'Fox Fox Fox Fox FOX FOX FOX FOX!" You know who they're yelling about: he's the granite-jawed guy standing above everybody else in the hall. Vicente Fox Quesada. Over six feet tall -- and, some will tell you, the sexiest candidate for the leadership of Mexico, since, well, Emiliano Zapata.

"For women, he is an attractive candidate, very tall, very macho," says David Shirk, a UCSD graduate student who has written a thesis on Fox's party, the National Action Party (PAN). "He has that macho image. That mustache [makes him] a very traditional Mexican male figure.

"!Arriba el PAN!" (Up with PAN!) yells an eight-year-old girl into the microphone. "!Arriba!"

The crowd roars it back. Hundreds of splayed fingers poke the air in a "V for vic- tory" sign. Blue-and-white banners and flags wave around the room, silhouetted by the setting sun. This rally appears to be kicking off a roller-coaster election season in Tijuana. Vicente Fox leads the most significant attack on the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in its more than 60 years of power. Of course, this ex-governor of Guanajuato state represents the party of counterrevolution. Until its remarkable growth in the past two decades, the PAN had eked out a marginal existence ever since it was created in 1939. It is pro-business, pro-individualism, supportive of a transparent democratic process, and conservative with a small "c." Fox, they say, is at once PAN's greatest hope and its least PANista member.

I've come here with Shirk and Tijuana's ex-mayor, Héctor Osuna Jaime, also a PANista, who has been helping Shirk with his thesis. The cops, half of them in black bulletproof vests, are all over Gustavo Díaz Ordaz Boulevard as we drive up to the Salón Alba Roja around 3:00 p.m. A roadblock has been set up. You can't help thinking back to the Tijuana presidential campaign of Luis Donaldo Colosio, which ended in his shooting death in the middle of a campaign speech on March 23, 1994.

We join a line of a few hundred people snaking down toward the '60s-moderne building, painted yellow with mauve concrete pillars.

Ironically, for pro-business PAN, it's a union building. Also ironic: it's called "the white-red salon" (PAN's colors are white and blue). Trumpet music drifts out of the building. Upstairs and inside, the music blares. Hundreds of people stand around in groups, some smoking, holding blue-and-white PAN banners. I notice Osuna wears a "Fox 2000" pin on his shirt. PAN and Fox T-shirts are for sale. Many other people sit at round tables eating tamales, the food du jour: PAN is respecting the Dia de la Candelaria, or Candlemas, a day on which church candles are blessed.

"Fox! I want to tell you something." It's another young girl at the microphone. Her voice booms. "My dad is a police officer. He was a PRI supporter when he joined the force. But when the PAN came in, they provided him with a weapon. They provided him with his own patrol car. He didn't have to find these things for himself anymore. Since the PAN has come in, my father is with the PAN!"

The cheers echo out around the hall. The event has been billed as a diálogo ciudadano -- a "town meeting" with Fox, to give him input on campaign issues.

But before most get their chance, Fox outlines what he wants: "Today," he booms, "we are five months away from [presidential election day] the second of July. We don't have any more time to lose. The time has come to put forth our ideas and our strength to build ourselves a marvelous Mexico. I have come here to join forces with you, arm in arm. I'm getting my trinchera -- foxhole -- ready. And we are not alone. We can see how Veracruz has woken up. How the state of Mexico has woken up. How Chiapas has woken up.... I will dedicate every second, every moment of my time to fight for a better Mexico...but I need you to put your pants and your skirts into it. I want you to accompany me in ending corruption and deceit, engaño. And to make an education revolution! When only 5 of every 100 children have the chance to reach university, things must change! That is our great responsibility."

Fox says Mexico is capable of an annual growth of 7 percent, up from the average 2 percent he says has been Mexico's average recently under PRI. He wants better wages, he wants an end to "presidentialism," where power is concentrated around the Mexican White House, Los Pinos, and in the federal government. He wants to decentralize power, create a new "federalism" where states essentially control their own economies. He speaks passionately and precisely. There are no hesitations. Not only that, but unlike the candidates campaigning north of the border, or even Mexico's President Zedillo, Fox has a great sense of oratory, a seductive command, an aura of the caudillo (charismatic leader). He's not just horse-trading promises, he's carrying on a crusade.

The cowboy boots and the engraved belt buckle signal his accessibility. And when he targets the drug trade, the roar of the crowd becomes greatest.

"The [present government] talks about the lack of safety in Baja California. They talk about narco-traffickers and organized crime. Narco-trafficking and organized crime are federal crimes. Those are the federal government's [responsibility]. This is an affair they have not resolved because they are part of the problem. Because within the federal government there is narco-trafficker influence.... Raúl Salinas, Mario Villanueva, other people from Culiacán and other cities -- there are murderers in our government making themselves rich!"

Hooting, cheers, and claps thunder out. But some people look around, a little nervous. Maybe they remember Colosio.

Fox is unfazed. "For these reasons they don't want us to win. [But] they know we're going to kick them out of Los Pinos on the second of July. They know we are going to build a great nation, a triumphant country."

Now he hands the microphone over to concerned citizens -- perhaps pre-organized by the party, perhaps not.

"I want to ask you what you would do for those of us women who work in the maquiladoras," asks one woman.

"We have been fighting for our rights for a year," says another. "We who are working hard and don't have a lot of money. We know you are going to have great power. We're desperate. Will you make a great effort for us?"

"I want to ask our candidate what exactly is your program to give us back our public safety, our security that we have lost for so long," says an older man in a big hat. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Fox, welcome to Baja California," says a middle-age woman. "You know that we all love you and support you. Especially the women. The woman is the most important part of the family. She also has to fight for her children and move them forward. So our question is: are you going to consider the woman as an important part of your presidential cabinet? And in what posts or positions?"

A few men laugh at what they probably perceive as the woman's nerve.

"We from Rosarito are confident that you are going to win," says a man. "And that you'll be in the seat of power in Los Pinos. So we ask you that you take away the headache of constantly rising gas prices. It's more expensive here than in San Diego!"

Fox responds as best he can, then winds up with a call to arms. "I want you to raise your hands up in the 'victory' sign. This means that you are promising to devote a little bit of your time every week, that you are committing to fight for a future for Mexico for our children. You are promising to help me kick the PRI out of Los Pinos! I go in triumph, I smell triumph. I smell success. I smell the desire to win. We're going to go for Mexico. We're going to go for Baja California. And we're going to go for the future of our children!"

"People don't realize it, but this party could take over in 2000," says David Shirk afterward. "And much credit will go to Fox. When I started to find out who were the key players in the PAN -- in 1996, 1997 -- I could tell Fox was part of something that was going to be big, at least within the party. That he was going to be a major player for 2000. He's been campaigning for a shot at the presidency since 1993."

Fox, says Shirk, started his working life in Guanajuato as a delivery manager for Coca-Cola. He worked his way up to become chief of all of Coca-Cola's Latin American operations. He seemed a natural fit for PAN, except his ambition and his pragmatism offended the party's scholarly ideologues in Mexico City. His victory in getting his party's nomination was seen by many as a coup d'etat, which brought less dogmatic "neo-PANistas" to dominate the older, more academic ideologues of the party. Some of these older members were not unhappy when Fox discovered that under Article 82 of the Mexican constitution, he could not become president. That rule stated both parents must be natural-born Mexican citizens. Fox's mother was Spanish. But reforms went through just in time for the 2000 elections.

Shirk says the opposition to Fox within the PAN leadership had the unintentional effect of provoking him into "Americanizing" his campaign, starting a trend that might be hard to stop. First he loosened his dependence on the party by setting up an "Amigos de Fox" organization outside the restrictions of both party and national electoral regulations. They gather funds, sell pro-Fox paraphernalia (like Osuna's "Fox 2000" booster pin), and produce TV ads. "A lot has changed in the past ten years," says Osuna. "I've been a PANista since 1983. In 1988 I remember putting a PAN bumper sticker on my car. I felt I was being pretty daring! It was risking something then. Today, look at all the cars outside. And Vicente Fox, he has what's needed to win the presidency."

So what would President Fox's attitudes be toward his northern border, immigration, and dealing with Uncle Sam? I catch him at the end of the post-diálogo ciudadano press conference he holds at the hotel Plaza Las Glorias. He wraps an arm around my shoulder and walks me outside."The only request I would make is that the next [U.S.] president should be a man or a woman with sufficient vision to know that we can build up a very productive long-term relationship between Mexico, United States, and Canada. And that we should move forward to opening up this border for free trade and for free passage of people, workers, and citizens. And that we should look at the long term, 20, 30 years from now, to a common market of North America where we would really be partners...to make sure that we eradicate this gap between a salary of a worker on this side of the border, which is $5 a day, and the $60 a day they earn on the other side. We need to improve the income here.

"I hope that the next president of the United States can have the wisdom and the vision that Europe has had to level off incomes in countries like Greece, Portugal, and Spain, with Germany, England, or the Danish people. As long as we keep that difference between salaries, this border will be a migrant border, no matter what is done."