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.