Fox is a Latino name?
Quasi
I believe that his father was an American employee of Petromex. The Econimist explained this in one of their articles when he started his campaign. You could do a search on their website.
The Spanish word for fox is zorro. Hm…who was that masked presidente?
My last name is not Gonzalez or Lopez, Silva, but I’m still as 100% Mexican as a Mexican can get when one’s country’s borders grew, shrank and was conqured and occupied by LOTS of other people. I regularly get “That’s a Mexican name?” and I say, Well, Mexicans have it…I do, anyway.
Since we pronounce the xsound in Spanish as a soft h, “Mexico” comes out sounding like “Meh-hee-coe.” So how do we pronounce El Presidente’s last name? “Foehhh”?
It would sound like “Folks” in English. The Spanish X has several sounds.
It’s not that strange for a Mexican, especially a relatively upper class one - to have a non-Spanish name. Jacobo Zabludovski, Arturo Ripstein, Frida Kahlo, Salma Hayek, Elena Poniatowska, Enrique Kraus, and Vicente Fox all come to mind this minute…all household names in Mexico.
I’m Chilean, but have a non-Spanish surname (It’s German), there and in Argentina non-Hispanic German, Italian, and even English surnames are even more common.
The “official version” is that his grandfather was an immigrant rancher from Ireland…(but there are some stories that he was born in Cincinatti, Ohio).
A few years ago the Mexican constitution was amended to make it possible for the child of a foreign born parent to be elected president. And Vicente Fox’s mother is from Spain. While the official reasoning behind the law change was to recognize that many Mexican citizens today are born in the United States (making them dual citizens) - many people in Mexico referred to it as the “emienda Fox” , ‘Fox amendment’ - as he was a rising political star at the time; but his parentage made him inelligible for president until the change.
I heard that he was the physical incarnation of the TV station that brings us The Simpsons.
(Yeah, it’s a fuckin’ stupid joke, but it’s 3:20 AM, and somebody had to say it. Might as well been me.)
hey, wasn’t the president of Peru named Fujimori? As Peruvian as Fox is Mexican.
I just wish I could scan in the photo of the two presidents on page 1 of the LA Crimes. Fox is pulling away from Bush like Bush has cooties. Hey, dumbness isn’t catching!
Actually, to pronounce the Spanish “x” like a Spanish “j” is archaic. It only survives in place names like México, Texas, and Oaxaca, and even then, some continental Spaniards spell them “Méjico”, “Tejas”, and “Oajaca”. (Mexicans never do, of course.) The Spanish town of Xerez/Jerez de la Frontera (where sherry is made) is in a similar situation.
Nowadays, Spanish “x” has the same sound as in English, as in “exactamente.” So “Fox” is pronounced “Fox” (longer “o” than in English).
Jaimest - It’s said that the constitutional amendment allowing first-generation Mexicans (that is, natural born Mexicans with at least one parent of Mexican nationality) to hold the office of president was designed to benefit Jaime Serra Puche, who was the Trade Secretary during the Salinas Administration. Serra Puche fell into disgrace as a result of the 1995 peso crash, when he was Zedillo’s Finance Secretary.
The change to Constitutional Article 82 was promulgated on July 1, 1994… at that time the presidency and both houses of Congress were under PRI control, so unlikely that Fox was the intended beneficiary of the reform. I think that at that time Fox was not holding public office, having lost his first bid for governor of Guanajuato.
During the Fox campaign some PRI politicians tried to link Fox to the now-hated Salinas, by saying that he (Fox) has Salinas to thank for the opportunity. Obviously most Mexicans didn’t buy it.
And to follow matt_mcl’s post…
Xola pronounced “Shola”
Xochimilco pronounced “Sochimilco”
Xoco pronoucned “Hoco”
I know the press can be unreliable…but I did read in different places that Fox, perhaps underhandedly, played a role in the constitutional change. Was it all PRI propaganda? I admit my knowledge of Mexican affairs is pisspoor compared to that of ** El Mariachi Loco **, since I don’t know the Mexican constitution very well, and tend to mix up things I hear.
But I do know that Fox didn’t just pop up from nowhere. He has been a nationally known political figure in Mexico for 10 or so years. (He certainly creates more of an impression than Jaime Serra Puche ever did). After the death of Manuel Clouthier, who built the PAN from a miniscule bunch of dissidents to a major force in northern Mexico, the PAN seemed leaderless for a while (I can’t even recall who ran for the PAN in 1994), Fox seemed to emerge as the party’s star. So I do think some people had Fox in mind when that article (or amendment?) was passed in 1994. Maybe not the PRI hierarchy, but the PAN party did.
I don’t think that was a joke, as I didn’t see a punchline. But maybe in a few years…
Anyway, this may not be the best example, as Fujimori is now living in Japan, having claimed Japanese citizenship, which the Japanese government has recognized. They are now refusing to extradite him to face murder, corruption, and various other charges back in Lima.
“Official” results for 1994 election
50.18% PRI Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon
26.69% PAN Diego Fernandez de Cevallos
17.08% PRD Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano
6.05% Others