The stamp featuring Memin Pinguin, a sort of Jim Crow-era vision of a black child, "is an image in a comic that I have known since infancy," Fox said. "It is cherished here in Mexico."

Fox, who celebrated the fifth anniversary of his election July 2, found himself under fire June 30 from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and leaders of other black and Latino organizations.

"The other minorities or the Afro-Americans or Latins, I would suggest to them that first, read the magazine, get the information and then express publicly their opinion," Fox said.

In a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush on July 1, the head of Mexico's National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination, Gilberto Rincon Gallardo, accused the stamp's critics of trivializing the fight against racism.

Speculators were offering sheets of the stamps on the Internet auction site eBay for more than $200 July 1, when hundreds of people lined up at Mexico City's main post office to buy them for 60 cents. Supplies sold out the same day.

The Japan Times Weekly: July 9, 2005
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