The last of the Latin American soap operas: the Honduras' coup d'Etat

When analyzing the situation of a country or when thinking about a country, it’s easy to be tempted by the idea of how desirable or good would be for a country to be able to start over, to start a new life again, from the very beginning, from zero. In many circumstances and situations, it’s always possible to star again. If there is an old building that is so dirty that when you look at it you feel bad, it’s always possible to order the demolition of that construction. The same with cars, that when get old and highly pollutant, it’s just better to dispose of it and buy a new one. Even individuals have the chance of trying to change the course of their complex lives: every time we celebrate our birthday or a new year, we think about goals for the future. Well, countries can also become as dirty or as old as buildings and cars, and their institutions can become as corrupt as the most corrupt of individuals, but now it seems, countries don’t have anymore at their disposal the privilege of starting over. There was a time when they could, that’s the era of revolutions, but that’s also a time gone. For some countries, it would be great to have that chance. One of these countries is Honduras.

This world we live in is so unfair and so uneven that, just as individuals, there are countries that were born rich and there are countries that were born poor and disadvantaged. This time I want to refer to a tiny country that is very close to my native country and which over the last weeks experienced the last coup d’Etat of Latin America. I am talking about Honduras.

I don’t know too much about the history and the specific circumstances of Honduras, but I know that this is one of the countries that were born poor and which inherited a list of problems whose complexity largely surpasses the capacities of the Honduras’ governments. Last month one more problem added to the list: on June 29th 2009, the legal government of president Manuel Zelaya was ousted by the military, and a new president Roberto Micheletti took his place. Because he was following Hugo Chavez (no need to explain my point) the deposed president was bad for the country, who was trying to force a Constitutional reform in order to extend his tenure and bad also is the fact that the military, for whatsoever reason, broke the legal order and took power.

The current situation in Honduras constitutes an unprecedented twice negative dilemma of two bad possible outcomes: if the military government headed by Micheletti stays, this clearly would be bad to the political health of the country and if Zelaya returns it would be also bad, because he has already proved that he wants to disrupt the constitutional life of Honduras. Two possible outcomes, both of them awful. Actually there’s a third possible outcome to this Honduras story that started as a drama but that very soon has become a Latin America soap opera: the possibility that violence erupts as a consequence of the two sides fighting.

Is it possible to find in the political landscape of the world of the past or of these days any other situation where all the outcomes are bad? Honduras has everything that makes it look like a building to be demolished or a car to be replaced. Unfortunately, Honduras is a country and transforming its situation will never be as simple as demolishing an old building, replacing a car or transforming an individual. It seems that Honduras can’t start over.

It’s not my purpose to deny hope for the people of Honduras. It’s not that I don’t see any hope for Honduras, it’s that I’m projecting my own despair for how I see my country, Mexico. Sometimes you would like that things change in your country as easy as if an old building was ordered to be demolished or if an old car was to be throw away. Sometimes you would desire that things change overnight and that the politicians that rule our mismanaged countries just disappear. How is possible that with that long list of problems that Honduras faces (poverty, corruption, inequality, natural disasters, deprivation), Honduras politicians still have the time to stage a soap opera of a military coup?

At first I thought that the military coup of Micheletti was born from the despair of the Honduras people, tired of having as president a Chavez like politician. I thought that like military coups of the past, this new Honduras version of military take over would be accompanied with a vast program of changes for the transformation of Honduras. However, very soon I realized that I have been too naïve. The military coups of these days are not like they used to be. There’s no more transformational radicalism embodied in the people that take power these days. There’s no program, no ideology, nor any agenda for change. So far, the Honduras military coup has proved to be only an action that broke the legal order of the country, so it was a purposeless coup.

The Honduras’ as well as the Thai military take over of 2006, constitute a big change from the past. Even the military coups of today seem to have become mild in their actions and purposeless for that they don’t present any alternative program, any agenda for change. They are born only from denial of a certain order, but they fail to offer any alternative.

As said, any of the possible outcomes of the Honduras’ crisis seems to be ideal for this country afflicted by so many threats, deformities and irregularities. Let’s just hope that these stupid political teams of Micheletti and Zelaya don’t decide to make the Honduras people pay with blood for this pathetic Latin American new soap opera.

In soccer as in life, when everything goes bad, everything goes bad…

Look:

June 24th 2009: US 2-Spain 0;

July 9th 2009: Mexico 1-Panama 1

For Mexico, football soccer, a reflection of everything else? It’s up to you to reflect…I am just saying…

My perspective on the Xinjiang (7/5) riots

Sadness and regret were the feelings I first had toward the riots in Xinjiang of past July 5th. I have lived in China for seven years and Western China has always been my favorite region in the country, the only region in the country where I have been seen really different things, where I have been a tourist satiated whit what the place has to offer. Western China has always captivated my interest, in no small measure for one of its most prolific peoples, the Uighurs, whose cultural features have always been my favorites among the Chinese kaleidoscope. In short, I love China but I love also what I have seen of the Uighur culture and so, for me the conflict between Chinese Han and the Uighur people has always been something that saddens me. I say that because in many respects, even if in most of the time I have been a supporter of China among its critics, the conflict of China with some its so called minorities has been an aspect where I have not always agreed with the Chinese government nor with the extended vision that (Han) Chinese people usually hold on that matter. I see in the Chinese a certain degree of underlying racism toward Uighurs and Tibetans and this is something I don’t like.

On the other hand is impossible not to see that without the industrialization, the development of infrastructure, the urbanization and the investment of the central government of China, Xinjiang would not be that different from all its neighbors, from Pakistan to Kyrgyzstan. If you go to Xinjiang, what you see is that Urumqi is a huge city, that there’s a railway that crosses hundreds of kilometers where there’s nothing except desert and in Kashgar you see also that there´s an airport that is much bigger and efficient than the airports of most of Mexico. Like it or not, the Chinese government and the Han have played a civilizatory role in what is now Western China, they have been like the British in India that built all the railways. Like it or not, the Han Chinese and its government are the industrious hand of that area of Central Asia, they have been like the white man in tropical lands. (Actually, when I had this reflection, I thought about at what extent the Chinese are really different from the white man…topic for another time). It’s very likely that in an scenario of one wealthy China not ruling what it’s now its Western edge and one independent Xinjiang, the Uighurs and the Tibetans would be flooding the Chinese consulates trying to get Chinese visas.

In analyzing the long history of hostility between China and its Western “minorities”, especially the Tibetans and the Uighur, there is a basic list of “undeniables” from which you can depart:

1) It’s undeniable that the Han Chinese have been generally racists to the Tibetans and the Uighurs, usually referring to them as thieves or beggars and frequently saying of them that they are dirty and their culture backward. Even the Chinese Communist Party vision of harmony between the Han and the minorities has a certain dose of racisms: in all the official images of the minorities, the Han Chinese depict the minorities as colorful peoples that spend the time dancing. For most of the Han Chinese, the Uighurs are very good at dancing…it’s like, besides that, they are incapable of seeing in the Uighurs or Tibetans something different or something else. This racist Chinese vision of the world translates in the seduction that the white skin and the American culture have on the Chinese versus the general attitude of Chinese looking down at black skinned people.
2) There’s no question that the Chinese central government investment in Western China has all the potential to have a positive impact on the economy, the problem is that this economy, most of the time, has been the Han economy.
3) Closely related with this last point, in Xinjiang and also very possible in Tibet, you have the feeling when you are there that those lands are not China anymore. I am not talking about politics nor saying anything more that what I am saying here, but in Xinjiang the sun raises at least two hours later than in Beijing and the taxi drivers don’t listen to the cheesy pop music of the Taiwanese singers, but instead they like Indian music. As the result of a similar logic, in that foreign land you feel that the Han are the rulers and you feel that the locals are like foreigners in their own land. The ruling institutions function in Chinese, which is not the mother language of the local populations.
4) I don’t think that with all its propaganda directed at creating harmony, the Chinese government has been very successful at integrating Han communities with no Han communities. This is evident in Xinjiang and very evident in Urumqi, where the Han live in one area and the Uighurs in another area, where there are restaurants for Chinese and restaurants for Uighurs. At a certain point this is normal, but in Xinjiang you feel that there are two different communities that don’t talk to each other. Clearly, this is a powerful factor that has created a gap of hostility between these two communities. I don’t have any statistic at hand, but I don’t think that intercommunity marriages between Han and Tibetans or Uighurs are very frequent.
5) On the other hand, it’s also undeniable that the Xinjiang neighborhood is one very difficult to rule. Turn your eyes to Pakistan or Afghanistan, are those countries in peace? Well, those countries were bombings and terrorists attacks are daily currency are just next door to Xinjiang. As a result, the Chinese are not the first to be in conflict with the peoples of that region of the world. Ask the British, ask the Americans if they think that is easy to be in those lands?
6) No matter what the independentists or the secessionist could say about this matter, but Beijing is the ruler of Tibet and Xinjiang and anything is going to change that reality. There have been and there are large Han Chinese populations in those areas and what drives the economy of those territories is the Chinese economic activity. Besides, in a world where there’s a growing number of rogue states, who wants an independent Xinjiang or Tibet? Honestly, there are more important things to do these days.
7) Like it or not, it’s also true that the Chinese have been in Tibet and Xinjiang since immemorial times. Look at the ruin cities of the Silk Road and you will get evidence of the historical presence of Chinese in those areas. Additionally, who has been earlier in Western China, the Han Chinese with thousands of years of history or the Uighurs, who are a branch of the Turkish (Turkey lies in a very distant location from Xinjiang)?
8) Finally, it’s undeniable that protesting with violent means and rioting, aggressing and killing civilians is unacceptable anywhere in the world and that’s what has happened in Tibet in 2008 and last Sunday in Xinjiang. I don’t think that in this regard the decision of the Chinese government of sending the police is any different from any other country. This is something that the advocates of human rights or the supporters of Tibet often forget: in 2008 there are lots of pictures featuring Tibetans with knifes persecuting Han on the streets. This is also unacceptable.

Nobody knows with certainty what really happened last Sunday July 5th in Urumqi,. The Uighur sympathizers argue that there was a pacific protest that was repressed by the police. But this explains the dozens of corpses of Han Chinese on the streets? If you see pictures of the injured people in the hospitals of the city for the riots of that day, what you see more are Han Chinese civilians that are not any different from what I see in the streets or the subway everyday. Civilians killed, is what I see.

But the Chinese government doesn’t do anything to clarify the situation and inform with precision and detail what happened in Urumqi. So far, most of what I am seeing in the Chinese media these days are blames to the Uighur organizations in the US or Germany. According to the media, what happened in Urumqi were the actions of terrorists coordinated from abroad. The problem with this version is that they are not providing any evidence and, what is worse, is that are missing the point: first tell us what happened, who started the violence, who was killed and, among the 156 people death, who were Han, who civilians, who protesters, who security forces? Those details are essential if you want to present the truth, allowing everybody to interpret the facts as everybody wants.

This puzzles me: why the smart Chinese government insists in wasting those golden opportunities to show to the world that they were not the ones who started the violence? Last year, in Tibet, there were clear images of ordinary Tibetans carrying knives in the streets of Lhasa. Why the Chinese government does not denounce that instead of blaming the Dalai Lhama or now, blaming Rebiya Kadeer? It just does not make any sense to me. If the Chinese government only limited itself to highlight the violent character of the protests as well as the dangers that this sort of protests entails for the Chinese people, it would be justifying its need to send the police to control the crisis. That would be smart to do for the Chinese government. But blaming foreign leaders and resorting to the police, only makes appear China as a country where every threat to stability is confronted with military means. CNN is going to show to the world Chinese soldiers police (even if those soldiers are not Chinese, as was the case last year during the Tibet crisis, when CNN used images of the Nepali army beating Tibetan protesters in the Chinese Consulate) but not what was violent in the protests. I think that in this instance, the Chinese government has exhibited a remarkable lack of sophistication.

Is that the Chinese government does not see the damage it auto inflicts to its public image allowing the international media to project images of its police and human rights organizations to criticize it for repressing “the poor Uighurs and the poor Tibetans¨? Probably the answer has to do with the Chinese government preferring to deal with the international media better than attiring a Han ultranationalist reaction when denouncing Uighurs or Tibetans massacring Han. It’s well possible that in fact, what the Chinese government is hiding now, is not the number of “poor innocent Uighurs” killed by the police but the number of poor Chinese walking that day in the streets of Urumqi and killed by “poor innocent Uighurs”.

Something else that I observe is that it seems that the world is now much busier in other matters, such as reactivating the economy or cutting the green house emissions as for having time of bogging China with stories of autonomy of Xinjiang and human rights. In line with this reasoning, China has become a very important partner for the rest of the world, in getting the world economy out of the recession as in helping to stop the underway warming of the planet by industrial pollution. China is an important partner that holds trillions of American treasury bonds and is also a partner whose market demand can reactivate companies such as Airbus. And it happens that the system needs this partner and it’s necessary that the partner is healthy, so let the partner fix the Xinjiang crisis as best as possible. I am seeing this in the moderate reaction in the world to the Xinjiang events. If what I see is true, this is another indicator of the growing Chinese ascendancy in the world. This week, for instance, China was mentioned because the G8 summit meeting and because the Rio (the mining company) scandal. The Xinjiang riots were one story among others.

Finally, the international media show that in these Chinese crisis some journalists, newspapers, opinion leaders and TV channels are the tools of groups of interests that are opposed to the rise of China and that they are going to take advantage of any opportunity to discredit China. China has critics and detractors and these crises are the perfect pretext to talk about human rights, democracy and all that chorus that is normally invoked for criticizing China. In Mexico, my country, for instance, the media is talking about “ethnic war in China”. But, come on, don’t you think that in a country of 1.4 billion people that term sounds like too much?

In the quest of “unthinkables” for Mexico: finding solutions to the drug war in the resilience of The Zetas.

“The same forces now making our world more dangerous contain the ingredients we need to make it safer. In every roadside bomb in Tal’Afar, in every death from drug-resistant tuberculosis, in each hiccup of global financial markets, we can see the workings of powerful forces that, once mastered, offer hope at the same time they present new dangers”

Joshua Copper Ramo, The age of the unthinkable, p. 15



In the opinion of the author of this cite, Joshua Copper Ramo, our traditional way of thinking is failing to solve the complex problems that we are now facing. The more we use force against terrorism, Copper Ramo remind us, greater the chances are that terrorism increases. In the opinion of Ramo we need to look at new sources if we want to find new ways of thinking. He looks, as the title of his book suggests, at the unthinkable as a source of new ideas that can make our world more resilient.

This approach has been haunting me over the past weeks. Does Mexico need also to look at the unthinkable as a source of new ideas? Does this approach suggested by Copper Ramo is applicable to the reality of Mexico?

In the particular case of Mexico there’s no question that the traditional concepts, ideas and people that have been dominant in the country in the last half century have failed to improve its overall condition. The ruling class of Mexico liberalized the economy in the 80’s to stimulate growth but since then, most of the time the economy has been stagnated. In that decade, Mexico laid the foundation for having a market economy free of monopolies, but since then the power of monopolies has increased. The examples of solutions implemented and paradoxical outcomes obtained are abundant. One in particular calls my attention: since 2006, the administration of the Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched a war against the drug mafias with the supposed goal of freeing the country of their grip, but once again, as in the other instances, the solution only made the problem more serious. Since 2006, the drug trade has worsened, the drug gangs have multiplied and the resulting violence has increased.

The time has come, as Copper Ramo suggest, to try to find innovative solutions in the “unthinkable”? To what would be equivalent the notion of the unthinkable in the context of Mexico?

Let’s focus our attention in the problem of the drug trafficking, which with all its corrupting capacity is putting at risk the functioning of the Mexican state. What the unthinkable offers to Mexico as a source of a new strategy for fighting the drug mafias? Where Mexico can turn its attention in order to find innovative strategies for confronting this threat?

In the same way as Copper Ramo presents the example of the Israeli Army analyzing in detail the reasons that make Hezbollah resilient, would it be possible for Mexican security officials to see The Zetas (a paramilitary group allied with the Gulf Cartel, formed of former Mexican Army members) as a source for keys to defeat the drug cartels?

Of course, there’s nothing in the Mexican mafias that anyone would want to emulate. There’s nothing in them that can be considered as a model for a new society. But, on the other hand, probably there’s something in their way of operating that contains the keys for fighting them. Would looking at The Zetas, at the La Familia, at the Juarez Cartel, be for Mexico a way of looking at the unthinkable for finding creative solutions for complex problems?

In the Mexico of these years, affected by such a complex array of problems, we will never know why President Calderón decided amid many other priorities to devote his administration to the fight against drugs. Being a country troubled by inequality, poverty and stagnation, why President Calderón decided to start with the fight against drugs? That’s a question for the future analysts of Mexican political decision making. Something seems to me certain: he adopted an approach doomed to fail.

With all the lessons that history offers regarding the failure of large armies, such as the Soviet, the French and the American armies in fighting guerrillas and terrorism movements, it should be clear to the advisers of President Calderón that sending the army to fight the drug cartels would not be the solution for curbing the drugs problem. Based on the experience of the US and Israeli armies in the Middle East, it should be evident for the Mexican security advisers and for President Calderón that once the Mexican government sent the army, the mafias would wave an asymmetrical war against the State. For someone that read history it should be clear that it is almost axiomatic that weak enemies tend to fight powerful enemies using assymetrical tools.

And this is precisely what the drug mafias are doing now: they are fighting the Mexican state with assymetrical tools: hand grenades, kidnappings and terrorizing ways of killing: beheading and killing their victims in acid.

Anywhere is more clear than here that the solution offered by the government made the problem worst: 10, 000 people killed since Calderón took office and, still worst, the drug mafias and cartels have multiplied. The tumor has metastasized, just as in other countries the terrorist cells multiplies when confronted with large armies.

The bad new is that this war started by Calderón can not be pursued without facing further risks nor can be stopped without making the mafia kingpins know that they won. The choices in front of the government are: if it continues the war, the drug mafias will keep reproducing and its capacity to corrupt the State will be increased. On the other hand, if the government stops the war or the next administration does so, that would send the message that the government lost and that in the future it accepts the existence of the drug mafias.

This is a terrible dilemma, because both choices tend to give the victory to the mafias.

Just as the Israeli army is adapting its strategy based on the analysis on how Hezbollah and Hamas operate, my idea would be that the Mexican government revisits its strategy adapting it to the facts that this is not a war of regular armies and that the drug mafias have attained a level of resilience, in the same way as Hezbollah and Hamas, that is worth studying.

In the complex and colorful universe of the Mexican organized crime of these days, any other organization shines as much as The Zetas. This is the most outstanding Mexican criminal gang of our days. Formed of defected special forces group of the Mexican Army, anybody else is recruiting, killing and operating as successfully as the Zetas. The Zetas are the Hezbollah of Mexico, an organization that is attracting poor young people in Northern Mexico (and Southern US) and that is becoming a legend for the cruelty of its methods.

In the Mexican government strategy for fighting drugs, is there something to learn in the resilience of The Zetas? Would it be possible to adapt the strategy based on the analysis of the Zetas?

Following Copper Ramo, my personal invitation for thinking the unthinkable would be: studying the reasons that make the Zetas resilient and departing from here for beating the drug mafias. What would be the translations of this?

If you ask me, the translation of this would be waving a dirty war against the mafias. That would include:

For the most part of Mexico, sending back the army back to their barracks but keeping in the field groups of special forces that perform covert and chirurgical actions; paying special attention to the municipal realities of the country: countering the recruiting operations of these organizations though infiltrating agents in the places where the mafias recruit their young operatives; condemning publicly their atrocities, denouncing their actions and looking for allies in the media, the Church and the academia; geographically encircling the gangs, restricting their movements, etc.

I am not a security expert, but it’s clear to me that instead of sending the bulk of the army it would be more effective to learn from the reasons that are making these organizations resilient and use that knowledge for applying chemotherapy to the tumors.

It may be, as Copper Ramo indicates, that in the unthinkable there are hidden solutions to our problems. Probably the time has come to Mexico to look at it.

Iran and Lebanon versus Mexico

Shanghai June 19, 2009.- The past elections in Lebanon (June 7th) and Iran (June 12th) would be for me two more important international events with no further interest if the Mexican elections were not scheduled to be held on next July. These Mexican mid term elections, on the other hand, would not spark additional interest for me if the outcomes of the Lebanese and Iranian were not as they were. My mind is connecting Mexico and these two countries of the Middle East because the contrasting images of what happened in Lebanon and Iran over the past weeks and what is taking place right now in Mexico: a sharp contrast between the high participation and the passion of Lebanese and Iranian voters against the social ongoing campaign in Mexico to override the vote on the coming July elections.

As in other instances, Mexicans have come to believe that while our economy can experience a mediocre development our democracy is superior to the political situation in other countries, as Lebanon and Iran could be. And this established belief is again to be questioned, at least from a social perspective.

I’m not going dwell on the profound differences between Mexico and Iran and Lebanon. Likewise I’m also aware to the fact that these Mexican elections are mid-term elections (which traditionally call much less interest from voters in Mexico than the Presidential elections) and that low participation is a widely extended democratic malaise. Notwithstanding that, the high participation in the part elections of Iran and Lebanon and the lack of interest of Mexican people in taking part in these elections makes me think about the political reality of Mexico.

I can synthesize my reflection saying that what happened in Lebanon and Iran (a victory of the Pro Western alliance in Lebanon and a strong opposition to the Mullahs that rule Iran) shows the miracles that democratic participation can operate in countries where the political system are flawed or oppressive, as is the case in Lebanon and Iran, whereas in Mexico the widespread skepticism of electors show how the word “democracy” can be employed to put in place a system that is distrusted by society. In Lebanon and Iran, the democratic passion of society erupted and took by surprise the system. In Mexico its “democratic system” in its current form seems to be against society.

I have never been to Lebanon and Iran and I what I know of both countries is very limited. Perhaps these are systems marked by countless flaws and weaknesses (irregularities and foreign interference in Lebanon; supreme authority of Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran) but what the high participation in both countries show is that people there had some hope in their vote, some confidence in the system. At least, it seems, Lebanese and Iranian electors flocked the polls because they saw some choice among the contenders, some real options and people believed that with their vote they can contribute to the transformation of the system. Lebanese and Iranians saw options and they had hope in their vote. They believed they can change things, voting.

To me, this is a miracle. A miracle of what the democratic passion can achieve in imperfect systems.

But in Mexico the people is on the other side, campaigning to blanking the vote, voting no or voting for fictional characters.

In contrast to the authoritarianism of the Islamic Republic, in Mexico on the surface there are choices, strong institutions and the ballots are respected. On the surface, in Mexico it would be enough for a citizen to go to the polls and cast a ballot. But what is happening is that citizens don’t believe that anymore. What Mexican citizens are showing is that they don’t believe that this system they have is giving them the tools or the options to transform reality. Reality is beyond the system, not only because reality is complex but because they know that this system, as it was designed, is unable to do something to transform the Mexican reality. What is worse, what Mexican society exhibits with this attitude is their underlying belief that this system is probably the reason the Mexican reality is so bad.

And Mexican people is not on the other side because apathy or lack of interest in politics. Mexican electors are skeptical of the system because they are fed up with the daily soap opera the Mexican democracy has become. From being a public spectacle to watch on TV and enjoy (like a reality show) it has come to be a miserable, distasteful show anybody wants to participate. In Mexico participating in the system is no longer seen as patriotic or civic. Participating in the system has become irrelevant at best and self deluding at worst. What this pre elections in Mexico show is that there are a lot of people so disenfranchised with the system, so disconnected from the system, that the number of people refusing to participate or be part of the system is growing.

If Lebanon and Iran remind us of the transformational and miraculous power of the democratic passion, Mexico shows how democracy can become a label that betrays authentic democratic sentiments. In Iran the ruling class is attempting to prevail over a large portion of Iranian electors. In Mexico is like if the “democratic system” is imposing over the aspirations of society. In Mexico the democratic system is gradually coming to be against society. This is tragic. What gives me hope, is that Mexican people are noticing it and as a consequence, if reforms that authorizes independent candidates or ways of limiting the power of the political parties are not passed in the short term, the legitimacy of this democratic system is going to erode.

A “democratic” Mexico like this reminds me more of places like pre revolutionary Vietnam or Cuba or democracies as such as the Egypt of President Mubarak, all of them defined by their lack of legitimacy.

Mourning a fallen President in Seoul

After living in China for seven years, it was only last week that I took the time to visit South Korea. For someone like me, interested in witnessing history, I came on what was probably one of the most interesting weeks in the recent history of the Korean Peninsula: only few days before my visit, two important events took place: the former President, Roh Moo-Hyun, kill himself when hiking and North Korea held its second nuclear weapon test. It was impossible to come to South Korea on a more interesting time.

I arrived in Seoul on May 27th 2009, just one day before the scheduled funeral of the former President Roh. Besides the well known Korean language salutation “Ahhn niyong ha say yo” I don’t speak or understand any Korean and what I consign here is basically what I saw during my time in Seoul.

The week I traveled from China to Korea, the headlines in the world were the news about the North Korean nuclear test. But the country was in shock more for the suicide of Mr. Roh than for anything else. During my time in Seoul that’s actually what stroke me more: the seriousness with which the Korean people took the death of a former president. On my first day, I saw the every day life going as usual: people working on a normal day and young people enjoying the prosperity offered by their country in shopping malls, galleries and coffee shops but in the evening I witnessed a generalized respect and devotion to the memory of a fallen leader that surprised me very much.

From someone like me, who comes from a country where most of the people have a negative opinion of most of politicians and who remember European friends expressing negative opinions of leaders such as Sarkozy or Berlusconi, witnessing the mourn and respect of the Korean people to its former president was very surprising. Honestly I don’t know that much about President Roh, but what I read is that he has been accused of corruption and that’s another reason that made me wonder how was that possible that the death of a leader charged with corruption had that impact in Korea.

I don’t have any explanation for that but to me that reaction of the Korean people is very different with what in my opinion would happen in my country or in any other Western country, where in most of the people it’s present an instinctive suspicion of politics and politicians and where is very difficult, especially now, that the individual sacrifices his personal time to participate in political activities.

Regardless of the causes or the differences with the rest of the world, on May 27th in the eve of the funeral, Seoul Plaza was filled with thousands of people that gathered to mourn President Roh. There were people of different ages carrying candles and pictures of their leader; there were people reading speeches and there were also people that sang sad songs having the South Korean flag and the image of President Roh as background. On the floor, there were young and old people sitting on newspapers, just there, just being part of the event. There were also screens that showed President Roh when he was young, probably during the time when he was an activist.

There were thousands of people on the street on May 27th, but there was order and there was civility. Everybody respected everybody, nobody was pushing or rushing or littering or yelling. People were just there, being part of a community, showing respect, worshiping a fallen leader. There was a heavy police presence that evening, but the order was not maintained because the police. No, the individuals showed care about the individuals. People were offering water and there was a silent dialogue going on between them, not the loud voices of confrontation.

What I saw in Seoul that evening made me think on the differences between Korea and my country, between the West and East Asia. I thought that if in my country a former president charged with corruption committed suicide, there would be some people that would have the idea of throwing a party for that. My reflection was: who on these times would resent the disappearance of a politician? I think only the sudden disappearance of President Barack Obama would make people publicly express their condolences.

But Korea apparently was different: in Korea was possible to charge and impeach a President and then to publicly mourn his death.

Something also different about Korea that also sparked my reflection is that the funeral of President Roh and the fact that millions of people watched on TV, showed that in Korea individuals had a genuine and legitimate interest on the system. Individuals, people, seemed to care about the system, showing interest in the system, whereas in other places, individuals were anomic, just as the French sociologist Durkheim said. Is the interest of the individual one prerequisite for the health of a system? Would it be possible for a system to dye without the interest of its members?

Finally, I saw in Seoul that day a highly civilized behavior of the crowds, which behaved like one educated individual. What I saw in Korea and I compared for the case of China is that crowds are not always synonymous or equivalent of chaos. The Seoul example showed to me that it was possible to have thousands of people in a public square without chaos and destruction.

The holes of the American Empire and the blindness of its Mexican follower.

In stark contrast to countries as Brazil, Kazakhstan and Turkey that are taking advantage of multidirectional diplomacies, the over reliant on the US Mexico is refusing in every possible way to play in the new geopolitical market place, essentially defined by the rise of China as a global player. In this May 2009, when the world is busy with other matters (the swine flu, the new North Korean crisis), it’s easy to forget that for the rest of this century the most crucial factor in world politics is the comprehensive stability or rivalry between the US and China. And just because of that, it’s still impossible to know whether the Mexican government is right or wrong in its decision of following the US in everything and refusing to elevate its ties with China to a higher level. If one day in the future the US-China rivalry gets out of control and the US imposes itself in a confrontation, Mexicans will thank its government it decided to be always on the US side. But if in the future, as I anticipate, there’s no major conflict between China and the US and as a consequence the global balance of power is further altered in China’s favor, we Mexicans will have all the right to criticize the refusal of our government to get to the new geostrategic market place, as Brazil or Turkey, in the search of the benefits resulting from the rising power of China.

Although the Mexican foreign policy has historically had as a principle “never putting all the eggs on the American basket”, Mexico has never been so materially dependent on the US as it is now. What is worse is that our government has never been so little interested in models different to those absorbed from the US and it has never been so psychologically dependent to the notion that the US is going to be always the master of the world. The other side of this coin now is that in contrast to other large developing countries, the Mexican government is exhibiting a staunchly antagonistic China foreign policy, as it was demonstrated during the past crisis caused for the supposed mistreatment of Mexicans in China during the outbreak of the swine flu.

The standing of Mexico is in this regard at odds with most of the world. Europe and China are linked by a strategic dialogue; in South America, Brazil is not the only country that is adapting to the rise of China: Chile signed a free trade agreement, Peru is trying to sign one of its own, Argentina has in China one of its main export markets and Venezuela is already exporting oil to China. Likewise, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy a very productive relationship with China and every country from Asia to Africa has expanded its trade and dealings with China.

Clearly, one of the consequences of the Mexican standing is that the country is practically out from all of the streams of Chinese investment in the world (highways in South America, pipelines in Central Asia, mines and harbors in Africa). I am not going to say here if this is good or bad in the long term for Mexico. What strikes me is that Mexico is behaving with a myopia that makes me think it believes its US partner will always be the master and the model for the world and in my opinion this psychological loyalty to that notion is mistaken. I think it would be wiser to look beyond the US and start playing in the new geostrategic market place, just like every body else is doing.

Looking in detail to the US standing in the world nowadays makes me skeptical of that reliance of Mexico on the US.

The US is still the most powerful country in the world, but in many regions is no longer the master. From Eastern Europe to Eastern Asia all across Africa and the Indian Ocean, there are new processes and tendencies that the US is unable to control or decide. The Russian invasion of Georgia last year, the North Korean nuclear test of two days ago, the existence of Hugo Chavez as disturbing factor in South America but especially the underway strategic rivalry between China and the US in the Pacific, convinces me of the strategic devaluation of the US over the last years. Is Mexico thinking or doing any preparation for the event of a Pacific Ocean not monopolistically dominated by the US? Is Mexican government aware of that relative strategic devaluation of the US?

In tandem with this, the political, economic and social model preached by the US is not perfect and the developing world is noticing. Throughout its history and with special intensity in the post Cold War, the US has promoted to the developing world political democracy, pluralism, small government and free market but this recipe has not had in most of the world the desired effects. Instances for this are abundant. As a result the American model is being increasingly questioned, especially in East Asia, where Asean plus China, Korea and Japan are resolute to replace the IMF in this region and where American style politics and social model have never been well regarded.

And it has also become clear for many countries that the US, with its high inequality and crime, its “crumbling” infrastructure and its poor basic education is not necessarily the best country to live or the best model to emulate. In a number of instances, as Parag Khanna says, for countries as Germany or Japan, the American life represents a “step down”. There are some countries, like China, that instead of importing American standards are more interested in European alternatives.

That’s why many countries in the developing world are adapting their foreign policies to the rise of China and Europe and are increasingly attentive to political, social and economic models different from the one preached by the US. Again, Brazil for instance, is trying to play in the new geopolitical stage and other countries are clearly giving attention and credit to alternative models.

We don’t know how the world is going to look like in the middle of the 21st century, but based on the trends underway, it’s very likely that the world becomes geopolitically and ideologically more pluralistic. If that´s the case, would it be still wise for Mexico relying as it is doing now on its American partner and at the same time overlooking all the benefits implicit in playing in this new geostrategic market place? My logic tells me it’s not.

A Journey to a New Developing World in Motion

Shanghai, May 16th 2009.- In the ranking of the countries Mexico used to rank in a medium level position. If seen as a classroom filled with students of different levels of performance, Mexico used to be in the world an average rather promising student during the sixties or the seventies. Mexico was never as good as the US, France or Japan, who in those decades were like the best students who got the highest marks, but Mexico was good enough to get B as an average grade. We didn’t have the largest economy or a perfect political system, but people talked about the Mexican miracle and we had internationally respected writers, such as Octavio Paz, or we even produced one of the best players the Spanish football has ever seen, Hugo Sanchez. In short, our B grades gave Mexico a certain reputation and allowed the country to stay in the classroom where only a limited elite of countries were allowed to attend. I am talking about the sixties and the seventies.

The outlook in this first decade of the 21st century is absolutely different. With the emergence of East Asia in the eighties the world has become much more competitive and this transformation has raised the standards for staying in the classroom of the elite. If getting only B in the past was enough to be respected, with our poor B we as Mexicans don’t have any longer guaranteed our position as a member of that club.

We as Mexicans have grown thinking that only Europe, Japan, Canada or the US are stronger countries or better places to live than Mexico. However, the reality of these years is that there are so many emergent countries that are developing systems or are enjoying trends that profile a coming world where those new countries will be stronger, more competitive or better places to live than Mexico. When that happens, Mexico will be officially forced to step out the elite classroom. Then we will be like second rate students and going back to the elite classroom will not be easy.

For all those reasons, I believe is important Mexico understands that these days there’s not only the developed world we are behind, but that there are other developing countries that are performing better than us. Clearly the purpose of this journey to this dynamic new developing world is not only to raise an additional sense of urgency to our country but also to get fresh lessons on what to do and how to do it that the developed world, especially the US, is now unable to deliver. The following is a bird eye look into some outstanding countries of this new developing world in motion.



A new developing world in motion.

A lot of Mexicans still believe Mexico constitutes, as one of the largest economies in Latin America, one model to emulate in the region and a country other Latin American countries tend to look up. Discounting the arrogance of that reasoning, probably nowadays that’s just not truth anymore. Either as a consequence of their particular development histories or as a result of recent struggles or specific policies, other Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Chile and Colombia are starting to ripe the benefits of past undertakings.

Among them the most impressive is Brazil. This is not the place to discuss in detail how all that history of autonomous development policies and all that energy is making Brazil, along with China, India and Russia, one of the largest developing countries and, as Parag Khanna notes in The Second World (Penguin Books, 2008) “The southern pole”.

Brazil is a very large country and it posses the population, the resources, the talent and the inspiration to become a truly heavyweight in this century. Only some words to get started: Ethanol, Petrobras and Embraer. Juan de Onis in the last years fall edition of Foreign Affairs mentions the following Brazil’s strengths: a) expanded exports; b) oil discoveries; c) financial stability; d) low inflation; e) growing foreign and domestic investment; f) booming consuming demand; g) social assistance focused in the neediest; h) diversified economy founded on strong sectors of oil, mining, agriculture and biofuels, and i) democratic political cohesion. (Juan de Onis. Brazil’s Big Moment. Foreign Affairs November-December 2008. p 110-122).

For all those reasons Brazil has become a country to take into account in the world stage but all if all those assets were not enough to thrive, Brazil strengths are being enhanced by a continuity in economic policies, stability in politics (Onis) and by a multidirectional diplomacy (Khanna, The Second World. p 155) that has made Brazil a champion in the international trade diplomacy (opposed to the subsidies of the US and Europe), and a founder of the club of developing nations G20.

There are so many Brazilian developments to comment, I only mention some that have called my attention: Brazil now directs half of its exports to developing countries; based in its discoveries of uranium, Brazil is one of the countries that is building the largest number of nuclear plants in the world and Brazilian cities such as Curitiba and Porto Alegre have become international models of environmental management.

Brazil is by far the largest Latin American country but it is still a country, as Khanna says, where “the first and third worlds visibly coexist”. In contrast, Chile has been considered the most likely Latin America to be part of the developed world. About Chile is worth mentioning that it has invested heavily in education and technology and as a result Chile is a country where poverty is below 15% of the population (Khanna, p 164) From Chile is also remarkable its foreign trade openness, its free trade agreements with the US, the EU and China and its rule of law and low corruption.

In a third place I include Colombia as an example of a Latin American country that is doing well. Colombia, as now Mexico, has suffered the curse of being an important part of the chain in the drugs international trade but this challenge has made the country, lead by its president Alvaro Uribe, to take harsh steps that are changing Colombia for good. As Khanna explains, “in Colombia, building the state and winning the war on drugs go hand in hand…” (The Second World. p 148) As a consequence of the war on drugs launched by President Uribe, Colombia has increased the reach of the state and also related to this war, Colombia has put in place social programs to provide an alternative livelihood for the population involved in the growing of coca leaf. Now Colombia has developed new strategies for the export of oil, coffee, bananas and flowers, is attracting European assistance to poverty alleviation and is seeking to establish “maquiladoras” specialized in exporting to the east coast of the US.

If surprising and worth of recognition is for Mexicans to learn about these developments in our Latin American cousins, more surprising would result learning that countries such as Kazakhstan has been called the Singapore of Central Asia for all the achievements it has attained since its independence from the Soviet Union in the 90’s, most of them supported by its well administered oil richness:

“Matching the ambition of the semi-authoritarian Asian tigers, Kazakhstan has established special economic zones and information technology parks and has turned biological-weapons plants into food processing factories. It also plans to utilize its enormous uranium reserves for nuclear energy. New regional airports and wide roads are restoring connections across the continental steppe.” (The Second World. p 90). It seems Kazakhstan is so surprising that it even has the most renowned business school in Central Asia, the KIMEP.

To the west of Kazakhstan, Turkey is also changing fast in part because of the economic contributions of its European diaspora as well as a consequence of a new founded Turkish identity, which no longer denies its Muslim heritage. One of the main consequences of that transformation is that Turkey is abandoning its over concentration in Western Europe and is embracing a new foreign policy in all directions. Economically, Turkey is recognized as an important actor in the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Middle East in the same way as Istanbul has become, as Khanna says, a capital any techno music DJ can miss.

Several countries in the Middle East want also to joint the elite class of the developed world.

The Gulf Emirates such as Dubai has a technology cluster known as Media City and a “Knowledge Village (which) features micro-campuses of the world’s top universities” (The Second World. p 247). There are similar projects in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, countries that for the first time in history are investing most of its oil profits in the Arab world.

Even more complex countries such as Egypt and Lybia are following through.

Egypt, for instance, “has real plans to recapture its old historical glory” through the establishment of Peugeot and Mercedes factories, the construction of highways that link Alexandria to Aswan and a new financial center in what is called the New Cairo. (The Second World. p 193,194). Not less surprising, Lybia for example, “like Kazakhstan has created a Norwegian-style Generation Fund to invest in schools and hospitals...and like Colombia, it spends lavishly on top-tier international consultants to steer the privatization of agriculture and industries, restructure the banking sector, develop strategies for petrochemical plants and tourism, and retrain scientists from weapons programs to water desalination and petroleum geology...”(The Second World. p 187).

Explanations

In contrast with Cold War era when most of the developing world wasted most of its energies in civil wars, the above presented developing world is a world in motion that is struggling very hard to catch economically and technologically with the developed world, trying to build better countries for their peoples. It’s like if this world in motion has understood that what is important are not ideologies or abstract concepts, but the possibilities for their societies to enjoy the benefits of a cell phone, a fridge or the pleasure of driving a car. After decades of being marginalized from the elite classroom of the world, these countries are finally determined to get in and to enjoy the best the world has now to offer.

This very basic material ambition has given form in those countries to an also very basic development agenda, for the attainment of which, it seems, governments, private sectors, education institutions and societies at large all agree. In the above described countries, there is not a single formula or a single model to make these agendas truth. Among these countries, there are some democracies (Brazil, Chile, Colombia) but there are also some authoritarian systems (Egypt, Lybia, Kazakhstan). Something seems common to them: they are not blindly following models but instead they are adapting external expertise and advice to domestic experiences, allowing them to give birth to institutional arrangements that are working well.

Additionally, in general they are pursuing multidirectional diplomacies that are letting them to benefit from the emergence of Europe and China instead of only relying on the good opinion that the US Congress has of them. One last and crucial factor is that this new developing world wants the best and the newest in technology and they are doing as much as they can to purchase technologies or to facilitate technology transfers.

However, the most important thing, in my view, is that departing from a material ambition (catching up with the developing world, offering a better life to their societies, having better cities, faster transportation, faster communications, more beautiful cars) they are taking bold, creative, even risked actions to get what they want, what they feel they are entitled to (recapture, as Egypt, a past glory) and what their societies really have aspired for so long.

Anything to think about, anything for Mexico to learn from that diversified economy and that multidirectional diplomacy of Brazil, that transparency of Chile and that state resolution of Colombia? Anything for Mexico to envy of that new founded identity of Turkey, that business school of Kazakhstan or that Media City identity of Dubai? Should we also aspire to get back a past glory of Mexico, should we engage in building nuclear plants or should we do something to desalinate the water of our shores in the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans? Should our government hire international consultants to improve our world image, to market our culture or to attract branches of Harvard?

Of course, Mexico has industrial clusters in Monterrey (investments in R&D, design for autoparts, aerospace and software), Guadalajara (computer and telecom hardware), Queretaro (manufacturing and design of aerospace manufacturing) where there are good trends (Businessweek, April 20, 2009) and it’s also truth that Mexican business are remarkable investors in Central and South America (Mexico looks to the South for business, www.cnnexpansion.com/expansion/2009/03/26/mirando-al-sur) but these lights are now considered islands in a Mexican universe of stagnation. And what is more important is that we are not seeing from the part of anybody in Mexico and especially from the government anything radical and bold that has the potential to transform our country. This lack of courage can be seen as a lack of responsibility for the future.

For the above reasons, the classroom Mexico attends has raised the requirements for its members. Kazakhstan, Colombia and most of the above mentioned countries are at the doorsteps of this elite and the bad news is that in this competitive world there is a limited membership and that’s why if Mexican government, society and entrepreneurs don’t do anything brilliant, bold, creative and risked, like building a nuclear plant, erecting a city of knowledge or building a fast train that connects Mexico to Monterrey in two hours, our new developing world competitors are going to kick us out of the classroom.

WE BUY STRONG STATES

Fear, respect and disregard. Those are different positions that people and governments hold reciprocally. No matter how well represented the people is, governments will always consider themselves as a separated entity from the sum of all citizens. The distinction can be minimal at best or continental in some critical cases. The question that draws our attention today is how strong are governments across countries? And, what is the attitude that the people and government hold against each other?

In China the government fears its population. Society respects the state but by no means is afraid of it. Society plays around. The government has established every possible mechanism to be able to screen and scrutinize its population. Even then, at the end of the day the people in China, will do whatever they want to do according to their capabilities and empowerment. This may have consequences, but everyone knows that direct confrontation is an unadvisable way to proceed. The government, on the other hand, will activate its massive media apparatus if it feels an issue must be clarified, anxiety addressed, or a question answered. Media is used to express reactions but very seldom to pave the way to policies and future strategies.

In the US the population appears to fear the government and the government to respect society. I Cannot think of a better example than the old-classic argument on why to have a gun (or a machine gun) in the house, “its to defend my family in case the government fails”. It is difficult to hear better conspiracy theories that the ones manufactured in the United States. CIA, UFOs, the Amero currency. They are watching us!
The government may respect the rule of law, but it does not fear society, it does not act like that. It plays and manipulates citizens. Interestingly, media appears to have the opposite role than in China, it is used preventively. It normally campaigns in a low to high intensity for a medium or long-term strategy.

Now, regarding Mexico. The population mistrusts the government. It is not necessarily scared, but very skeptic of it. The government, I would argue, also mistrusts society and decides to carry on governing and making decision without it, why bother? I believe the biggest problem is that there is no fear or respect involved in the relationship. Mass media is intimately entwined with the political and economical elites. But media is also used to advocate for some social issues. Of course, that is only if these will shake up a targeted political entity or individual. Media is very willing to satisfy many diverse groups. It works like the town’s whore. With a granted survival and for a good profit, what can I do for you?

Political systems reflect these relationships in a very interesting manner:
In China, with a fearful government, the drive that keeps the government from failing or giving up or becoming completely paranoid is that they have the legitimate control of violence. They have the social control apparatus and as long as they don’t mess up badly, they can govern for a very long period of time. They have privileges of course. In fact, being part of the government is the most efficient way to get around and under the government’s control.
In the US, people have elections. Particularly, folks belong to constituencies; they have their representatives in congress. They know their local politicians and will not let them act irresponsibly. Moreover, those will do quite a lot to remain in the good graces of their constituency. If not, folks will exercise their most precious right, vote them out and bring somebody else that can protect them from the government. This is what keeps the citizens from stroking by the idea of an all-powerful, big-brothered state.
In Mexico, well, who has what?
This is when it gets turbid. The state has some control over violence but many parts of the civil society (lawful or lawless) have that too. Who watches over who? No one does. Media watches over both, and media, it has been argued, is behind the profit and securing its survival.
The population does not get that much social provision from the government so there is no reason to fear loosing something. Getting more, on the other hand, is never demanded. Health, education, security, infrastructure, those are not only provided by the state, the private sector also offers alternatives which sometimes will be of a better quality. Not even taxes are a monopoly of the state, in some parts of the country, one would do better handing the taxes to the local boss than to the government, after all, the local boss has a more direct influence over safety.

Now, what could be a better option for Mexico? What is more likely to happen?
a) Fear the government and respect the people.
or
b) Respect the government and fear the people.

It is not surprising that both options need a strong state. Mexicans ought to buy a strong state.

Back to the IDEA

BACK TO “THE IDEA”

I look at Mexico from the outside....Is a “failed democracy” to much to say these days?
After years and years of hard-earned reform, would I be the only Mexican living abroad crazy enough to think of our sad state of affairs as such?

I think not. And I’d much rather think that Mexico is not alone in this era of stagnation and failed democracies -- or should I say “mediocrities”?

No, we’re not alone... In fact, to think of it, we haven’t been alone.
In fact, in past centuries, some of today’s emerging cultures and economies were facing the same horrible virus, which tore at the fabric of their society, like a murderous knife.

As Fareed Sakaria comments in his most recent book, The Post-American World,
“In China, rich merchants would abandon their business to master Confucian classics so that they could become favorites of the court…The Hindu worldview….‘a vision of endless cycles of creation and reabsorbtion into the divine [led] to the passivity and skepticism about the value of practical action.”

And in stark contrast to the above examples and today’s reality, “Arabia” was once a thriving hub of ideas and progress. Mr. Zakaria goes on to say, “The Arab world was once the center of science and trade. In recent decades, its chief exports have been oil and Islamic fundamentalism. Any cultural argument must be able to explain both periods of success and periods of failure.”

“Periods of failure”…

So what can we say of Mexico, today?

To answer that question, I believe we need not look past the surface at what’s coming from within. For, in this era of global trade and seamless connectivity, every country can be judged not only by what it produces, but also by the ideas it exports.

From that perspective -- beer, tequila and tacos aside -- there is little to make a Mexican proud, in this generation.

I must be exaggerating, right? Perhaps just a bit.
But think of it this way: for the last 50 years, while the USA– in spite of all it’s shortcomings and mistakes -- has exported the ideas of Democracy, Capitalism and Free enterprise, along with Microsoft, fast food, the NBA, Nike, Citibank and Boeing, far and wide…and while South Korea, Japan, India and China have been focusing on exporting video games, mobile phones, martial arts, digital pop-culture, flat-screen tvs, eco-cars, alternative energy, Bollywood, and chopsticks to both the developed & developing world, Mexico appears content on exporting people, alcohol, and drugs.

*Futbol is a no- no, as Mexican superiority in the CONCACAF is no longer a fact of life.

People, alcohol and drugs…
These, in turn, just happen to be the ingredients of Mexico’s supreme export, the concept of “Fiesta”: a wonderful and holistic concept – but only for those lucky millionaires with nothing to worry about, except their next vacation to the Maldives or the Sahara.

But this very idea of “Fiesta” is precisely a reflection of the “something” which has, for decades, failed to make Mexico a prosperous and progressive nation.

The Mexican Fiesta.
No one denies the blizz of a Mex party, but, in today’s Mexico, it’s this perpetual celebration of “something” which tears at the fabric of our society. It has weakened our mind & the spirit, and left us vulnerable to the onslaught of intellectual and social competition.

The Mexican Fiesta.
It helps us forget how much we’ve lost, how much we’ve missed, and how much we’ve fallen behind those countries which we used to be so comfortably ahead off only 30, 20, or even 10 years ago.

And now, as us 30-year-olds step out of young-adulthood and into the prime of our lives, we come to a cross-road. A fork in the road, with the same old “fiesta” in one end, and the discovery a “something else” on the other. A no-brainer for a disciplined and diligent Chinese, perhaps – but if you’re Mexican, you’d be lying if you said it’s an easy decision to make.

We’re at the cross-roads of our lives.

Our elders once chose, and I have a feeling they somehow chose erroneously. Or at least, somewhere along the road, they decided to turn back.

This time, it’s our turn.
Our turn to step up to the plate, to start the engine, to take the penalty-kick, and, perhaps, sail in another direction, away from the fiesta… into a more productive and prosperous destination which implies DOING, SACRIFICING, and THINKING -- out of the box.

And make no mistake about it, I’m not denying “lo bueno”:
Tacos, El Santo, Artesanias, Mezcal, Zarapes, Playita y Palmeras…that’s all well-intended. But rather than dwelling on the ordinary and the usual, wouldn’t we like to produce and export part of “the future”?

Before we press the button, we can begin by asking ourselves who we are…What we as global Mexicans want to nourish and produce… What are these new ideas and products we’d like to export to the world? Rather than alcohol, drugs, fiesta, and the “fake freedom” we project across our borders, wouldn’t we like, for instance, to export nano-technology, green energy, healthy snacks, or space-station components?

If so, how do we go from the feeble 3rd world Mexico of today to the honorable and respected 1stClass Mexico of tomorrow?

Let’s focus on that question.
Before we march into our destiny, let’s chase, capture and harbour that idea!!

I’d like to end today’s reflection with a powerful message from an ordinary man with an extraordinary vision about our world. A vision that, in many ways, spills over into our life in China, in England, in Dubai, in Tokyo, in Paris, in Mexico, or anywhere in the world where we’re struggling to make sense out of the “ugly-mess” Mexico has become. It’s a vision that could hold part of the solution for those of us who’ve been asking ourselves, for so long, how in the world to bring dignity back to Mexico.

Because in order to beat “la fiesta, in order to beat “Carlos Slim”, in order to beat “los Narcos”, in order to beat our own “mediocridad”, it’s gonna take more than a speech by Calderon, more than a hefty donation from an honorable foundation, more than a march down Avenida Reforma…it’s going to take ideas…strong, innovative and powerful ideas!

“It takes 20 years to change a culture... In the last 20 years we’ve made 'dumb' sexy…in the next 20 years we need to make 'smart' sexy again. We need to make dignity sexy, we need to make being a global citizen sexy…we need to flip the script. It takes 20 years to change a culture… we can create laws and rules…but there’s been greed since the beginning of time, what’s gonna change is US… What do we believe? What do we stand for?...In many ways this generation has failed…[but]what do the next 20 years look like? And what are we teaching? What do we stand for?...

It’s the power of the idea…Bill Gates didn’t wake up one day and say ‘I wanna be rich and powerful’…Steve Jobs…[Richard] Branson...Archbishop [Tutu]…Operah Winfrey said “I got an idea! I got an idea!!!”...we have to get back to the power of the idea. The idea is that WE ARE GREAT, and everybody can be GREAT because everybody can serve.”

John Bryant (Davos, 2009)

A proposal for building a flat Mexico and connect it to the world

Guangdong, April 9th 2009.- For so long, analysts, commentators, business leaders and government officials at both the domestic and international levels have presented recipes on how to fix development countries economic, social and political tribulations. The IMF and the World Bank have emphasized the importance of liberalizing the markets and the developed countries have stressed the overall benefits democratization brings about. Although those basic policies and reforms have an unquestionable positive value, its relative application has failed so far to get most of the developing world out of poverty, inequality, corruption and low growth rates. The challenges developing countries such as Mexico are experiencing are complex in nature and probably the time has come for thinking on new ways of fixing them.

Hereby I want to present a personal proposal –what I call a manifesto for this blog- on a new way to energize Mexico and put it at work for the 21st century. My proposal consists of two elements for operating a miracle:

a) We need to make Mexico a truly flat country in terms of the flow of information. I don’t have any statistical at hand but it seems to me that Mexico hasn’t truly taken advantage of all the benefits of the information technology revolution. Therefore making a Mexico a real flat country in terms of the usage of the Internet would make the country, its citizens and its companies more productive and more connected to the corners of the world more innovative and progressive.

b) Secondly, more information about Mexico, about its human and natural resources, its companies, its entrepreneurs, its government and the way they operate, needs to flow to the rest of the world. It’s true that information about Mexico abounds. The US government as well as European countries or Japan are probably very knowledgeable about Mexico, but there’s still a huge amount of information about Mexican industries, enterprises, regulations, government bodies that are not well systematized and presented to the rest of the world. It’s my belief that if we organize all the information available in Mexico, we would be able to attire the best of the world into Mexico. One requirement of this constant presentation of Mexico to the world would be channeling this information to key players in the global economy as well as to international “valves” such as strategic consultants or venture capitalists. If we get to do this, our chance of calling the attention of the world into Mexico would be dramatically increased.

I believe this is one of the most important missions this generation of Mexicans can bear. This double mission of flattening Mexico and connecting it to the best of the world doesn’t sound as heroic or as glorious as other historical movements, but its impact can be much stronger.

The impediments for a flattened Mexico

Most of Mexicans would agree that the greatest obstacle for building a flattened Mexico is the high Internet costs that the monopoly Telmex, the corporation of the famous Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, imposes on Mexicans. Therefore, our best way for celebrating the 200th anniversary of Mexican independence would be doing something to break this monopoly and giving the chance to more people in Mexico to go on line.

But this is not the only hurdle a new flattened Mexico encounters. One more, also very important, is that Mexicans have not exploited the Internet at its full potential. It’s really amazing the information you can get on the websites of the Mexican government, companies and institutions. There is a network of government departments whose websites contain valuable and well organized information that if fully employed economically or politically really can do something for changing Mexico. Just to name one example, the INEGI (National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information www.inegi.org.mx ) contain tons of information about Mexico, its resources, its social and economic organization and its trends. It also contains links to Mexicans that are on the ground dealing with mining, fisheries, education, etc, all the elements for erecting a virtuous cycle for the exchange of information and, more importantly, action.

It’s worth to mention also the existence of a new set of laws and regulations of transparency and the right of citizens to information that the Federal Government of Mexico has approved over the last few years. Now if you send an email to a Mexican government official, he has the Constitutional obligation to answer your questions, otherwise you have the right to sue them. This same transparency is also present at the Mexican political parties, Congress, NGO’s and corporations, who have created websites where you can find email address of legislators, researchers and so on.

If we Mexicans want to enjoy the supposed benefits of our democratic system, we need, first of all, to test our democracy through the empowerment of the Mexicans citizens with information and the possibility to communicate with decision- makers. Therefore in this new era, Mexicans concerned about our state of affairs need to be cybercitizens of this virtual world where there are no borders and which is open, by the force of the law, for everybody to asking everything.

One of the most ambitious and aggressive missions we can have as a generation would be playing in this new virtual board and transmitting our ideas for change to all the Mexican decision-makers that are already connected to the Internet.

Contributing to build a flat Mexico is now one of my main missions and I assign to this blog this as one of its main goals.


Step two: connecting a flat Mexico to the world.


It’s important to be read on the virtual world by everybody but if what you want is to bring progress to your country, still more important is to be read by all the numerous groups of capitalists and innovators that are already shaping this new century. We need as a generation -and I assign also that mission to this blog- to introduce to all this people what Mexico really is beyond all the good and bad things that everybody already knows. We need to make them know in detail all the human capital and the riches that lay in the soil of Mexico, beyond this superficial reality presented by the mainstream media. But, still more importantly, we need to connect the influential people scattered across the world with the most progressive and energetic elements of Mexican society and government. If we get to contact, for instance, strategic consultants such as Boston Consulting Group or Kissinger Associates, with entrepreneurs or innovators in Mexico, we can contribute to build significant connections. The relationship of Mexican government, entrepreneurs and innovators with strategic players in the world can make Mexico leap frog to get all those disruptive technologies and to have that collaborative innovation that the country so badly needs.

Mexico has indeed most of the elements it needs to operate a transformation: we have a government that despite all its shortcomings has institutions devoted to information and science; we have a vast network of enterprises and a respectable list of capitalist eager to invest in the future. We have also universities which do science and research.

If we as a generation set the ground for a flat Mexico where more actors and more people discuss dynamically the new ideas of this century and if we market this flat Mexico to the shakers and movers of the world we will have a great contribution for making a better Mexico.

Doing business with Mexican science: science entrepreneurs wanted!

Shanghai, April 10th 2009.- If you only look at what the media says these days about Mexico, you probably are prone to believe that Mexico is a failed state. But it’s not and not only because the reasons provided by Enrique Krauze in his wonderful article published by the New York Times last month (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/opinion/24krauze.html?scp=1&sq=krauze&st=cse) My opinion is that is unfair to say that Mexico is a failed state not because the strengths of our democratic political system, as Krauze argues, but because the overall social peace of most of the last century gave birth to precious achievements we Mexicans need to thank, preserve and improve. One of these achievements is the network of institutions devoted to science and research in Mexico, a fact that by itself invalidates the claim that Mexico is a failed state.

In my first writing here about the quest of the positive, I argued on the need for the Mexican citizens who are for the construction of a better Mexico –as my self- on focusing on positive topics that allow us to present new and fresh ideas to change Mexico. Now I initiate my personal quest with this writing about what I have found about science, technology and innovation in my country. I am glad to announce that I have found lots of information in Spanish and English about the research and the sciences that are nurtured in Mexico.

Although Mexico is a country that does not ranks in any of the international lists of the world in terms of science and innovation, Mexico is not at all a country deprived of science developed by it self. I was stroke by the figures presented by Carlos Bazdresh Parada and David Romo Murillo in their paper The impact of science and technology in the development of Mexico (El Impacto de la Ciencia y Tecnología en el Desarrollo de México http://www.cidecyt.org/documentos/CIDECYT%2005-01.pdf) in which, based on statistics of the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT www.conacyt.mx) they state that the share of the contribution of Mexican scientists to the total of scientific articles in the world has grown from 0.33% to 0.72% from 1993 to 2002. Their whole argument is worth citing:

1) Mexico has already a scientific infraestructure capable of doing world class science in all the fields of knowlegde;
2) Mexican scientists have been producing an increasing number of scientific articles published in the best scientific magazines, both national and international. Whereas in 1992 there were 2,015 articles by Mexican scientists in the ISI ( Institute for Scientific Information), in 2003 this number climbed to 5,783.
3) The number of members of the National System of Scientific Researchers is also growing fast: whereas in 1992 the system counted 6,602 researchers, by 2003 this number has climbed to 10,189.

Mexico passed in the last decade a Law for Science and Technology and as a consequence there are commissions in the Mexican Congress and Senate of Science and Technology. In addition, there is also a network of institutions devoted to science and technology:

Institutions in Mexico devoted to science and technology:

Academia Mexicana de Ciencias (Science Academy of Mexico) www.amc.unam.mx

Asociación Mexicana de Directivos de la Investigación Aplicada y el Desarrollo Tecnológico, ADIAT (Association of Executives devoted to the Applied Research and Technological Development of Mexico) www.adiat.org

Asociación Nacional de Universidades e Instituciones de Educación Superior, ANUIES (Universities and High Education Institutions National Association of Mexico) www.anuies.mx

Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CONACYT (Science and Technology Council of Mexico, CONACYT) www.conacyt.mx

Foro Consultivo Científico y Tecnológico (Consultative Forum for Science and Technology) www.foroconsultivo.org.mx

Fundación México-Estados Unidos para la Ciencia (Mexico-US Science Fundation)
www.fumec.org.mx


Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial (Industrial Property Institute of Mexico)
www.impi.gob.mx

Sistema Integrado de Información sobre Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, SIICYT (Integrated System for the Information on Scientific Research and Technology)
www.siicyt.gob.mx

In terms of scientific research the largest university of Mexico is UNAM, the National University of Mexico (www.unam.edu). The publication Science in UNAM 2007 (http://www.cic-ctic.unam.mx/cic/mas_cic/publicaciones/download/lcunam2007.pdf) gives an account of all the UNAM dozens of Institutes and Research Centers, which are so numerous that are classified according to families of knowledge: Biochemical and Health Sciences; Physics and Mathematical Sciences; Earth Sciences and Engineering Sciences. Among this vast network of institutions, the ones whose existence surprised me more were the Astronomy Institute, the Genome Science Institute, the Research on Materials Institute, the Energy Research Institute, the Applied Physics and Advanced Technology Institute and the Geo Sciences Center. These institutes invent and develop year after year a number of equipment, materials or processes that go unnoticed on the Mexican media. The UNAM Astronomy Institute, for instance, has developed telescopes that are now used in Spain and the Biotechnology Institute has created new antibiotics. UNAM is also one of the most important institutions in Mexico in charge of preserving its flora and fauna.

This is something we as Mexicans can take proud and is also something that a better media should highlight or at least mention more frequently.

Unam is Mexico's largest institution devoted to research on basic science but it’s not the only one. There’s also de Polytechnic National Institute (www.ipn.mx) and the Technological and High Studies Institute of Monterrey (www.itesm.mx) among others.
After learning on the existence of all this network of institutions, do you still believe Mexico is a failed state? I don't. Not anymore.

The problem is when you look for technological innovations or inventions produced in Mexico, which unfortunately are very scarce or almost nonexistent. The good news is that Mexico has a certain level of scientific infrastructure that so far Mexican companies and governments have not taken advantage. But now is time to change that reality. How? Marketing the Made-In-Mexico science and research to all those Mexicans or Foreign Companies who want them or need them. Doing this will have the double benefit of allowing the corporations that contract science or technology developments from Mexican sources to innovate as well as it has the potential of bringing the financial resources to the scientists of Mexico who so badly need them. And of course, this marketing of science and technology doesn’t have to be restricted to Mexico: since Spanish is our common language, we can sell them to other countries in Latin America.

According to Bazdresh Parada and David Romo, one of the most acute problems that has imperiled the conformation of an authentic National System for Innovation in Mexico is the lack of a link between scientists and corporations. Other weaknesses, according to the same authors, have to do with a cultural attitude rooted in Mexico in which science doesn’t play a central role in the mentality of our entrepreneurs. Finally lack of financing has also weighed against the marketization of Mexican science.

The distance among our scientists and our entrepreneurs creates a vacuum to be filled by us, this new generation of Mexicans, that can arise to become the bridge between these two essential edges of the line. Here’s the plan.

I am proposing to constitute as many as possible consultant agencies specialized on doing research about the research produced by our Universities and on the needs of our companies. This is one part of the job. The other one is to market our Mexican scientific assets, which means that we need to talk to scientists and to all the bureaucracy involved in the production of science in order to get their authorization to advertise and promote their capabilities among their final users, who should be the private companies interested in innovating. A third role of this kind of consultant firm or agency would be to propitiate the exchange between science and the market. In Spain for instance, the migration of scientists to corporations is favored, the same as the transfer of executives or engineers from corporations to the labs of research institutes
That is my proposal and that’s a project I will be happy to commit my self.

Obviously for that to happen it’s critical also to change the mindsets and probably some suspicions that may exist between scientists and entrepreneurs, the former for being against the market and the later for failing to see the strategic advantage that the science made in Mexico can bring to their businesses.

If we fail to publicize the achievements of our scientists, we miss an opportunity to encourage and recognize their –heroic- work and, sadly, we also miss the opportunity for taking the full advantage of what they are, which ultimately is a product of the collective effort of Mexican society and government.

In conclusion, who wants to enlist in this project of bringing the Mexican science to entrepreneurs and investors?

A green code for Mexico: the challenges of the present as the most precious opportunity for the future.

A green code for Mexico: the challenges of the present as the most precious opportunity for the future.

By Jorge Visoso


Shanghai, April 2, 2009.- For the past decades, one of the most important components of the relationship of Mexico with the international economy has been its policy of attracting foreign investment from developed countries.

Foreign investment has been for Mexico what it has been for other developing countries: an opportunity to bridge the technological gap with the developed world as well as a source of employment and economic growth. Even though Mexico has been open to any kind of foreign investment, what Mexico has got in more quantity is not the kind of investment to create the most technologically advanced industries. American automakers came to Mexico when the automotive industry in the world was already mature; aerospace industry has recently come to Mexico, when this is not either a new industry. The same is true in the case of electric appliances, retailing, machinery, etc.

No doubt that foreign investment has had in the development of Mexico a very positive impact. It has created jobs and it has given the country an opportunity to catch with the world and form a skilled work force. However, this pattern of attracting investment in relatively old industries is one of the reasons Mexico has never been technologically ahead. For decades, Mexico enjoyed the boom of the car consumption in the US but precisely for this reason now is suffering the crisis of the automotive industry in the US.

I believe that now Mexico has a historical opportunity to change that pattern and make a virtue of a liability. Now that the world needs, as Thomas Friedman argues, a green code in order to cope with a hot, flat and crowded world, there is a historical opportunity for Mexico to put in place a green code of its own.

Since the United States is for Mexico its main source of foreign investment and its main export market, it will be for Mexico very visionary to take a step ahead of the United States, becoming a new neighbor that supplies no fantasy drugs but cheap green technology products and solutions. If this green Mexican code is pursued as a national goal, before than other competitors such as Central America, China and Canada, this will be for Mexico its most visionary project.

The world is experiencing now in this spring of 2009 a very serious crisis. The threats go beyond the troubles of the economy. In the past, every time societies experienced the turn of centuries, there were always people that feared the end of the world. We are just starting a new millennium but the problems of the world are so complex (especially those related to the environment, the energy crisis and the climate change) that fearing that the world is going to end is just understandable..

The transformations in progress are bound to give birth to a new world, where the cars are not going to be gas powered, where people are not going to work in offices anymore but at home and where newspapers are no longer be printed in paper. A new world is in construction and still for a very long time, the United States, Mexico’s largest partner, is going to be the source and the market for all those transformations.

So, why not envisioning a Mexico that takes the wave of the future and that prepares it self for becoming a leading exporter and supplier of electric cars, electronic paper, new batteries and home-office furniture, just to name few examples? I don’t need to elaborate more on the benefits that this turn will bring to Mexico: better environment, better jobs, value added exports, technology, education and prosperity. I believe this can be a master plan for Mexico.

As I write this lines, Danish (Vestas), German (Solarworld), Japanese (Honda) and Spanish (Gamesa) corporations, just to name only few examples (fortune.com/greenbiz), are lining to invest in the US in order to tap on all the new necessities of the consumers of the future. Why we don’t make Mexico a choice for all those companies? Why don’t we change our focus and instead of stay stuck to the old pattern of attracting gas powered cars or flat screen TVs, we don’t try to attract all the green investment of the future?

If we decide to take that path, it will be essential we reorient our external antennas in the world as well as to reform our foreign policy. It will be crucial also adapting our education system to these expected transformations.

My idea is that we better reinforce our presence in all those regions and international forums where the leaders of green technologies are. If you ask me, I will say that we should send more people to study to Sweden, to Denmark, to Germany; that we should create the best possible conditions for the investment in Mexico of big new green projects, such as turbines, lithium batteries, new materials or for providing new services, such as efficient recycling.

We need also human capital to work and support the new industries. At first glance, it looks like there’s nothing like that in Mexico but that’s not true. For instance, the university I graduated from, UMAM, has recently opened a bachelor in technology and it has two relatively new research institutes: the Center of Research on Energy www.cie.unam.mx and the Center of Research on Environmental Geography www.ciga.unam.mx

Transforming problems into opportunities has always been a key to compete and the most successful countries and organizations are those who have understood this truth. This April 2 2009, the New York Times published a note that exemplifies how China is taking advantage of the present automotive industry crisis to become a leader in the production of electric cars http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/business/global/02electric.html?hp Why don’t Mexico try something similar? Actually, the cooperation with China in these new fields would be a very interesting endeavor of our Mexico’s foreign policy. I would love to see the Ambassador of Mexico, Mr. Jorge Guajardo, get busy trying to make Mexico board the Chinese locomotive instead of only focusing on trying to sell pork meat or tequila to China. On the same toke, it would had been lovely to see last week the President of Mexico, Mr. Felipe Calderon, bring our ambition of having our own green code to Mr. Hillary Clinton instead of only focusing on who is responsible for the recent drug violence.

We can not change history and geography, but now is the moment to be ambitious and visionary enough to take a step ahead of America and shape our future. A Mexico transformed by a new green code is the Mexico of the future that I can't wait to see.

In the quest of the positive: a new thinking for fixing the Mexican Gotham.
By Jorge Visoso


Shanghai, March 21 2009.

Now that the world economy experiences one of its worst crisis in decades, people feel uncertainty about the future. The economy is in crisis and people fear that their countries probably are not going to be viable in the future. That´s what you read in the US newspapers of these days and that’s also the image that Japan and Europe project. Even the so far triumphant China is scared about its chances to face the future.

The same is true in Mexico, where opinion leaders are starting to address this crisis as one of the worst in the history of our country. In our case, however, the current economic crisis is not really the reason people feel so bad about the general situation of the country. The economy is not growing, it’s true, but for a generation of Mexicans – my generation- the country’s economy has never been anything really special that make us raise our hands to the sky. In contrast to regions such as East Asia, we have never really seen that economically speaking things goes any better. Mexicans are accustomed to the mediocrity of their economy.

The woes of Mexicans come from realities that are really unprecedented for us. Since 2007, in our country more than 10,000 people have been killed in the war that the Mexican government has supposedly launched against drug traffic gangs. That number of people killed and the way that many people are being killed daily –executions, grenades, people beheaded, criminals that throw their enemies into acid- are things we never saw before and that make us think on how low we have fallen. That, until recently, undefined reality of a democracy and a market economy such as Mexico gained in recent months the label that it really deserved: Mexico as a failed State. For many people, the application of this term to the case of Mexico is an unacceptable exaggeration; for some minority, like me, is fair.

The drug´s war violence is in fact only the cherry on the top of the comprehensive crisis that Mexico has gone into: crime everywhere; extended corruption in the government (police, local governments, judges, Congress, etc); unchecked power of the monopolies of the economy and the media; increasing polarization of society where the rich become richer and the poor poorer; breakdown of Mexican educational system, etc. Like it or not, Mexico has become in a very short span of time a country similar to Gotham -the city where Batman lives- that is dominated by criminal gangs, where the evil triumphs and the fair and good causes are defeated by the powerful. If there are some people who deny that Mexico is a failed State, at least we can not deny the long list of our failures.

The worst is that it doesn’t feel that the Mexican government is doing anything significant to address our multiple and pressing problems and as a consequence the ordinary Mexican citizen tends to evade this reality or feels desperate about a complexity he can not change.

The Mexican intellectuals, writers and opinion leaders do not seem to react to the crisis in a very different way. They feel also desperate and the only thing that they do is criticize everything: the system, the president, the powerful men; they criticize the judges, they criticize the mayor of Mexico city, they criticize the church, the army. Our comprehensive and old crisis has made our thinking hyper critical and has reduced our perspective to the negative, the bad, the impossible. Because everybody feels helpless and hopeless, the brightest minds of Mexico doesn’t think anymore on how to correct our situation and fix our problems; they don’t think anymore on how to make our Mexico, in our own context, a better place. Crime, corruption and mediocrity have become distinctive features of my country and our national sport is criticism.

I acknowledge that I have been a champion of this Mexican national sport. Most of what so far I have read in my life regarding my country is negative, the education I received in college was focused on the negative and that means I haven’t been trained on thinking about solutions to our problems. Now I state that I am sick of my hyper criticism, I relinquish my crown as a champion of the negative and I declare my aspiration to become one of those who proposes solutions.

This change of mindset comes from my readings. In Mexico people say “tell me who you are with and I tell tell you who you are”. Something similar is true when it comes to readings: tell me what you read and I will tell you what you think. In my case, regarding politics, I have gone from Marxist philosophy,, when I was a college student to a new range of readings about the world. Consequently my thinking has evolved.

Not very long time ago I discovered the pleasure of reading in English and I discovered what seems to me as an English speaking countries tradition: the application of ideas to reality. Criticizing reality and then proposing ideas to change it. I believe that Mexico needs that. We need to change our focus and think about what is positively feasible in order to improve our reality.

This that I am writing now is inspired on the reading of the articles of Thomas L. Friedman on the New York Times and on his most recent book Hot, Flat and Crowded, which I am delightfully reading. I find that in his writings Friedman makes very sharp criticism on what in his opinion has gone wrong in the US and he cast light on where the US should head to and on the people that in the US and outside the US are doing positive things the American government, corporations and society can learn from.

In the introduction to his new book, Friedman defines the nature of the problems that the US is facing and identifies the bad tendencies that he sees in the US. At the end of the introduction he refers to the need of an internal “nation-building” and he speaks about all the people in the US or abroad that are doing something positive in order to do that nation-building.

Something also important is that Friedman criticises but he doesn’t write to destroy or to denounce others. There’s no resentment in his writing.

I think we need people as Friedman who speaks about clear minded goals for our Mexico and who tell us who in the world and in our country is doing positive things and how our government, our Mexican corporations and our people can learn from those experiences. We need to inaugurate an intellectual quest for the positive in the world and in Mexico, a quest that give us inspiration that make us contribute, that make us organize ourselves for collective purposes and that make us push our government for actions that change our country.

The thinking that we need to get out of Gotham has to be free of resentment and has to be positive in nature. It has to seek solutions and it has to have as an aspiration the goal of improving our reality.

But how can we Mexicans develop this new thinking I am calling for or how can be optimistic or positive when all that surrounds us looks negative? How can we lucidly think about what our country needs when all that our Mexican newspapers give us is the description of problems and tragedies? How can we come up with an innovative thinking when we are so accustomed to expect solutions from above? How can we imagine new ways of living and producing when we are so accustomed to see our nearest reality? What is important in our past and in our present to build our future?

My opinion is that thinking creatively demands changing our sources of traditional information. If we are going to propose fresh ideas we need to look for a different kind of news. Why, instead of learning how the drug gangs kill their enemies, we don’t get more interested -as Friedman does-in people that are innovating in Mexico or in experiences that are applicable to Mexico? We need to cast light on what is positive and good, good Mexican businesses, scientists, innovators, social workers, etc.

I also believe that we are not going to thrive as a society and as individuals if we don’t think in ways that make us a contributing part and not only a beneficiary. We need to desire to be a part of the solution of our Mexican crisis and we need to be willing to work for it.

One more requirement of the new thinking I am seeking is that we need to see Mexico in perspective. Mexico is not the only country in the world where its citizens feel their country is in crisis. I remember having conversations with Italians and they complained about Berlusconi; if you watch movies from Peru, Brazil or Argentina the only thing that you see are problems, corruption, crime, just the same problems we have. So, if much more people suffers as us, we need more perspective, for assessing our problems as well as for looking for solutions.

Something that I see in writers such as Friedman is a capacity to be systematic and to sum up the complexity of the US problems and propose solutions that look like viable. We need also that.

My last requirement would be that we need thinking that test our new Mexican democracy. A thinking that proposes solutions that are inviable is not acceptable. We live in a country that is defined as a democracy (no matter you agree or not) and we need to play in this system. We need to think in terms of this system, which means that we need to be realistic. So our new thinking has to provide clues on how people can organize to do what we have to do to reform Gotham.

The above described quest of the positive is my goal for this Mind Harbour, in which I aspire to write, as Friedman and others do, on the things that my country is doing and can do to change the Gotham-like reality it has become. I start now my personal quest for the positive.