Fox Will Head New Agency for Mexico Migrants

President Vicente Fox, answering criticism that he had tuned out the voices of Mexican immigrants in the United States, announced the creation of a Cabinet-level agency Tuesday to lobby for the interests of Mexico’s 22 million citizens abroad.

Fox told 400 Mexican American leaders that he would head the new National Council of Mexican Communities Abroad and soon appoint a Mexican living outside the country to coordinate its advocacy and assistance programs. The council will take advice from a panel of other Mexican expatriates, he said.

“The government ... will approach our compatriots with a fraternal, agile hand,” Fox declared at a decree-signing ceremony at his Los Pinos residence. “I can assure all Mexican migrants that we will not fail you!”

Mexicans abroad heard a similar pledge when Fox took office in December 2000, hailing them as “national heroes” and setting up a presidential office to look after their needs.

Its director, Juan Hernandez, shuttled between Mexico and the U.S., lobbying to improve undocumented immigrants’ access to education and health care in America and to make it easier and cheaper for them to wire money home.

But last month, Fox abolished the office without comment after Hernandez lost a power struggle with Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. Castaneda and other Cabinet officials had complained that the Texas-born literature professor announced new programs without consulting the agencies charged with carrying them out.

Mexican American groups reacted with unexpected fervor, criticizing Fox for dumping a popular advocate without consulting them.

“Have we ceased to count?” asked leaders of two dozen such organizations in a letter announcing a boycott of Tuesday’s ceremony. They said they feared that the new council, supplanting Hernandez’s office, would be more bureaucratic and less responsive.

In his speech, Fox struck a defensive yet reassuring tone. Mexico’s 18 million immigrants in the U.S. send home an estimated $9 billion a year, the country’s third-largest source of income after oil and tourism.

“Far from distancing ourselves from these concerns that we have had since the presidential campaign, today we are confirming them,” the president said. He applauded Hernandez’s work but said it was time for a more coordinated effort involving seven government ministries.

Mexican officials said Fox felt rushed to answer his critics before starting to consult them over which groups will sit on the new council’s advisory panel.

Hernandez, who has not commented on his ouster, will apparently play no role in the new setup. On Monday, he was offered the position of coordinator of presidential records, with the task of setting up an Internet site and writing reports on Fox’s achievements.

Fox promised to give “primordial importance” to the ideas of Mexicans abroad, “leaving behind the idea” that government policies toward expatriate citizens “are dictated unilaterally from Mexico.”

His audience’s reaction was mixed.

“This is very strange,” said Jose Jacques Medina, coordinator of the Comite Pro-Union, a Mexican American group based in Maywood. “We don’t know how the Mexican American communities will fit in, how much funding this council will get or where the money will come from. We’re a bit confused.”

The new council won tentative support from the Council of Presidents of Mexican Federations in Los Angeles and the Washington-based League of United Latin American Citizens. Brent Wilkes, executive director of the latter group, said the change is “probably better in the long run,” since Hernandez’s office lacked a significant budget and staff.

California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, in Mexico on state business, said Castaneda invited him to Tuesday’s ceremony with a day’s notice. Having heard criticism of Fox’s initiative, Bustamante said he hesitated, then decided to listen to the president.

“We’ll have to see the outcome of this new program,” the lieutenant governor said after Fox’s speech. “Expectations have been raised, and Fox understands that. That’s why he put himself as the presiding officer of the new council. There’s a need to raise the level of service to Mexicans abroad.”

Times staff writer Anthony McCarthy in Los Angeles contributed to this report.