HispanicVista Columnists
The U.S.-Mexico Technology Initiative
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By
Sal Osio, JD - From the Publisher's Corner
- June 12, 2006
I had the privilege of attending, as a guest or my good friend and neighbor, the Hon. Jaime Oaxaca, a founding member of HispanicVista, a dinner-conference hosted by Dr. Hector Ruiz, the President and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMC), in New York in September of 2003. The conference was attended by President Vicente Fox of Mexico, Mexico’s Secretary of State, Louis Ernesto Derbez, and the Mexican Ambassador to the U.S., Juan Jose Bremer, another old family friend, and numerous functionaries of the Mexican Government. The participants, primarily, were Hispanic Americans in the sciences and technology sector and their counterparts from Mexico. The objective was to promote and establish an exchange of intellectual property and technology between the two countries. After several, well documented presentations, the conferees agreed to the formation of a bi-national organization to implement the recommendations agreed to at the summit.
I remember vividly coming out of the conference elated at the idealistic and noble pursuit of an intellectual exchange between two societies, neighbors, who in the absence of trade and commerce under NAFTA, were distant neighbors – forever quarreling over immigration, drug trafficking and border issues – each pointing the finger at the other. In short, I concluded that in the absence of economic immediate gratification, the hall mark of American pragmatism, the ideals espoused at the conference were destined to the dead end of all similar idealistic overtures. - another Quixotic venture.
Was I wrong!
Turn the clock forward, almost three years from the New York summit, to May, 2006, Sacramento, California, at a conference also attended by President Fox of Mexico, wherein I also had the privilege of being included as a guest, courtesy of Jaime. This gathering was attended by some 200 participants in the programs initiated in the aftermath and as a direct result of the initial 2003 enclave. The progress of the initiative was reported by the participants – FUMEC (The Fundacion Mexico-Estados Unidos par ala Ciencia), chaired by my friend, Jaime Oaxaca through 2005), dazzled even the most skeptic among us, particularly me. In its almost three years of operation, FUMEC in collaboration with TechBA – The Technology Business Accelator (designed to incubate and support Mexican high tech enterprises to partner with their U.S. counterparts) - financed and supported by the Secretaria de Economia de Mexico, and operated by FUMEC, under the able operational leadership of Guillermo Fernandez de la Garza, its President and CEO, have accomplished the incredible. There is now a crucial network for the collaboration in science and technology, particularly along hhe border, with emphasis on such issues as health and environment, education, technological and business innovation. On the instant gratification pragmatic scale, several Mexican technology/entrepreneurs recounted their experiences of success as a direct result of the FUMEC/TechBA initiative. I invite the reader’s attention to the Web sites: www.fumec.org and www.techba.com.
If only we could make the same progress in other divisive areas of our bi-national relationship. It’s interesting that bi-national labor, possibly due to the brown face that provokes a negative reaction among the white racist, remains the divisive issue between the two nations, albeit, in the absence of the labor exchange, our economy, particularly the agricultural and the service sectors, would suffer a crippling set back.
Sal Osio is the Publisher of HispanicVista (www.hispanicvista.com) Contact at: sposio@aol.com