Fox, a 58-year-old, tough-talking cowboy and ex-Coca-Cola executive, is the first presidential opposition candidate to ever make prey of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a slippery entity that managed to hold on to power for 71 years by constantly shedding its skin and reinventing itself.

And if Fox's recent Cabinet appointments are any indication, his administration promises to mark a major change of tone in U.S.-Mexico relations. With proposals to add to the North American Free Trade Agreement and loosen border restrictions for workers, Fox appears to be demanding from Washington a bigger piece of the North American pie.

His inauguration Friday, attended by such diverse luminaries as Cuban President Fidel Castro (with whom he is friends), U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, marked an indelible moment of change in Mexico's long and turbulent history.

"Let us proceed sensibly and bravely to demolish all vestiges of authoritarianism and to build a genuine democracy," Fox boomed during his inaugural address.

His term as president began like no Mexican head of state's has before. Fox awoke early and headed to the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe to pray to the nation's patron saint, as a mile-high plume of smoke from Mexico City's Popocatepetl volcano hung above him. Afterward, he ate breakfast with capital street children, dining on sweet tamales as he pledged to make the poor and marginalized his first priorities. As Fox headed to Congress to be sworn in as president, a 5.1 earthquake shook the ground beneath him, as if even nature had to recognize the dawning of a new era in Mexico.

"I promise to be a president who is simple, close and a friend to all of you," he told Mexicans later that day in a public address. After seven decades of authoritarian rule marked by corruption and cronyism carried out with impunity, Fox's pro-business National Action Party (PAN) has swept into power on the shoulders of a larger-than-life man whose own bounding optimism has created high expectations for his administration.

Fox has vowed to take a hard line against crime and corruption, beginning with a complete overhaul of the law-enforcement system. He has singled out the poor, the indigenous and migrants, who have historically been ignored, as his highest commitments, creating new posts to attend to their needs.

In addition, he has pledged to open the U.S.-Mexico border to a free flow of workers and bring Mexico's economy in line with that of the United States, under a new plan he calls "NAFTA plus," even while railing on the U.S. for its voracious drug appetite, which he says has helped turned Mexico into a drug-trafficking den.

While these ambitious ideas and great expectations have marked Fox as a beacon of change, they could also become thorns in his side. Although Fox's progressive domestic proposals are much needed, the PAN does not hold a majority in either house of Congress, and faces fierce opposition from the PRI, which is still smarting from a loss of power, and the left-of-center PRD, which frowns upon the PAN's gung-ho business stance.

"I think it's only natural that when someone brings this kind of enthusiasm, energy, vision and record of achievement onto the national stage, that it would generate a great deal of enthusiasm and expectations," says Paul A. Laudicina, a vice president of global management with consulting firm A.T. Kearney. Laudicina predicted two years ago, based on Fox's success as governor of Guanajuato, that he would be Mexico's next president.

Fox is also entering a political territory so new that it makes this year's U.S. presidential election look like mere self-reflection.

Whereas the botched U.S. election drew attention to the intricacies of the country's electoral system, Mexico's election was an epiphany of democracy. Aided by electoral reforms ironically put in place by outgoing PRI President Ernesto Zedillo, Fox grabbed 43 percent of the vote in a three-way race that was widely seen as the first fair election in Mexico's history. When Zedillo went on national television July 2 to announce Fox as the nation's next president, newscasters' jaws gaped while PRI loyalists plotted the political lynching of their lame-duck leader.

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