PRESIDENT FOX IN HERMOSILLO FOR SECOND RECENT VISIT

UNCLAS HERMOSILLO 000100 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR WHA/MEX, EMBASSY MEXICO FOR POL, MCCA DONAHUE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV ELAB ECON MX SUBJECT: PRESIDENT FOX IN HERMOSILLO FOR SECOND RECENT VISIT REF: HERMOSILLO 0095 ¶1. (U) Summary: President Vicente Fox returned to Hermosillo on March 7, his second visit in four days. He engaged briefly with miners demonstrating for his assistance outside the Government Palace. The President told reporters that he had no intention of firing the Secretary of Labor and that legal action against union leader Napoleon Gomez Urrutia would continue. End Summary. ¶2. (U) President Fox visited Hermosillo March 7, his second visit in four days (reftel),to inaugurate Sonora Forming Technologies, an automotive stamping and assembly plant and major supplier for the huge Ford Company operation here. He attended a private (i.e. closed to the press) luncheon with prominent Sonoran businessmen hosted by Governor Eduardo Bours, and a separate ceremony at which he accepted a pledge for 13 thousand wheelchairs to be given to the Federal government for distribution throughout Mexico. The Governor's wife, working with the International Wheelchair Foundation, had arranged for this donation. ¶3. (U) The President's advance team had kept demonstrators away from him during his stop in Sonora last week (reftel),but on this visit a crowd of about 100, dozens of them miners from Cananea, was waiting at the Government Palace when he arrived. Fox consulted briefly and privately with miners' representatives after seeing posters supportive of the government's position on Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, General Secretary of the Miners Union. Afterwards, he told reporters that his Administration was not interfering with internal union affairs with its investigation of Gomez Urrutia for alleged corruption. The investigation would proceed, he said, as a matter of compliance with the law in accordance with allegations of fraud, including several filed by miners. He said he had no intention of firing Labor Secretary Francisco Salazar. SIPDIS ¶4. (U) The President said that his government had always respected the autonomy of unions, and that it had been the unions themselves which had first moved to suspend Gomez Urrutia. He added that a democratic Mexico has no room for authoritarian enclaves ("enclaves autoritarios") which benefit themselves at the expense of ordinary workers. (Note: The allegations against Gomez Urrutia are in connection with suspected irregularities in distribution of funds paid by mining company Grupo Mexico as part of a 1990 privatization of some copper mines. Gomez Urrutia's backers claim the investigation is actually retaliation for his role in blaming Grupo Mexico for the tragedy last month that killed 65 miners in Coahuila state, and for his opposition to labor reforms proposed by the government. End Note.) ¶5. (SBU) Comment: Governor Bours was as attentive to President Fox as before, and provided a private opportunity for him to interact with some of Sonora most influential business leaders. Overall press coverage of Fox's visit this time, however, was notably less warm than that of the previous week. Reporters complained about heavy security arrangements and ran stories about how closely prominent local officials had been screened to get into events. El Imparcial Sonora reported that the President generally looked tired and grim, and said that his public remarks at the business inauguration focused only on his Administration's accomplishments and seemed to forget the problems of Sonorans. End Comment. CLARKE