Mexico Now A Latin American Leader In Tech Services

Fronteras, 5/15/2013

In the last decade Mexico’s tech industry has flourished, growing three times faster than the global average. Most of that growth is fueled by demand from the United States. But without certain reforms Mexico’s progress can only go so far. On the cover of April’s edition of Forbes Magazine in Mexico is Blanca Treviño. She is the 53-year-old CEO of Softtek, the country’s biggest technology service.

Softtek spans four continents and provides software support to clients that include Fortune 500 companies. The business sector represented by Softtek is one that’s growing rapidly in Mexico thanks in large part to its proximity to the United States, the world’s largest consumer of tech services. “I think it’s safe to say that without the U.S. the Mexico market would not be doing very well,” said Morgan Yeates, an analyst with the IT consulting firm Gartner.

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Op-ed: How Mexico Got Back in the Game

The New York Times, 2/23/2013

In India, people ask you about China, and, in China, people ask you about India: Which country will become the more dominant economic power in the 21st century? I now have the answer: Mexico.

Impossible, you say? Well, yes, Mexico with only about 110 million people could never rival China or India in total economic clout. But here’s what I’ve learned from this visit to Mexico’s industrial/innovation center in Monterrey. Everything you’ve read about Mexico is true: drug cartels, crime syndicates, government corruption and weak rule of law hobble the nation. But that’s half the story. The reality is that Mexico today is more like a crazy blend of the movies “No Country for Old Men” and “The Social Network.”

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Mexico’s ‘Crisis Of Disappearance’: Families Seek Answers (Audio)

NPR, 2/21/2013

Maximina Hernandez says she begged her 23-year old son, Dionicio, to give up his job as a police officer in a suburb of Monterrey. Rival drug cartels have been battling in the northern Mexican city for years. But he told her being a police officer was in his blood, a family tradition. He was detailed to guard the town’s mayor.

In May 2007, on his way to work, two men wearing police uniforms stopped Dionicio on a busy street, pulled him from his car and drove him away. That same day, the mayor’s other two bodyguards were also abducted. Witnesses say the kidnappers wore uniforms of an elite anti-drug police unit. The three men haven’t been seen since.

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Americans ready to risk lives to save souls in Monterrey, Mexico

Los Angeles Times, 10/30/2012

Pastor Andres Garza had told the American evangelicals to stay away from his troubled city. The drug war made it too difficult to guarantee their safety.

The way Garza saw it, the Americans’ return on this September weekend was part of an epic spiritual battle for a city, like Babylon, that had fallen into decadence and was in need of salvation. There was also a little of Jesus’ story in their visit.

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In Nuevo Leon a Civil Police Force Replaces the Military [in Spanish]

Reforma, 9/16/12

While Nuevo Leon is suffering from the worst wave of violence in its history, the military is leaving the streets of Monterrey and is being replaced by a new civilian police force called the Fuerza Civil which was created by the state’s governor Rodrigo Medina last year.  There will be an 80% reduction in military presence, and they are recruiting many new police officers.

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The Mexican Press Under Fire

The Wall Street Journal, 8/26/12

Five and a half years after Mexican President Felipe Calderón initiated an all-out war on the Mexican cartels that run drugs to American consumers, organized-crime rages in Mexico. But it is not limited to narcotics trafficking. Having made a bundle off prohibition, mastered the art of corrupting officials, and provoked a generalized breakdown in the rule of law, other gangster businesses are booming. When the press dares to expose their operations, it gets the El Norte treatment or worse. The paper has reported that 47 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2006, 13 have disappeared and there have been 40 attacks against media properties.

The Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice (CCSPJP), a Mexico-based nongovernmental organization which tracks homicide statistics, found that five of the 10 deadliest cities in the world last year were in Mexico. The Council has also reported that of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world in 2011, 40 are in Latin America. Last year, for the first time, Monterrey joined that list as cartel violence spiked.

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Mexico’s Monterrey still ranks as top city, despite violence

The Los Angeles Times, 8/15/12

In a new study by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, or IMCO, the city of Monterrey, at the once-tranquil heart of Mexico’s industrial hub, was ranked No. 1 in most of the things that make an urban center attractive to business and residents. And yet, the report also noted that Monterrey’s murder rate grew by 300% between 2010 and 2011. (Links in Spanish.)

Part of the explanation, the report noted, is that homicides really soared after the cutoff date for the data used to rate competitiveness in the study, late 2010. But security in Monterrey had already begun to deteriorate in early 2009, and other factors apparently sustained the city’s ability to develop and attract investment…

“In my opinion, it’s not a contradiction because we are saying Monterrey is competitive DESPITE the crisis of violence that it is living,” the report’s author, IMCO urban development studies director Gabriela Alarcon, said in an email message.

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Mexico Magazine Printing Plant Raided, Burned

Huffington Post, 7/31/2012

An official in the Nuevo Leon state prosecutors’ office who was not authorized to speak on the record says the attack targeted a plant run by the DIPSA company in the city of Monterrey. It handles work for the Proceso news magazine as well as society and gossip publications.

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Report: Mexican newspaper office set on fire in 2nd attack this month

CNN, 7/30/2012

Two masked men set the offices of a prominent Mexican newspaper on fire Sunday, the second such attack on the daily this month.

The armed men walked into the Sierra Madre office of the El Norte newspaper in the northern city of Monterrey, threatened a security guard, poured gasoline out of canisters and lit the building on fire, the newspaper said.

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Resucitating the Barrio Antiguo [op-ed, in Spanish]

Animal Politico, Alejandro Hope, 7/17/12

In this piece Alejandro Hope discusses the situation in Monterrey, and how the Barrio Antiguo, which was once the center of the towns night-life is now quiet, and how many bars have completely closed.  He says that this is because people fear going out at night and because some of the bars have been unable to continue financially due to extortion by criminal gangs.  He proposes a plan similar to PRONAF which helped make the center of Tijuana safer, in which cars were banned from the streets, cameras were set up on corners, emergency buttons were located throughout the area, and where a group was formed to protect business owners from extortion (among other initiatives).  He says that he knows that people will wonder why they should go through so much trouble so that youths can continue going out, and says that it is a way to reduce fear, and points to how the safe area in Tijuana gradually spread from the center of town to further out areas.

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