Now, Garcia says, they expect their reward. We hope that it gives us work, that it gives us quality education, that it gives us more. Millions of Mexico's poorest hold the same hope. And Fox, who takes office this Friday, says that alleviating poverty in places like Cacatzala will be a primary goal of his six-year term. The incoming president, his advisers and analysts agree that a failure to at least begin relieving the desperate conditions in which many Mexicans live will scuttle the new administration's promise of a lasting and prosperous democracy.
Penury plagues Mexico.
Two decades of financial crisis and anemic economic growth have left nearly half the country's 97 million people below the poverty line. The gap between rich and poor, always great, has yawned still wider amid the slow recovery from the economic crisis sparked by the 1994 peso devaluation. While luxury cars ply Mexico City's streets, malnutrition rates in some areas rival those in the world's poorest countries. Shanty-towns ring most cities, and beggars clog their streets. But nowhere is poverty worse than in the countryside, home to more than a fourth of the country's people.