Mexico’s Tech Startups Look To Overcome Barriers To Growth

NPR, 6/18/2013

In the past decade, Mexico’s tech industry has flourished, growing three times faster than the global average. Most of that growth has been fueled by demand from the United States. But as Mexico’s startups strive to make it in foreign markets, they say they need more engineers and ways to finance their growth.

Softek, Mexico’s biggest technology services company, spans four continents and provides software support to a client base that includes Fortune 500 companies. The business sector is growing rapidly in Mexico, thanks in large part to the country’s proximity to the United States. “I think it’s safe to say that without the U.S., the Mexico market would not be doing very well,” says Morgan Yeates, an analyst with the IT consulting firm Gartner.

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Political Risk: Is Crime Rising In Mexico City?

Forbes, 6/18/2013

A string of violent incidents in Mexico City has left residents looking for answers. In February, a gunman riding a motorcycle killed a nightclub owner in La Zona Rosa, a central district not far from the U.S and British embassies and the headquarters of many foreign multinational companies. On May 9, Malcolm X’s grandson was beaten to death in a bar near the city’s famous Plaza Garibaldi.  On May 26, in the same neighborhomod as the nightclub owner shooting, armed assailants kidnapped a dozen teenagers from Tepito, one of the city’s rougher outer neighborhoods. On June 6, two gunmen entered a gym in Tepito and killed four people. Josefina Ramirez, the aunt of one of the victims, explained, “two masked men came and just started shooting.”

Although some residents worry that the recent increase of violent incidents that appear to be connected to organized crime could undermine Mexico’s City’s success story, many analysts continue to view Mexico City’s community-focused police program as an adequate buffer from a regression to the sort of crime wave they city went through in the 1990s.

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Immigration bill could cut deficits by $175 billion – CBO

CNN Money, 6/19/2013

A bipartisan Senate bill that would create a path to legal status for many of the 11.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States could reduce deficits by $175 billion over the first 10 years and by at least $700 billion in the second decade. That’s according to an analysis released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO, working with the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, estimates that 8 million unauthorized residents would become legal in the first decade. In addition, the report estimates the bill would boost the U.S. population by a net of 10.4 million people by 2023 and by 16 million by 2033.

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Despite Mexico Security Improvements, Public Polls Betray Deep Worries

InSight Crime, 6/17/2013

A government survey reveals how certain social behaviors in Mexico have changed due to public perceptions of crime, even though much of the country has seen violence levels plateau somewhat. According to a newly released portion of the National Survey of Victimization and Perceptions of Violence, known as Envipe under its Spanish acronym, Mexicans are substantially altering their lifestyles in an effort to insulate themselves from the violence. As a result, violence linked to organized crime is no longer considered an issue limited to public security, but is seen as a much broader problem, one that affects commerce, investment, education, and social life in general.

One of the most basic manifestations of this is the reluctance to enjoy the nation’s nightlife, previously a famous staple of towns like Mexico City and Monterrey. The survey — produced annually by INEGI, the government statistics agency — counted more than 23 million Mexicans who said they avoided public places such as bars and soccer stadiums because of fears of violence. This is not idle fretting: as InSight Crime has reported, bars have periodically been targeted and their patrons killed at random, as different criminal groups use terror tactics to advance their position. In one notorious incident in 2011, a first-division soccer game in Torreon was called off after just 45 minutes, due to a gun battle that started outside the stadium.

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The Rise of Mexico’s Self-Defense Forces

Foreign Affairs, July/August 2013

Mexico has suffered staggering levels of violence and crime during the country’s seven-year-long war against the cartels. The fighting has killed 90,000 people so far, a death toll larger, as of this writing, than that of the civil war in Syria. Homicide rates have tripled since 2007. In an effort to stem the carnage, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced last December that the federal government, having struggled to defeat the cartels using corrupt local police and an inadequate military, would create an elite national police force of 10,000 officers by the end of this year.

Many Mexicans are unwilling to wait. In communities across the country, groups of men have donned masks, picked up rifles and machetes, and begun patrolling their neighborhoods and farmland. As in the Tierra Colorada incident, their behavior is not always pretty. Several months ago, another such group in the state of Guerrero detained 54 people for over six weeks, accusing them of crimes ranging from stealing cattle to murder. After a series of unofficial trials, they handed 20 of them over to local prosecutors and let the rest go free.

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Can Mexico Harness Its Demographic Dividend?

New Security Beat, 6/19/2013

Mexico’s 2012 elections were important for a host of reasons: the PRI party returned to power after 12 years of rule by the more conservative PAN; there was the first female presidential candidate from a major political party; and turn-out was historically high. They also proved that Mexico’s young people are not as apathetic as some may have thought, with the emergence of the #YoSoy132 student movement demanding fair press coverage.

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HAPPENING NOW: Duncan Wood Testifies Before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

Jesus Villaseca (Flickr)

“Security Cooperation in Mexico: Examining the Next Steps in the U.S.-Mexico Security Relationship”

U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs / Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere and Global Narcotics Affairs

Duncan Wood, Director of the Mexico Institute, joins a panel of experts in testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations regarding the U.S.-Mexico security relationship.

Live webcast available here.

Transcript of Duncan Wood’s testimony available here.