assets, the strength, the capacity of migrants to build big projects like building a nation, like building our own home," he said. "If you look back, for each U.S. citizen today there is always a migrant heritage, but today evaluation of migration is negative, described as a problem, when, very different to that, it's a great opportunity. But we need to administrate the issue of migration under some regulations and in some order."

He also touted a "NAFTA-Plus" solution to help the nations of Mexico, the United States and Canada build their economies. He noted that Mexico imports more products and services from the U.S. and Canada than Italy, Germany and Great Britain combined.

"We need to reawaken NAFTA because this trade agreement is the most powerful tool we have to create wealth, to promote growth, to create the jobs to replace the jobs we're losing to China, to India — the tigers of Asia," he said.

Fox says Mexico, which was once the leader among Latin American nations, has seen that role fall to Brazil. He said the Mexican government has not done enough to respond to the people's needs and expectations.

"When you don't have a job, when you don't have a place in school or a scholarship, when you don't have opportunities, then you're not enthusiastic about the future," he said. "Mexico has to regain that leadership."

He also said drug-related violence has ravaged his country, so he proposed radical thinking to address the problem — including the legalization of drugs — in order to take the money out of the hands of criminal cartels.

"This is the problem: A $50 billion market that's going into the hands of criminals who are using it to corrupt Mexican officials and contract with young people who are 15 to 25 years old. There are 100,000 kids working for the cartels because they are paying them a salary they can't get anywhere else."

Fox told students that that each person has the power to change the world for the better and used the examples of Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King as leaders who refused to accept the status quo.

"Don't forget that every day you have the opportunity to start again, to accomplish what you want. You have the power within," he said at the end of this speech, which received a standing ovation.