On July 2, 2000 the world's attention was fixed on Mexico when Vicente Fox (born 1942) pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of winning the country's presidency and toppling the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) after more than 70 years in power.

Ironically, the day Fox (full name: Vicente Fox Quesada) won the election happened to be his birthday. He was born July 2, 1942 in Mexico City but was raised on a communal farm in the state of Guanajuato near Leon. His father was a rancher of Irish descent and his mother came from Spain. Fox also spent time in the United States, first in Wisconsin where he attended Campion High School in Prairie du Chien, for one year; then at Harvard University.

In 1964 he was hired by the Coca-Cola Company, after studying business management at Mexico City's Iberoamerican University. Ten years later he was named president of Coca-Cola of Mexico. In 1979 the company...