Wealth gap tests Mexico's conservative new leader

The president's first trip outside Mexico City was to one of the poorest towns in the state of Guerrero, where he announced a program to invest in the nation's 100 poorest municipalities in order to provide potable water, new drainage systems, and more school funding – and to help bridge the divide between rich and poor. Calderón announced in Guerrero a plan to launch 2,500 projects to improve housing, paid for with $3 million in federal money and $1 million in state funds. Generating employment through infrastructure projects was another López Obrador pledge.

Yet the project Calderón announced in Guerrero is a continuation of a program under previous administrations, says Rodolfo de la Torre, a national expert on poverty who had Calderón as a student while he worked toward his master's degree in economics. Calderón later announced he will bring caravan medical clinics to isolated towns, which expands on former President Vicente Fox's insurance policy for the uninsured, Seguro Popular.

Calderón has also launched a national health-insurance plan for all infants born during his administration. While it has been both hailed and criticized for being aggressive and propagandistic, at its heart the program is also an expansion of Seguro Popular. In announcing the program, Calderón said he hoped to cover an additional 1.7 million uninsured Mexican families this year.

"There is no change – it's a repackaging of different actions," says Mr. de la Torre. "Calderón is not going to revolutionize the economy or social policy ... He is not a man of big ideas but of sensible ones that ... have more impact on people's lives."

Calderón has been part of the political party his father founded in the 1930s for his entire life. A devout Roman Catholic, he lacks the charisma of Fox but, says de la Torre, is a "vertical thinker" who cares less about abstract reasons behind poverty than about results. Others agree. "I think he is better positioned and better qualified than Fox to tackle the social and political issues surrounding poverty," says Mr. Guerra Castellanos. "Because, at the end of the day, it's not just about social programs – it's having the guts to stand up to powerful unions, having the guts to stand up to local party bosses, and the savvy to outsmart them."

George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary, says Calderón will be able to put together legislative coalitions, as he was able to do to pass the budget proposal in December, to acquire more resources for social programs.

According to the National Council on the Evaluation of Politics of Social Development, poverty decreased from 54 percent in 2000 to 47 percent of the population in 2005, but Guerra Castellanos says that Mexico has failed to integrate a huge portion of its residents into the workforce and give them hope that their kids will be able to go to college and move up. "You have managed to bring communities and people out of the swamps; however, the lower middle class, as a sector, is stuck, and it's getting bigger all the time," he says.

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