offices abroad - gob.mx · retailing furniture industry mexican furniture cluster using its...
TRANSCRIPT
offices abroad
North AmericaOffices in: Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, New York, Toronto and Vancouver
Latin Americaand South America Offices in: Bogotá, Guatemala, Santiago de Chile and Sao Paulo
Bogotá[email protected]
Santiago de [email protected]
Europe and Middle EastFrankfurt Regional [email protected]
Offices in: Brussels, Dubai, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Stockholm
Brussels [email protected]
Asia - PacificShanghai Regional [email protected]
Offices in: Beijing, Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo
Beijing [email protected]
Singapore / New [email protected]
ProMéxico Headquarters
+ 52 (55) 544 [email protected]
www.promexico.gob.mx
2 Negocios
Contents
From the CEO 6
Briefs 7
Business tips Mexico and the ah1n1 virus. facing the callenge 22
Mexico’s Partner roche: a dose of swiss ethics for
Mexican health 27
Mexico’s Partner silanes: developing a new Market 30
Mexico’s Partner birMex: the Mexican health coMpany 32
Figures 37
probioMed:innovating
Medical biotechnology
24
34Innovamédica:
Mexican Talent that Saves Lives
There are clouds of myths floating around one of the most politically significant battles that the Mexican Government has fought in recent decades: that against drug trafficking. Joaquín Villalobos dismantles the arguments of a mythology based on poor statistics and questionable comparisons.
14
twelve Myths about the war against drug trafficking
[email protected]+ 52 (55) 5447 70 70
www.promexico.gob.mx
>> Log in to Mexico
Success is just a click away…
"
proMéxico is not responsible for inaccurate information or omissions that might exist in the information provided by the participant companies nor of their economic solvency. title certificate of lawfulness 14459. text certificate of lawfulness 12032. number of title reserve 04-2009-012714564800-102. postal registry pp09-0044. responsible editor: sebastián escalante. printing: cía. impresora el universal, s.a. de c.v. distribution: proMéxico camino a sta teresa 1679, México d.f., 01900. phone: +52 (55) 5447 7000. negocios is an open space where diverse opinions can be expressed. the institution might or might not agree with an author’s statements; therefore the responsibility of each text falls on the writers, not on the institution, except when it states otherwise. although this magazine verifies all the information printed on its pages, it will not accept responsibility derived from any omissions, inaccuracies or mistakes. february, 2010.
4 Negocios
Interview
cecilia García-
Huidobro"Chileans and Mexicans are meant to understand
each other"
46
The lifestyle Contents
ProMéxicobruno ferrariceo ricardo rojo image and communications director sebastián escalanteManaging [email protected]
Miguel Ángel samayoa advertising and [email protected]
fernanda luna copy editing
taller México alejandro serratos publisher [email protected]
felipe Zúñiga editor in chief [email protected]
orlando santamariaMarketing [email protected]
pilar Jiménez Molgadodesign [email protected]
Jorge silva design [email protected] dalia urzua orozcodesign [email protected]
paloma ló[email protected]
vanessa serratosdesign [email protected]
Piso de ediciones vanesa roblessenior writer [email protected]
karla Juárez sandra roblaguilucila valtierraMauricio Zabalgoitiastaff writers
translationalejandra díazJuan Manuel romero
Proof readinGgraeme stewart
contributorsJoaquín villalobos, María cristina rosas, Jennifer chan, cristina Ávila-Zesatti, José antonio aguilar, guadalupe castillo aja, graeme stewart, ricardo ibarra, fidelia fadel, oldemar.
this is an editorial project for proMéxico by taller México & piso de ediciones.
Download the PDF version of Negocios ProMéxico at: negocios.promexico.gob.mx
The Lifestyle Feature
Mexico at its best on broadway
58The Lifestyle briefs 42
Architecture the postal palace in Mexico city 49
Interview Mitchell keenan, falling in love with a country 52
Art curating Mexican art 30
Feedback casa de la sal 61
Get news about Mexican business environment and lifestyle delivered directly to your mailbox
Discover Mexico…
[email protected]+ 52 (55) 5447 70 70
suscribe to
business anD lifestyle
Contact us at:
A mere five years before the deadline of achieving the Unit-ed Nations Millennium Development Goals, health is still one of the main challenges facing the world. All around the globe, health systems have come to trust that research and development efforts will be able to deal with complex situa-
tions that may affect any country's development opportunities.
That is how the pharmaceutical industry has gained an unprecedent-ed relevance in the development strategies of many countries around the world. Progress in this sector represents not only economic benefit but also an opportunity to generate value added chains in social matters.
Mexico is a strategic point for the world's pharmaceutical industry be-cause it is one of the largest drug and medical equipment consumers in Latin America but, more importantly, because it now has the conditions needed to develop and improve products based on research.
Mexico's legal framework is now one of the most advanced in the world in the area of biotechnology and it provides one of the highest levels of cer-tainty regarding intellectual property protection. Mexico also offers great advantages and incentives to the research and development of the sector, thanks to its solid education system that every year trains professionals to the highest level, and its leading public and private research centers.
These and other factors have led to a stronger Mexican pharmaceutical industry that today has important growth plans.
In this issue of Negocios we include examples of the dynamism of the pharmaceutical industry in Mexico and the success experienced by the companies that decided to invest in health sciences.
Welcome to Mexico!
Bruno FerrariProMexico CEO
From the CEO.
briefs.
Mexico has moved back into the world’s top-10 most attractive countries for foreign direct investment as US companies seek low-cost production closer to home, consult-ing firm A.T. Kearney said.
Mexico’s attractiveness for investment ranks 8th worldwide this year, up from 19th at the end of 2007, according to A.T. Kear-ney’s FDI Confidence Index for 2010, which is based on a survey of global business ex-ecutives.
Among US investors, Mexico ranked as the fifth most-favored destination for invest-ment in the firm’s 2010 index, behind the US, China, India and Brazil. It was ranked 10th in 2007.
Of the estimated 13 billion usd Mexico re-ceived in foreign direct investment in 2009, A.T. Kearney said 53% came from the US and 6% came from Canada.
Manufacturing, the sector traditionally
exporting healthThe high rates of scorpion and snake bites in Mo-rocco led the Pasteur Institute of that country to seek cooperation from Mexican specialists. The Bioclón Institute, a subsidiary of Laboratorios Silanes, and researchers from the Institute of Bio-technology of the National Autonomous Univer-sity of Mexico (UNAM) developed an antidote for Mediterranean Africa scorpions, the NAMO Alac-ramyn (North Africa and Middle East).
In Morocco up to 40,000 cases of people af-fected by scorpion stings are registered each year.
The antivenin is already developed and Mexi-can specialists are now training physicians in North Africa on how to use it.
Moroccan researchers, led by Mexican special-ists will start in May a clinical study to document the efficacy of the product.
www.bioclon.com.mx
pharMaceuTicaL
FOreiGN DirecT iNVeSTMeNT
Among the Best targeted by foreign investors in Mexico, was a key driver in the country’s ranking this year. The index placed Mexico at number 3 for investment in light manufacturing –which includes goods such as electronics, furniture and textiles– and number 10 for heavy man-ufacturing of products such as autos and chemicals.
On the other hand, Mexico ranked as the 24th most-attractive country for investment in financial services, 27th in non-financial services and 21st in telecommunications.
A.T. Kearney’s index placed Mexico among the top-10 most-attractive countries for foreign direct investment from 2001 through 2003, at one point ranking as high as number 3 globally. Mexico then fell out of favor with international investors, falling to number 22 in 2004 and number 16 in 2005.
www.atkearney.com
Ph
oto
ar
ch
ive
Ph
oto
ar
ch
ive
8 Negocios8 Negocios8 Negocios Photos courtesy of elize amendola / marriot / archive
Marriot takes Fairfield Inn to Mexico
TOuriSM
Best choiceThe consumer electronics chain Best Buy has decided to expand in Mexico. The com-pany will open between three and five new stores in Mexico during 2010.
www.bestbuy.com
reTaiLiNG
FurNiTure iNDuSTrY
Mexican Furniture ClusterUsing its experience in the electronics sector, manufacturers in the state of Jalisco are to set up Mexico’s first furniture cluster. The Furniture and Decoration Cluster will involve manufacturers from Guadalajara and Ocotlán, as well as producersof arts and crafts from Tlaquepaque and the Mexican Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer for SMEs (FUNTEC).
www.jalisco.gob.mx
The hotel operator Marriott International plans to open 36 mid-range hotels in Mex-ico in 2011, under the Fairfield Inn & Suites brand, as part of its international growth strategy. This will increase the chain’s pres-ence in Mexico from 19 to 57 hotels.
www.marriot.com
briefs.
Ph
oto
co
ur
te
sy
of
te
rn
ium
Free Trade ChampionMexico consolidated its position as the most open to trade country in Latin America, following the tariffs reduction for imports from WTO members since January 1st 2010. Mexico’s simple average tariff went down to 5.3%, a figure below that of other most open to trade countries in the region, such as Chile (6%), Peru (5.5%) and Costa Rica (5.4%).
www.economia.gob.mx
iNTerNaTiONaL TraDe
New Ternium InvestmentTernium, the steel product manufacturer, will invest 40 million usd in a logistics com-plex in San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, to help the company cut its delivery times by 60% and improve its customer service.
www.ternium.com
MeTaLLurGY
In 2009, tequila production in Mexico reached 249 million liters, of which 136.1 million were sold in 120 countries, according to figures from the Tequila Regulatory Council. Exports of 100% agave tequila, increased 3.9%, going from 35.9 million liters in 2008 to 37.3 million in 2009.
www.crt.org.mx
BeVeraGeS
It's All About Tequila
daimler moves to meXicoDaimler, the German car manufacturer, closed one of its plants in Canada and is plan-ning to close another one in the US in 2010. The company will relocate production in its plant in Santiago Tianguistenco, Estado de México.
www.daimler.com
auTOMOTiVe
10 Negocios Photos courtesy of daimler.com / archive / ventureresp..com
MeDicaL DeViceS
Fisher & Paykel to start up operations in TijuanaWith an initial investment of 6 million usd, the New Zealand medical devices manufacturer Fisher & Paykel Healthcare will begin operations in Tijuana, Baja California, in March 2010.www.fphcare.com
Altos Hornos de Mexico (AHMSA) ended 2009 with a total production of 2 million 990 tons of liquid steel, exceeding the target set earlier that year. In the lamination process the liquid steel was transformed into 2 mil-lion 678,000 tons of finished products, while AHMSA’s shipments of various types of steel amounted to 2 million 784,000 tons.
www.ahmsa.com
MeTaLLurGic
Strong As Steel
eNTerTaiNMeNT
Expanding PresenceMexican movie chain Cinépolis unveiled its plans to open 330 new movie theaters in 2010, 250 of which will be located in Mexico and 80 in countries like Honduras, Colombia, Peru and Brazil. In these countries local investors will join the Mexican firm. With such expansion, Cinépolis will reach a total of 2,500 movie theaters around the world.
www.cinepolis.com.mx
FOODS
meXico’s flavors in europe
Mexico is the guest country of the Fruit Logistica 2010 Trade Fair, taking place between February 2 and 5
in Berlin. Mexico first participated in this fair in 1995 and its involvement has grown ever since.
www.fruitlogistica.de
Ph
oto
co
ur
te
sy
of
fr
uit
log
istic
a.d
e
briefs.
12 Negocios Photo courtesy of comisiÓn federal de electricidad
Green Partnership101 million usd in loans by the Inter-American Development Bank for two projects will supply clean electricity through unprecedented partnerships between Cemex, Walmart, Spanish and French power companies, multilateral lenders and local communities in Mexico.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved 101 million usd in partial financing for two wind power projects totaling 318 MW in the state of Oaxaca, that will help to establish a critical mass of renewable energy in the coun-try, provide clean energy to private companies, and generate jobs and payments to low-income rural communities.
The projects are part of Mexico’s strategy to diversify its energy matrix while reducing green-house gas emissions. This strategy includes a Special Program to Exploit Renewable Energy and Special Climate Change Program that will contribute to the country’s goal of reducing emissions by 50% of its year 2000 levels by 2050.
The IDB Board approved a 50 million usd loan for the 250.5 MW Eurus wind farm cur-rently under development by Acciona Energía México (AEM), a wholly owned subsidiary of Spain’s Acciona Energía. This is by far the largest wind power project ever built in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Mexico’s Cemex, a global producer of ce-ment and concrete, is an equity partner in the Eurus project and will purchase all its electric-ity under a 20-year self-supply power purchase agreement. Cemex expects Eurus and other self-supply projects to meet a significant percentage of the energy it needs for its Mexico operations.
The IDB will also facilitate an additional loan of up to 30 million usd from the Clean Technol-ogy Fund of the Climate Investment Fund (CIF) for the Eurus project, whose total cost will be close to 600 million usd. Additional long-term fi-nancing is expected to be approved for the proj-ect by other multilateral lenders, development finance institutions and commercial banks.
Separately, the IDB approved up to approxi-mately 21 million usd for a 67.5 MW wind farm currently under development by Eléctrica del Valle de México (EVM) an affiliate of EDF En-ergies Nouvelles of France. Four subsidiaries of Wal-Mart de México, one of the country’s larg-est retail chains, will purchase electricity from this project under 15-year self-supply power purchase agreements, as part of Wal-Mart’s goal of using 100% renewable power in its Mex-ico operations.
The IDB loan, combined with credits ex-pected from multilateral and bilateral lenders, could cover as much as 103 million usd of the EVM project’s 190 million usd total cost.
“These projects are the fruit of Mexico’s pioneering strategy to support regulatory and financial conditions in which renewable power can improve energy security while reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno. “They also show that even in a financial crisis, creative partnerships between governments, private companies and development finance institutions can lead to pathbreaking investments that simultaneously advance human development and low-carbon economic growth.”
Both projects have included certified emis-sion reduction credits in their plans. The Eu-rus project will benefit from the sale of carbon credits for a total of 600,000 tons of avoided CO2 emissions per year. The EVM project is currently in the process of obtaining credits for up to 168,000 tons of avoided CO2 emissions per year.
The land on which the turbines of both projects are located has been leased from local ejidos –a traditional Mexican system of com-munal land ownership that is widespread in the country’s rural areas.
Both projects will take advantage of strong winds in the state of Oaxaca, which is consid-ered to have some of the planet’s best wind power potential. Mexico plans to develop at least 2,500 MW of wind power capacity in this state. Permits to develop some 2,000 MW (in-cluding the ones partly financed by the IDB) have already been issued to private developers.
The Mexican government estimates that a total of around 5 billion usd will be invested to build these new wind farms by 2012, and that they will meet approximately 4% of the coun-try’s electricity demand. Some 10,000 jobs will be generated directly and indirectly during the construction of these facilities, and around 374 permanent jobs will be created for operation and maintenance. n
www.iadb.org
briefs.
14 Negocios i The Lifestyle illustration oldemar
TwElvE myThs abOuT ThE war againsT drug TraFFiCking
there are clouds of Myths floating around one of the Most politically significant battles that the Mexican governMent has fought in recent decades: that against drug trafficking. these Myths stretch froM those that state that this “war” should never have begun to those that argue that the participation of the Military in this caMpaign against organiZed criMe can have no positive results. in these pages Joaquín villalobos disMantles the arguMents of a Mythology based on poor statistics and questionable coMparisons. Joaquín villalobos is a forMer MeMber of the farabundo Martí national liberation front. he now works as a consultant for international conflict resolution.
Since the beginning of its Revolution in 1910, Mexico has never faced a violent atmosphere with such political im-pact potential as the one it currently faces.
In the late 1980s the US succeeded in reducing the vol-ume of drugs being trafficked from Colombia to Miami
through the Caribbean route, which once allowed the Colombian cartels to send marijuana and cocaine directly to the US without intermediar-ies. Mexico then became the most important entrance portal to the US for Colombian drugs and there was an explosion of drug trafficking that shattered the long and peaceful years that began a few years after the Revolution ended in 1920.
To understand, discuss and be prepared to pay the costs involved in re-ducing the power and putting a stop to the violence of organized crime, all under democratic conditions, has not been an easy exercise for Mexican so-ciety, which is much more used to accepting the social order imposed by the political elite than to debating such important matters in the public sphere.
This historical fact has led to several difficulties when it comes to understanding and processing the information and results of the “war” of the Mexican State against drug traffickers and has contributed to creating a favorable environment for the rise of myths around the bat-tle against drugs and the violent atmosphere that has resulted from it. Furthermore, some of these myths have even emerged from the indis-pensable democratic political debate. However, since this is a complex problem that will probably take a long time to bring under control, there is no reason to be pessimistic.
by Joaquín villalobos
1. “War against organized crime should have never been held” When violence increased as a result of fights between drug cartels in Mexico, the Mexican government determined to send federal forces to those states that first faced problems, i.e., Tamaulipas, Guerrero and others. Violence extended to other states and the Mexican government decided to combat drug trafficking head on, maintaining and reinforcing the federal intervention in several states.
Criticism of lack of prior intelligence then arose. Governmental ac-tions were described as reactive operations and it was even said the government was acting only due to political interests. Many have argued that government operations have worsened the problem instead of solv-ing it. Some have even stated that it would have been better to counteract the effects of violence in the media and deal with the problem through “local agreements” between the authority and drug traffickers, just as it was deemed to be handled in the past.
However, those “agreements” were never between equals but between criminals and officials intimidated by the law of “plata o plomo," Silver or Lead, which in the past only led to assassinations of police officers and the intimidation of timorous local governments across the country.
The proposal of not fighting against drug trafficking is based naively on the idea that narcotraffic is neither “contagious” nor “expansive” and that it would never have reached the Federal District in Mexico City. The reality is that one of the most challenging battles for the Government has been to retrieve control of the international airport in Mexico City, which for drug traffickers is as important as cities like Nuevo Laredo or Ciudad Juárez.
sPecial feature
war against
drug trafficking
* This article was originally published in the January 2010 issue of Nexos. It was translated and published by Negocios with the permission of the author and Nexos.
16 Negocios i The Lifestyle illustration oldemar
Drug trafficking has firmly placed Mexico in the middle of the battle camp, between the biggest drug consuming country in the world, the US, and one of the most violent regions on the planet, Central America. There-fore, it is difficult to think that it is possible to isolate the country and assume that nothing would have happened if the Mexican government had decided against a war on organized crime.
Drug trafficking is a global problem. It has spread to most of Latin Amer-ica and is also affecting Eastern Europe, North Africa and some regions of Asia. Furthermore, the growth of the urban middle classes and the increase of global drug abuse seem to be directly related phenonema.
There is no reason to think that the Mexican middle class could be ex-cluded from this trend that is now seriously affecting Brazil, for example. Doing nothing could have led Mexico into a similar situation that Colombia faced in the late eighties. Many Colombian citizens and officials have openly accepted that the situation in their country “bottomed out” because they waited too long to act.
The current levels of violence in Mexico have demonstrated that the monster is real, strong and dangerous. Given this scenario, there are only two possible methods of action: determination and speed.
2. “Mexico has transformed into the ‘new colombia’ and is in dan-ger of become a failed State” These statements are not based on serious comparative data. Mexico suffers localized violence in six of its 32 states and has a national rate of 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, while Venezuela has 48, Colombia 37, Brazil 25 and Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are above 50. The state of Chihua-hua, considered the most violent in Mexico, is in the peak with a rate of 143 homicides, followed by Sinaloa (80), Durango (49), Michoacán (44) and Baja California (25).
In the early nineties Medellín, Colombia’s most violent city, maintained for several years a rate of 320 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, Cali 124, Cucuta 105 and Bogotá, the capital, 80. Colombia has experienced two wars in 25 years, which have claimed more than 200 lives and 2 million people displaced. The conflict continues in that South American nation.
The volume, extent, historical roots, cultural codes and complexity of violence in Colombia has been and still are well above from those in Mexico. In Colombia drug trafficking influenced politics, military, police, business and society in higher levels than those that currently exist in Mexico where no one can claim that narcopolitics can have any bearing on the country.
IN A FIRST STAGE, MASSIVE PRESENCE WAS ENOUGH AND MORE IMPORTANT THAN qUALITATIVE PRESENCE. NOW MExICO IS FACING MORE COMPLEx CHALLENGES, SUCH AS REBUILDING ITS POLICE FORCE AND INTRODUCING A SOCIAL COMPONENT TO THE STRATEGy.
Determination to keep on fighting notwithstanding how violent the re-sponse from drug cartels is and in spite of social fears inspired precisely by that violence; speed to contain and surpass the opponent.
Actually, prior intelligence was not necessary. Cartels operated in the streets with cynical impunity and the first step to fight them was to take away the benefits of a “peaceful” environment and the “business opportuni-ties” they had created for themselves to such an extent that the mere pres-ence of federal forces in the field would have produced an immediate reac-tion, just as it has happened.
In a first stage, massive presence was enough and more important than qualitative presence. Now Mexico is facing more complex challenges, such as rebuilding it’s police force and introducing a social component to the strategy. But doing that was unthinkable if the Government had not first gained ground on the cartels. Action was indeed necessary to stop thinking of drug traffick-ing as a police problem and to start seeing it as a threat to national security.
The Colombian cartels and narco-guerrillas influenced personalities and institutions in the political sphere, the economic world and the media all over the country. In 1989 Luis Carlos Galán, a presidential candidate, was assassinated by drug traffickers and three other political candidates were killed in that same period. Even President Álvaro Uribe has survived several attacks and Vice President Francisco Santos was kidnapped by Pablo Esco-bar. That has never happened in Mexico and it does not seem likely to occur. There are no ungovernable territories in Mexico, as happened in Colombia for 40 years. The Mexican State has been pervasive and strong, while Co-lombia was weak and absent.
From January to June 2009, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 65 police of-ficers were killed in clashes with criminals. The city has a homicide rate of 38 per 100,000 inhabitants. Recently, drug traffickers shot down a police helicopter in the northern suburbs of the city, killing 12 police officers. In 2006, gangs engaged in drug smuggling, simultaneously at-
tacking police posts, government offices and several points of economic interest in Sao Paulo.
In contrast, the Federal District in Mexico has a rate of only 5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants and there has never been anything as violent and severe as those events in the cities of Colombia or Brazil. Mexico has a secu-rity problem on the periphery of its “vital centers," while Brazil has it, and very serious too, in its two main cities, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
However, Rio will host the Olympics and no one claims there is a war or that Brazil might be a failed State. If failed States were only defined based on whether there are ungovernable territories or not, then more than a dozen countries in the Americas and even some cities in the US, in where more than a million gang members live, must be considered so.
Media resonance and the geopolitical significance of Mexico are bigger than those of Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil. Therefore, whatever happens in Mexico definitely has more impact in public opinion, both inside and out-side the country.
Ciudad Juárez is not the same as Rio or Medellín. Its proximity to the US makes a huge difference. A clear example of this is the so-called “Zapatista” guerrilla. If we compare militarily, politically and socially those movement with armed insurgencies in South and Central America, the “Zapatistas” could not be considered as a guerrilla movement, much less as an insur-rection. However, this movement managed large national and international media coverage with a single armed action in 1994.
3. “The intense debate about insecurity is a sign of its worsening” The debate and the complex processes of decision making in ad-vanced democracies are signs of stability but in emerging democra-cies are perceived as weakness and uncertainty because, consciously or unconsciously, the people still miss the order that, without any de-liberation, was achieved through authoritarianism.
The debate on strategies designed to address security problems is normal in a democratic environment and it becomes more intense and free when the threat to the country’s vital powers is lower. The opposition, intellectuals and the press need to be, and should be, criti-cal almost by nature. That is part of democracy.
Drug trafficking is a phenomenon that co-opts or destroys the in-stitutions. It suppresses democratic freedoms and places citizens un-der the power of the gangster. Where organized crime is strong there is no criticism or freedom of expression. Therefore, when there is public discussion, when citizens and opinion leaders can criticize the government, it means that state power dominates any power mafia. In Mexico the central authorities are not affected or inhibited by the cartels, this only partially happens in a few Mexican states.
In Colombia, when indicators to measure the success of the strat-egy of democratic security in areas that had long been dominated by diverse armed groups were under design, it was concluded that one of the best indicators of success of security plans was to mea-sure demands and complaints from citizens, as this proved that fear was defeated and democratic freedoms were restored. It is a mistake to think that the existence of a broad debate about security and the methods to tackle the violence is itself a sign of alarm, when what we should really worry about is silence.
sPecial feature
war against
drugtrafficking
4. “The deaths and violence show that the war is being lost” Drug trafficking is a well-armed enemy, ultra violent, without moral barriers and with great corrupting power. To believe that this problem can be solved without confrontation and without violence is extremely naive. This enemy can only be submitted using the force of the State and when this occurs, the resistance of cartels grows and the wars between them are sharpened, which inevitably increases the number of deaths.
In every war there are dead and deaths are an indicator of the war it-self. Wars are won through conflicting more casualties on the enemy than those we receive and are lost when our own casualties are bigger than the social and politic policy environment can tolerate. Understandably this is difficult to explain to the public but the reality is that whatever side takes more deaths, arrests and has more moral deterioration in their ranks, that is the side losing the war. In the case of Mexico at the moment, that happens to be the drug traffickers.
The fight against drug trafficking cannot be read as a “classical” war in which contestants are clearly defined. Cartels are a fragmented enemy and generate violence in an anarchical way. There are many groups fighting both each other and against the State. Most of their casualties result from a pro-cess of self-destruction, which is deepened when the State confronts them. In this type of war that means progress. In Medellín, cartel self-destructed under the harassment of the State, for reasons that ranged from arguments over territory and control of routes to personal problems. The process of self-destruction atomizes cartels and forces them to start recruiting ambi-tious and inexperienced young people from marginal groups. This only con-tributes to increase internal violence and accelerate self-destruction.
The problem is that in the intermediate phase of the war, political pres-sure demands a reduction in violence. That does not happen until three re-quirements are met:
a. When the State gains greater social and territorial domain in the cartels’ zones of operation.
b. When cartels lose their ability to “recycle” assassins. c. When those weaknesses transform cartels into a marginal issue
for the State. In the case of Mexico, reducing violence might take longer but the pro-
cess of cartels-self-destruction is accelerating and that is a good signal. Gen-eral Naranjo, chief of the National Police of Colombia said that “when you know that drug trafficking has strongly penetrated into society, the main problem is not violence, but non-violence” because this means that drug traffickers have taken control of society. The belief that for every dead crimi-nal there are two new ones ready to act is illogical. The greed for money is not enough to “recycle” gunmen. Skills and experience are also needed and these attributes cannot be achieved from one day to another.
5. “Three years is a long time. The plan has already failed” As with other claims, the demand for quick results is based on emotional factors and not on an objective analysis of reality. In the most general sense we can say that the time required to control the problem is directly propor-tional to the size and the historical roots of drug trafficking in Mexico, and taking other countries with similar problems as a reference is necessary. The size of the drug trafficking problem in Mexico is determined by its proximity to the US, the biggest consumer of drugs in the world, and the consequences
18 Negocios i The Lifestyle
of this in terms of demand, flows of money and weapons. As for the roots of the phenomenon, even though the problem began to take shape in some states, particularly in Sinaloa, many years ago, the expansion of the cartels only began 15 years ago after the closure of the Caribbean route. In the case of Mexico, countries like Colombia, Italy, Brazil and perhaps some North Af-rican states, may be good references to calculate and compare times.
Colombia remains at war and as for Medellín, the country’s most vio-lent city, it took 16 years and 70,000 dead to counteract a deteriorating situation that placed society in suspense. Italy has struggled for several decades against the mafia and the country has still not succeeded in end-ing the problem. During eight years of Lula’s government, Brazil has still to resolve its gang problem. In North Africa, deterioration has dropped to almost uncontrollable levels. Given the above we can properly say that Mexico has achieved progress faster and with lower costs than all these countries in only three years.
The results of operations in Mexico in the last three years have broken world records. 227 laboratories have been destroyed and the State has seized 389 million usd, 30,500 war weapons, 24,900 handguns, 409 aircraft 310 ships, 22,900 vehicles and more than 5,000 tons of drugs including 90 tons of cocaine, 4,800 of marijuana, 4.5 of methamphetamine, 27 of ephed-rine and 18 of pseudoephedrine. 286 drug traffickers have been extradited, mostly to the US, and 89,500 people have been captured, including seven leaders, 47 financial, 60 lieutenants, 2,061 killers and 600 government of-ficers involved. The money seized is almost the amount destined to Plan Mérida, several trains or 250 wagons would be needed to move the drugs seized. The armies of El Salvador and Honduras together have fewer weap-ons than those seized in Mexico. The aircraft seized represent 50% of the fleet of American Airlines, the boats are twice Mexico’s army fleet and ve-hicles outnumber police and army fleets in Central America.
The initial goal of any plan should be to hit criminal structures —not to reduce violence. Without the former the latter cannot be achieved.
6. “Drug traffickers attacks are a proof of their power”In all wars randomness and chance play a role, sometimes against and sometimes in favor. In every war battles are lost and won, but ultimately what determines the outcome is who has had the strategic initiative and who has succeeded in hitting harder the opponent’s morale, forces and ma-terial means. In the case of Mexico all these factors are in favor of the State, although sporadically cartels have surprised with actions that have created fear with a significant political and media impact.
Cartel attacks are reactive, without any strategic logic, and many times are motivated by irrational revenge. The basic rule in any war is that ha-rassment and pressure on the enemy leads him to despair, error and even terrorism. The cartels operate in a defensive and not offensive way, their strategy is to co-opt police, not to kill them. When fighting directly against the State, cartels make things easier because they help to morally unite the members of the State forces.
In Mexico, cartels are strong as long as they keep control without fight-ing and are able to go unnoticed to most of the population. Instead, when they react and become visible, their ability to control and operate freely weakens and internal struggles increase. This is not a sign of strength but of weakness, despite the violence generating social uncertainty.
illustration oldemar
For example, the fact of cartels using submarines to transport drugs was misunderstood. The simple perception was that drug traffickers demonstrated their enormous capacity and strength by building sub-marines. However, what was not said was that the freedom to openly transport drugs through ports and airports was closing and therefore cartels had to use more complex and difficult to operate mechanisms to move fewer amounts of drugs.
In this sense “more sophisticated” not necessarily implies an im-provement, no matter how impressive is the production of submarines —in this case, by the way, it was quite precarious.
7. “First we need to end corruption and poverty” In many studies, addressing and reducing corruption and poverty are considered prerequisites for resolving the uncertainty generated by drug trafficking, and thereby they negate the role of coercion.
This myth is part of a true approach: the problem of security requires comprehensive plans that address all the edges of the phenomenon, from the use of the force of the State to the attention of other social issues involved in security. However, in a situation of extreme emergency, such as the one facing some Mexican states, if solving poverty and corruption
and the dynamics of cooptation, control, violence and death imposed by organized crime are the same thing, since they respond to quite different logics. It is naive to pretend that improving security in the short term needs first to undertake an ethical reconstruction to completely end codes of corruption that have been present in Latin America over a very long period of time.
The question is where to start in an emergency? No one can ever pretend to get into an area dominated by cartels through assistance plans of the “Mother Theresa” kind and is not likely to encourage public participation in areas where drug trafficking is terrorizing society. Re-gaining control by State forces is needed in the first instance to succeed in breaking the intimidating power of the cartels, which is the “center of gravity” of the problem.
That necessarily puts coercion as the priority. In Medellín the State won the war over 10 years ago and yet it has not been until today when the successful results of the comprehensive plans, with full participation of citizens and cultural changes in the neighborhoods where once ruled Pablo Escobar, become visible.
8. “powerful politicians and businessmen are behind drug traf-were preconditions for having a safe environment, we would have to ac-cept that the situation is a hopeless one, since it would mean setting a goal of eliminating poverty instead of improving security, which at this time happens to be the most important issue for citizens.
In security matters the dose of prevention and repression involved in a plan always depends on the specific situation. Set by the definition that one must prevail over the other is an error and is the result of political ideological visions of security, which state that the Right uses repression while the Left prioritizes prevention. Either, or both, can be the priority but this should be determined by reality itself, not by a political position.
There is no territorial or social relationship between poverty and drug trafficking. Although drug trafficking is a crime of greed that re-cruits the poor, it depends more on the geographic advantages that pro-vide routes and areas with potential for production and trafficking.
Drug trafficking looks for control of strategic points that represent a “business” advantage. The distribution networks for drug smuggling clearly lie in the geography of urban poverty but that is not necessarily the case with drug trafficking. That is why the biggest problem is on the northern border. Furthermore, there is no direct relationship between poverty and insecurity. Nicaragua is the second poorest country on the continent and the third safest. A comparison between the US and India can also be made to address this point. We can also analyze the case of Venezuela, where the huge social spending of the government goes along with a worsening of insecurity in the poorest areas of the country.
Moreover, the nature of political corruption is different than that pro-duced by drug trafficking. The first may open the door to the second but political corruption does not involve the risk of violence or death, which is ever present in drug-related corruption. The rule of “silver or lead," which always ends in “lead and lead," is based on the three action principles of drug trafficking: violence, crime and death. A corrupt politi-cian wants to get rich but not to die. Clearly the culture of corruption is useful to drug traffickers but no one can think that political corruption
ficking” This myth is based on conspiracy theories that do not consider the con-text or history but information that is almost always the result of specu-lation. Such theories feed soap operas, movies and cheap literature for entertainment but by the means of repetition they end up transforming any lie into a truth that soon becomes universal without verification.
Some years ago a very successful and well produced Mexican soap opera called Nada Personal (Nothing Personal) suggested that the main drugs lord in Mexico was the President. Many people around the world have become addicted to these theories and, mainly due to Hollywood, they assume that “all Mexicans are corrupt and Mexican authorities are all bosses.” In counterpart, some Mexicans think “that the drug business is managed from Wall Street.” These arguments are easy to believe and spread even when they do not have any rational basis. Drug trafficking usually emerges from the activities of smugglers of lower middle class with little education, who start building their organizations from family groups as a way to ensure loyalty (“the family”). These organizations usu-ally recruit socially downward. Violence and death are their means to settle all conflicts —personal problems, in the market, within the family and with authorities—, because their activities are not legal and therefore cannot use courts and laws. Imposing extreme punishments and killing are their only instruments of “justice." When financially stronger they socially expand and then begin to intimidate, subjugate or use public of-ficials and / or employers. First they co-opt police until they take coercive power away from the State, then they continue with the judiciary, the press and economic and political powers.
Drug traffickers end up placing themselves at the top of the social pyramid but use violence and death as means of exercising their power. This happened in Colombia, in Chicago in the twenties and thirties, in Italy for decades and is happening now in Michoacán, Sinaloa, Tamauli-pas, and so on. But the nature of a businessman or a politician is different and incompatible with the Mafia. Is it feasible for drug traffickers to put
sPecial feature
war against
drugtrafficking
20 Negocios i The Lifestyle
businessmen and politicians under their power yet assume that busi-nessmen or politicians are destined to become drug traffickers? That makes no sense. Although there are isolated cases, that is not the rule. Penetration levels, like those found in Italy, took decades to infiltrate mafia power and in Mexico the criminal phenomenon is compara-tively younger.
9. “The only way out is to negotiate with drug traffickers” This myth is related to the belief that negotiation was the method used by past governments to maintain peace. It then concludes that violence erupted when the new government abandoned this method. It is argued that violence would cease if negotiations were resumed with the criminals. This is an extremely simplistic approach to un-derstanding the past and assuming a solution in the present.
Drug trafficking has always been an issue of national security. It became a strategic threat when it became financially stronger since the second half of the nineties. In the past drug traffickers were a sec-ond-order police problem and dealing with it only required a local operational logic not a State strategy. For many years drug traffick-ing was not a central issue for Mexico or for anyone else. During the seventies and eighties tolerance was a universal trend and even the CIA and Cuba underestimated the threat. What is known as “nego-tiations” may probably be only part of those legends left by some lo-cal police chiefs and politicians that used to deal with drug trafficking behind the defence of a strong State.
Now we face a different reality in which cartels seek to impose their authority over the State by using the law of “silver or lead." Drug trafficking is now a strategic threat. No one can say that some possible arrangements that used to exist in the past between police and crimi-nals are equivalent to a State bargaining with drug traffickers today. It is impossible for the authority of any country to carry out agree-ments with criminals who govern their conduct by the principles of violence, crime and death.
A negotiation would mean that cartels are a constant enemy in total control of its structures that acts according to rules and limits. The reality is that drug trafficking is a fragmented enemy, with no control over its people and no rules on the use of violence. The idea of negotiating with the cartels is a fantasy. Colombia, for example, negotiated with Pablo Escobar and other cartels. The State offered them benefits if they surrendered before justice. The outcome was an absolute mockery of the authority. Prisons converted into luxuri-ous command and operation centers for cartels, with State protec-tion paid by the citizens just to let Escobar continue sowing violence and death in the country.
10. “The strategy should address the legalization of drugs” Legalization of drugs is a debate on how to minimize the problem be-cause there is no ideal path for drugs. It is actually a choice between public health damage and violence. Legalizing drugs does not mean that drugs are socially desirable. Taking the principle of the lesser evil as a starting point, the idea of legalizing them is correct and will surely stop being a myth in the future. What is now a myth is to pre-
tend that this approach can be successfully launched in the countries affected by the violence generated by the production and trafficking of drugs. The legalization of drugs requires a simultaneous agree-ment with the consumer countries. Without the participation of the US and Europe, implementing such a strategy in Mexico or Colom-bia, for example, would be suicide for the security of these countries. That is unfair — but the problem is not a matter of ethics but of reality.
It is not just an international political conflict between the inse-curity of the countries that produce and traffic versus the hypocrisy of countries that consume. The distortion that would be generated
could be highly explosive. The provision of drugs in Mexico and Co-lombia is infinitely superior to their demand and the situation in Eu-rope and the US is reversed. Therefore, legalizing drugs in the first without having done it in the latter would imply a strengthening of criminal structures in Colombia and Mexico because the core busi-ness would remain illegal exports, due to the huge price difference.
Legalizing would give complete freedom to criminal groups in countries with large institutional weaknesses. If in the current condi-tions small states in Latin America and Africa face the risk of falling into the hands of gangs, that would aggravate and multiply with a uni-lateral legalization.
Although it’s tough to say, the reality is that the US and Europe continue to play the card of consumer tolerance because the levels of violence by criminals engaged in distributing drugs in the streets have not yet become a strategic threat. But such violence is growing
illustration oldemar
—the US has detained more than 2 million people for drug-related crimes, a million people in the country are part of gangs and prob-ably the most of them are already involved in drug selling. Perhaps when such violence becomes intolerable for Europe and the US, the idea of legalizing drugs will begin to be seriously discussed as a multilateral strategy. Meanwhile, producing and trafficking countries should maintain damage control strategies and keep on denounc-ing the harm caused by consumer countries. The issue of legalizing marijuana is advancing but the possibility of an agreement between governments remains difficult.
11. “The army’s participation is negative and military should with-draw”The myth about the negativity of military participation is based on such assumptions as: internal security is not their task, they are not prepared for this work, fighting against drugs jeopardizes their image, they are more likely to violate human rights, it is dangerous to empower the military and other similar ideas.
All these and other arguments are based on potential risks, doubts and suspicions that are in some cases predominantly subjective ideas. None takes into account the true problems that have forced the State to use the military: the extent and dimension of the threat represented by the cartels, the fire power of organized crime, the number of assassins and organiza-tional level of criminal structures, the moral crisis among police and the extent of co-optation of state and municipal police in troubled areas, the limited availability of staff for the Federal Police, the transnational nature
of the drug problem and finally the roots, the social force and territorial control that organized crime has reached in some parts of Mexico. It is not the same to face this problem with 30,000 men than with over 200,000.
Drug trafficking poses a challenge that exceeds police order, it consti-tutes a threat to State sovereignty and also has transnational features. If the army withdrew, the drug traffickers would very quickly recover ground, the threat would grow to higher dimensions and the violence would soar and could reach Mexico City.
Paradoxically, as mentioned above, while other critics speak of the risk of becoming a “failed State," the myth about the withdrawal of the army is at the other end as it assumes that the problem is not so serious and could be solved by the municipal and state police alone. It’s hard to imagine that Mex-ico may face another war in the coming decades even worse than the cur-rent one against drug trafficking. The strategic solution is to rebuild, reform and strengthen the police, but while that occurs it is essential to use the army.
Throughout Latin America armies are necessary to respond to the type of threat posed by organized crime and, beyond ethical requirements, human rights have become an essential part of operational efficiency for both police and military. Modern wars are subject inevitably to a severe control from the media and the political and judicial systems. The State can only maintain legitimacy in the use of force if it is able to use the co-ercive power under those conditions. This means that human rights are now a permanent universal condition for the use of force but should not be a reason for not using it. To retrieve security Colombia multiplied the strength of its army. By contrast, Guatemala has fallen into the hands of organized crime because it hasn’t been able to rebuild its army.
12. “The most effective and quick way to fight crime is to take jus-tice into one’s own hands”There are no rules among cartels. Their differences are solved through “exemplary death." The State, meanwhile, is meant to bring justice, not to kill, and it must retain this moral and social advantage over criminals. The start of paramilitary violence, based on the same principle of “exem-plary death," transforms the State into another violent and unruly actor who may end up being identified as such by organized crime and would speed, aggravate and multiply violence. The idea that killing criminals is the fastest way to restore security is false. Organized crime is a large social body, not individuals but supported groups. A deadly confrontation may end up dividing communities, thus the duration of the problem would be extended rather than shortened.
Moreover, a war of this kind can redirect much of the violent action of drug traffickers against the institutions, public officials and their families. If that happened the violence of organized crime would no longer be essen-tially self-destructive. The State’s task is to restore authority and to ensure for itself the monopoly of violence.
The organization of paramilitary groups constitutes a delegation of authority to private bodies that undermine State authority. International experience shows that paramilitary activity is a serious mistake. The cases of Colombia and Guatemala are very clear.
In Colombia the paramilitary only contributed to escalate the conflict and in Guatemala the State has been virtually defeated due to the pres-ence of paramilitary groups. n
sPecial feature
war against
drugtrafficking
22 Negocios22 Negocios
mExiCO and ThE ah1n1 virus.Facing the Challengeby María cristina rosas *
illustration oldemar
When faced with a challenge like the AH1N1 virus, we must consider various issues: avoid contamination, assist sick in-dividuals and make use of all the material and human resources available to avoid an unwanted scenario.
Diseases are very expensive for society. For example, today HIV/AIDS threatens the survival of countries such as South Af-rica, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Swaziland, to name only a few. In Zimbabwe, one third of the entire population is infected with HIV. Life expectancy in these countries is clearly affected by HIV/AIDS, which has com-promised their development and viability. Average life expectancy in South Africa is 49.3 years, in Zimbabwe 43.5 years, in Zam-bia 42.4 years and in Swaziland 39.6 years. Regardless, HIV/AIDS is only one of many health challenges that the world is facing in the 21st Century.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed that in a globalized world, infectious diseases have a high spreading power. If we consider that only in 2006 close to 2.1 billion people traveled by airplane around the world, we can surely under-stand why a disease that appeared in certain latitudes can become much more severe in other remote areas.
However, there are some other trends that are of concern. Since the seventies, new diseases have been appearing rather quick-
ly. According to WHO, there are currently some 40 diseases in the world that the previ-ous generation did not know about. To add to the problem, between September 2003 and September 2006, 685 “events” were recorded around the world that are considered signifi-cant for the public health of the international community.
A famous example is the Severe Acute Respi-ratory Syndrome, or SARS, which affected 8,096 individuals in 37 countries between November 2002 and July 2003. There were 774 deaths, meaning that the disease had a 9.6% mortal-ity rate. The coronavirus that caused SARS was identified initially in Guangdong province, China, but it quickly spread to other countries. Once the epidemiological issue was identified, the WHO recommended placing thousands of individu-als in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Canada in quarantine.
Singapore was particularly incisive in its fight against SARS. They assigned one hospi-tal exclusively to treat affected people, isolat-ing them and restricting their visits to medi-cal staff only. The Ministry of Health issued the Diseases Act that allowed the monitoring of those individuals who were released from the hospital, by isolating them in their homes for an additional period of 21 days and call-ing them at any time to verify that they were home. Individuals who did not answer the calls three consecutive times would receive a penal sanction and would have to use an electronic
bracelet that would allow them to be located at any time. In the end, Singapore recorded 33 deaths, compared to 234 in China, 299 in Hong Kong, 44 in Canada and 37 in Taiwan. However, due to Singapore’s demographics –its population does not reach 5 million people– the death rate was extremely high.
SARS had a very high cost. For example, air-lines experienced a sudden fall in the flow of pas-sengers traveling to Asia. Tourism also decreased significantly. In the case of Toronto, many con-ferences, congresses and film productions were canceled. Hotel occupation was halved. Once the epidemic crisis was overcome and the WHO removed travel warnings, stars such as the Roll-ing Stones, among other celebrities, were asked to give a rock concert, known as SARS Stock, to help restore Toronto’s tourism and economy.
Each country is responsible for maintaining the health of its citizens but this century’s dis-eases demand international cooperation to help the most affected areas and because, as SARS and the AH1N1 virus have shown, every society is exposed to the severe consequences of infectious diseases, epidemics and other health risks.
Mexico Faces the challengeIn the last four years, Mexico’s health ex-pense budget has been reviewed, revealing that investment in this area is much higher today compared to 2006, when the Ministry of Health of the federal government was allo-cated a budget of approximately 3.1 trillion usd.
Mexico proved to be efficient in handling the warning of the appearance of ah1n1 virus and it has since gained international recognition and trust because of the Measures it adopted to contain contaMination.
business tiPs
On the other hand, in 2009 almost 6.3 trillion usd were allocated, which means that the budget for this area was doubled.
In April 2009, Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies approved the motion to include natural disasters and epidemics in the National Safety Act. That way, AH1N1 virus prevention and fight measures would be assigned maximum priority.
With an investment close to 150 million usd, Mexico bought from Sanofi-Aventis and Glaxo-SmithKline 30 million doses of the vaccine against the virus, with the goal of protecting the population and reducing the risk of massive con-tamination during the winter.
Also, Mexico, together with the WHO and other countries, has shared its experience of the first outbreak of AH1N1, thus promoting an ex-change of measures adopted and efforts made to contain the contamination and protect the population.
Mexico proved to be efficient in handling the warning of the appearance of AH1N1 virus and it has since gained international recognition and trust because of the measures it adopted to con-tain contamination.
This recognition can be seen in the recovery of Mexico’s economic activity. The perspective for 2010 is good. Also, this year Mexico will host important international summits and meetings and it will celebrate 200 years of its Indepen-dence and 100 years of its Revolution with sev-eral events in which celebrities from around the world will participate. n
*Professor and researcher in the Political and Social
Sciences Faculty, National Autonomous University of
Mexico (UNAM).
24 Negocios Photo courtesy of probiomed
Mexico’s Partner probioMed
The Latin American Pharmaceutical Industry Federation (FIFARMA) has estimated that by 2012, biotechnological drug products will ac-count for 12% of global prescription drug sales. In Mexico, PROBIOMED leads the way in the manufacture of this kind of product.
With over 40 years in the market, PRO-BIOMED started out by manufacturing ac-tive ingredients for drug products, originally known as pharmacons and now called active pharmaceutical ingredients. The company now focuses on research and development of biotechnological and generic products.
OriginsPROBIOMED’s history is closely tied to medical innovations that have been fostered in Mexico.
Since the company began its operations in the mid-1970s in Tenancingo, in Estado de México, “we have manufactured all kinds of active in-gredients and drug products. We produced the whole range of sulfa drugs when they were still used and which were subsequently replaced by improved antibacterials. In Mexico we were pio-neers in chorionic gonadotropin, heparin, chlor-amphenicols –a synthetic antibiotic drug once used to treat typhoid–, dipirones, vitamin B12, iodine and its derivatives," says Jaime Uribe, CEO of PROBIOMED.
In 1986 the company started producing drug products and by the 1990s it was manu-facturing generic oral, injectable and cepha-losporin products. PROBIOMED flourished in the 1970s with the support of various gov-ernment programs for integration, decentral-ization and exports, as part of a scheme for companies that complied with certain quality standards. When the country opened up to trade in the mid-1980s, many Mexican phar-maceutical companies went under. “Of the 130 pharmachemical companies, only 10 sur-vived. The ones who remained were those that complied with all the quality programs and requirements. We withstood the test of trade
Innovating Medical BiotechnologyPROBIOMED, a first-rate Mexican company with a global reach, is one of Mexico’s key biotechnology players
by Jennifer chan
liberalization and we proved that we were in-ternationally competitive," explains Uribe.
At that time, innovation was key to staying competitive and so, at the end of the 1980s, PROBIOMED entered the bio-tech market with the aim of manufacturing proteins that were identical to those produced by the hu-man body but using recombinant DNA tech-nology that freed the company from its depen-
dence on the supply of raw materials. “There are no quantity limits for producing recombi-nant proteins such as heparin or interferon,” Uribe explains.
Also, biotechnological products carry no risk of viral contamination. “It was a safer man-ufacturing process to create a product that was identical to that produced by the human body,” he continues.
“Our objective is to save lives and improve the quality of life for people, in a way that is more accessible to society, the government and institutions,” says the CEO of PROBIOMED. And this objective has been met. For example, with the launch of its signature BIOYETIN –rHu-erythropoietin– product in 2000, that in-creases the production of red blood cells and is mainly used by sufferers of chronic renal insufficiency, it increased competition in the market, playing a major part in driving down prices of these drug products.
Its first biotechnology product, launched in 2007, faced a number of challenges from both within the industry and from government authorities. “No-one could believe that this technology could come from Mexico. People thought it could only be done in Europe or the US," says Uribe.
Investing in R&D• in 2008, prOBiOMeD inaugurated the prOBiOMeD industrial
Biotechnological complex, considered to be Latin america’s most important medical biotechnology center.
• With one of the largest investments in Mexico’s pharmaceutical sector, this center is unique in Latin america for its production of nine recombinant proteins and its capacity to produce five more in the short and medium terms. it is also a first-rate research and development center for new biotechnological drug products.
• It comprises a Biotechnological Industrial Park, an R&D Center for New Biotechnological Drug Products and a Technological R&D Center for Bioequivalent Drug products. Since opening for business, it has raised Mexico’s game to match the level of its asian biotechnology competitors.
soMe of tHe Major awards received by ProbioMed• National Technology award,
1999 (the first time this award was given).
• canifarma (National chamber of the pharmaceutical industry) Basic research award, 2004.
• aDiaT (Mexican association of Directors of applied research and Technological Development) Technological innovation award, 2005.
• Science and Technology award, estado de México, 2006.
26 Negocios PHoto courtesy of probiomed
Ever since, PROBIOMED has set about prov-ing that to be untrue. The company continues its steady growth and is currently producing nine recombinant proteins from gene to biomedica-tion. It is currently in a strategic alliance with the Center for Disease Control (CDC), based in Atlanta in the US, to develop vaccines for Hepa-titis C and E, for which no such vaccinations yet exist. It has also entered into agreements with various Mexican institutions such as the National Council on Science and Technology (Conacyt), the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Polytech-nic Institute’s Center of Research and Advanced Studies (CINVESTAV), as well as with research centers in Europe and Israel.
PROBIOMED currently meets 80% of global demand for the Hepatitis B vaccine –produced 100% in Mexico– and is preparing to launch a totally new product, developed by UNAM scientists and technicians. They chose the company for its production given that it had the infrastructure to handle all the research and development stages: a basic research depart-ment, a research and development center exclu-sively focused on recombinant proteins, a tech-nological development center for drug products which uses chemical synthesis to create an active ingredient, the pharmaceutical develop-
ment to produce the drug product and achieve its bioequivalence and make interchangeable generic products and preclinical and clinical re-search centers. “I can’t go into any more details, other than saying that we have already carried out all phase 1 tests and we are currently on phase 2," says Uribe.
Despite strong competition from countries such as China and India, PROBIOMED now has a firm international footing. It sells its prod-ucts and active ingredients in 12 countries: Gua-temala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Thailand, Pakistan and Ukraine. It is currently at the development stage for registra-tions in nine other countries: Costa Rica, Ecua-dor, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Syria, Libya, Russia and Uzbekistan.
PROBIOMED generates over 1,000 direct jobs and provides continuous training and incentives to its researchers. In 2008 it sold around 58 million usd and the company esti-mates sales of over 60 million usd in 2009 in three different areas: institutional –public health institutions–, the private sector through its distributors and the export market.
“In 2000, government departments were our main client. We felt this was an excessive risk. So we embarked on a change strategy, in
order to balance out our sales three ways, 33% for each market segment. In the future we ex-pect our strongest segment to be the export market," says Uribe. n
soMe recoMbinant Proteins Manufactured by ProbioMed and tHeir effects.• interferon alpha 2b (uriFrON):
Defense against hepatitis B and c, cancer and aiDS.
• GM-cSF –Molgramostim– (GraMaL): Bone marrow growth factor.
• erythropoietin –rhu-epO– (BiOYeTÍN): red blood cell growth factor.
• interferon alpha 2a (prOQuiFerON): Defense against hepatitis B and c, cancer and aiDS.
• G-cSF-Filgrastim (FiLaTiL): Bone marrow growth factor
• hBV (prOBiVac): Vaccine for hepatitis B.
Mexico’s Partner roche
Ph
oto
s c
ou
rte
sy
of
ro
ch
eA health alert spread across the world at the end of April 2009. The reason for such global-ized anxiety about the appearance of this new virus was clear: no vaccination was immedi-ately available to fight it.
Now we know that it was a type of influen-za, which has been designated as the AH1N1 vi-rus. We know its symptoms and the measures needed to reduce the risk of its spread. And we also know that since the virus first appeared, new cases continue to be reported in differ-ent regions throughout the world. However, its mortality rate is now understood to be lower than first feared, when the World Health Or-ganization (WHO) declared it as a “pandemic."
With all that is now known and being done to deal with this new type of influenza, people’s fears seem to have been allayed. Nevertheless, at the time of the initial outbreak, Mexico faced a number of challenges and needed to take deci-sions to react to the crisis. Its response has sub-sequently been recognized by other countries.
a Friend in NeedBetween April and October 2009, the AH1N1 virus required a steep learning curve in over 160 countries.
Specific vaccinations are still at the trial stage and they are being applied slowly and with care. Meanwhile, laboratories continue to work on the exact formulae that will increase protection against the virus, the development of which is still hard to predict given its recent appearance.
Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, is one of the major players involved in research into this virus, which is still of concern for the health industry. Roche has a competitive ad-vantage over other companies in the sector, as it is the manufacturer of Tamiflu, a medicine recognized at the time by the World Health Organization (WHO) as practically the only medical tool able to counter the most immedi-
A Dose of Swiss Ethics for Mexican Health-care
Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical firm, has found in Mexico a strategic partner and the perfect location for one of the three specialized drug product manufacturing plants the company has in the world.
by cristina Ávila-Zesatti
28 Negocios28 Negocios Photo courtesy of roche
It came to Mexico over 60 years ago in 1948. By then, it had already notched up among its greatest successes the first synthetically pro-duced Vitamins A, C and E on an industrial scale. Meanwhile, its scientists were already working on anti-cancer research, a specializa-tion that would later become one of the com-pany’s strongest suits, with the first version, Fluoracil, launched in 1962.
Mexico Goes GlobalMany multinationals choose to operate in Mexico for its unquestionably advantageous strategic location and the trade agreements that help cross-border business. Roche is no exception.
“Mexico is definitely open to trade and its strategic location gives us the opportunity to supply our products to North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) member coun-tries," says Ricardo Jiménez, Roche’s Director of Pharmaceutical Center of Manufacturing Excellence.
However, this is not the only reason why the company decided to heighten the importance of its Mexican subsidiary, which now has a spe-cialized drug product manufacturing plant, the
Mexico produces around 25 Roche specialized
therapeutic products as well as 80 more general
medicines and health-care products, marketed in over 500 different presentations.
ate effects of the new influenza, also referred to as Influenza A.
During the emergency, with the first out-breaks in Mexico and the US, Oseltamivir –an antiviral drug marketed by Roche under the trade name of Tamiflu– was the only medical agent in the world capable of largely prevent-ing the symptoms of the new virus. Between April and June 2009, at the height of the cri-sis, Roche answered the call of the Mexican government and the WHO to make available the necessary supplies of this medicine, which works by preventing the spread of the virus through the body.
As a result, Roche shipped 220 million treatment doses of the anti-viral drug to Mexi-co and other countries that requested it. Then it decided to double its production of Tamiflu, to 400 million doses, to prepare for the eventu-ality of a further outbreak in the autumn and winter months, in response to health special-ists’ concerns.
research historyTamiflu’s appearance as the only defense dur-ing this recent global health alert was not ac-cidental. The drug product had already been
on the market for 10 years and its effectiveness previously tested with a similar epidemic, the so-called bird flu.
For the pharmaceutical industry, leav-ing things to chance is tantamount to playing with people’s health and even their lives. And Roche knows that. It is now justifiably the sec-ond largest company in Switzerland, a country with the highest standards of quality and busi-ness ethics in the world.
The company was founded in 1896 by Fritz Hoffmann and Adèle La Roche and is now the world’s leading biotechnology company.
With its headquarters in Basel, Switzer-land, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, known sim-ply as Roche, has operations in 155 countries.
only one of its kind in Mexico and Latin Amer-ica and the third one in the world.
“Our plant in Toluca is one of three Roche plants that produce strategic products for our global markets. The talent of our Mexican col-leagues and the government’s assistance with technology transfer is ideally suited to Roche’s focus on quality, turning our operations here into a strategic center to supply global mar-kets," says Jiménez.
In 2001, the Integrated Center of Pharma-ceutical Manufacturing Excellence was inau-gurated in Toluca, in Estado de México. In 2007, the company decided to open, in the same loca-tion, its High Power Drug Product Manufactur-ing Facility, which aims to produce 250 tons of drug products annually, especially for treating cancer. Roche invested 40 million and 60 mil-lion usd respectively in these projects.
Minimum doses of these “high power drug products” have significant therapeutic effects and they focus on the affected part of the body. This makes them particularly effective for on-cology and chemotherapy treatments.
Until 2007, Roche only had high power drug product plants in the US and in Switzer-land. Therefore its Mexican operations made Roche México one of the world’s leading play-ers in the drug product market.
With this development, Mexico produces around 25 specialized therapeutic products as well as 80 more general medicines and health-care products, marketed in over 500 different presentations.
a Key partnerAt the close of the first quarter of 2009, the global financial crisis had caused the pharma-ceutical industry to contract and this affected Roche. The market value of its shares fell by 8%, according to financial media reports.
However, the global health crisis caused by the arrival of the AH1N1 virus gave an unprec-edented boost to the sector and Roche’s role in events reminded the market that the company was one of the oldest and most experienced
companies in the sector. The demand for Tam-iflu increased by over 200%.
For Roche, however, Mexico has always been a particularly important sales niche, be-ing its fifth most profitable market in the world.
With or without Tamiflu, and according to the company’s own figures, the Swiss company produces five out of every ten drug products currently prescribed in Mexico.
That makes sense, given that Roche is the global leader in products to fight cancer, a dis-ease with several terrible effects and the sec-ond most frequent cause of death in Mexico after cardiovascular diseases.
Roche also specializes in anti-diabetic drug products. Mexico is among the ten countries with the highest number of people suffer-ing from diabetes in the world and the Latin American Diabetes Association predicts that as high a figure as 97% of Mexico’s population may be at risk from this illness in the future.
In facing up to these challenges, Roche not only has complete faith in its internal stan-dards but also in the high level of talent in Mex-ico, where it has around 1,700 employees after 60 years of operations.
“The quality of our talent in Mexico is some-thing special. Many colleagues have received training here as well as at other company loca-tions. We are also linked to several universities, with a particular focus on molecular biology, currently one of our main areas of interest," Jiménez explains.
On a global level, Roche stands out for having one of the best working environ-ments and its Mexican subsidiary follows suit, having been recognized by the Great Place to Work Institute as a “Great Place to Work” in 2006 and a Socially Responsible Company (ESR) in 2007.
“Our company is dedicated to providing healthcare and by the same token we must be a healthy company too –to be congruent and in line with our ethical code,” says Carla Sán-chez, Corporate Communication Manager for Roche México. n
Mexico’s Partner roche
• Mexico’s healthcare expenditure accounts for 7% of its Gross Domestic product. alongside Brazil, it represents 85% of Latin america’s pharmaceutical market and is worth an estimated 30 billion usd.
• 50% of the most frequently prescribed medicines in Mexico are brands produced by roche.
• roche invested 40 million usd in 2001 in its integrated center of pharmaceutical Manufacturing, in Toluca, estado de México.
• The company invested 60 million usd in 2007 for its high power Drug product Manufacturing plant in Toluca, estado de México.
• roche invests 19% of its annual income in research and Development (R&D) globally.
• roche México employs 1,700 people.
• 8 specialized drug products for the global market are produced by roche México.
• 25 general medicines and healthcare products are produced by the company in Mexico.
• in 2004 the Food and Drug administration (FDa), the uS governmental agency, certified roche’s plant in Toluca for the production and sales of active substances and drug products in the uS.
• as part of its Social responsibility program in 2008, roche México lent its support to 10 health-related civil organizations around Mexico, such as the Mexican association for the Fight against cancer (aMicc), the Mexican Kidney Foundation (Fundrenal) and the casa de la Sal (that helps people suffering from hiV-aiDS), among others.
“Our plant in Toluca is one of three Roche plants that produce strategic products for our global markets. The talent of our Mexican colleagues and the government’s assistance with technology transfer is ideally suited to Roche’s focus on quality, turning our operations here into a strategic center to supply global markets.”
30 Negocios Photos courtesy of silanes
Developing a New Market
With its entry into the Spanish market, the Mexican pharmaceutical company Silanes consolidates its status as a global player.
For over six decades, the history of pharma-ceutical innovation in Mexico has been inex-tricably linked to Laboratorios Silanes. This company has led the way with its research and development work since it was founded in 1943 and it offers solutions in four areas: phar-machemicals, diagnostics, molecular biology and biotechnology, an area in which Silanes has been one of Mexico’s pioneering compa-nies.
“Around seven years ago, we had to decide which direction to take as a company: to stay within Mexico –producing generic drug prod-ucts– or to strike out internationally with in-novative products […] and we chose the latter
by Jennifer chan
min), holding the world’s only patent for the drug. Its development earned it the Canifarma (National Chamber of the Pharmaceutical In-dustry) Award for Technological Research and Development in August 2008 and the ADIAT (Mexican Association of Directors of Applied
road," recalls Antonio López de Silanes, CEO of Laboratorios Silanes and President of Grupo Silanes.
The company currently offers around 100 prescription drug products with a wide range of applications, ranging from treatments for diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and painkillers, as well as anti-inflammatories, analgesics, vitamins, antivenoms and diagnos-tic products. It produces 35 million treatment doses a year.
The company specializes in anti-diabetic drugs, offering the widest selection of oral ther-apeutic treatments for type 2 diabetes (DMT2), including Glimetal (glimepiride and metfor-
Mexico’s Partner silanes
Research and Technological Development) Prize for Technological Innovation in 2009. Oral anti-diabetics currently account for 50% of the company’s sales, with an annual pro-duction of 1.5 billion tablets, which represent one-year treatment for one million people in Mexico, Central and South America.
To stay at the forefront of the local and international pharmaceutical industry, hard work and a commitment are needed, with new products constantly under development. “We invest 10% of our sales revenue into re-search," explains López de Silanes, “we have around 60 in-house and about 140 external researchers working in different centers around the world.”
It has entered agreements with top aca-demic institutions in Mexico, such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Institute of Nutri-tion (INNSZ), and in the US and Spain.
This has led to its registration of over 70 pat-ents in Mexico, Europe and Central America and a presence in over 25 countries in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Silanes now generates over 850 jobs directly and around 1,000 indirectly. The company is on the National Listing of Scientific and Technologi-cal Institutions and Companies (RENIECyT), issued by the National Council on Science and Technology (CONACyT) for companies in-volved in research and development work.
instituto bioclón
Instituto Bioclón is Laboratorios Silanes’ close partner and both work closely together in their marketing. Instituto Bioclón has become well known for its anti-venoms to treat stings and bites from poisonous animals. These products are hailed as the new generation of anti-venoms, for they are very safe and effective without any severe side effects currently being reported. This innovative technology has not been achieved just by chance. In 2008, the Institute invested over 23% of its profits in research and it has entered into agreements with various institutions in Mexico, France and the uS. in fact, instituto Bioclón, under the chairmanship of Juan López de Silanes, is the only Mexican company that has had “orphan drugs” designated by the FDa for three of its products. This designation means that no other drug or medication exists to treat a specific complaint. Also, instituto Bioclón received the National prize of Technology in 2005. Now its anti-venoms are marketed in hospitals and in zoos in Mexico, Central and South america, as well as in africa, the Middle east and europe. But there is still a long way to go. “We have tried to apply our comprehensive methodology to cover the North American market with highly complex products for which regulatory approval takes a longer time. However, our globalization strategy is under way. We are the world’s number one manufacturer of anti-venoms," explains Juan López de Silanes.
aWarDS receiVeD BY LaBOraTOriOS SiLaNeS iNcLuDe:
01
02
03
Technological Innovation Award, CANIFARMA, 2008
Science and Technology Award, Estado de México, 2008
Technological Innovation Award, ADIAT, 2009
Its plant, located in the Toluca 2000 busi-ness park, in Estado de México, gives an example of its solid foundations for future growth. Opened in 2003, these premises with their state-of-the-art technology required an investment of 80 million usd. The plant re-ceived its Sanitary License from the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sani-tary Risk (COFEPRIS) and was awarded, and re-awarded, a “Clean Manufacturing” certifi-cate by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (PROFEPA). Laboratorios Silanes has also implemented quality management sys-tems at these installations, complying with the requirements of Good Manufacturing Practices and ISO 9001.
Next Stop: The WorldLaboratorios Silanes is strongly motivated to reveal the quality and talent of Mexicans to the world. This explains its unstinting efforts to expand its international presence. This year it launched Glimetal throughout almost all of Latin America, in collaboration with two of its strategic partners: Aché Laboratorios Farmacéuticos, Brazil’s largest pharmaceuti-cal company, and the French company Sanofi-Aventis, both of which are widely recognized for their work on treatments for diabetes. This move has led to the export and market-ing in 25 countries of a high-tech product de-veloped entirely in Mexico.
To further extend its global reach, Labo-ratorios Silanes has now taken its second im-portant step, this time toward Europe where it began operating in October 2009. The com-pany will focus its strategy on research and development (R&D), working with its subsid-iary Laboratorios Silanes IDF in Madrid with the aim of developing, registering and produc-ing drug products for the global market.
This will require pre-clinical and clini-cal trials, approved by international organi-zations, with an estimated investment of 2 million euros over the next three years. The company has already begun its clinical re-search on four molecules focused on treating complaints related to metabolic syndrome. This research complies with the protocols and standards set out by the European Med-icines Agency (EMEA).
“Spain is our portal into Europe,” explains Antonio López de Silanes. “What is developed there can be sold throughout the EU and what is sold in the EU can be sold anywhere in the world. European certifications will open up strong new markets for us.” n
The company's plant, located in the Toluca 2000 business park, in Estado de México, gives an example of its solid foundations for future growth. Opened in 2003, these premises with their state-of-the-art technology required an investment of 80 million usd.
32 Negocios
Although the company as it is known today was founded in 1999, the tradition of the pro-duction of vaccines and serums in Mexico dates from 1895, when Section of Bacteriology of the Pathology Anatomy Museum started the research and production of these products for the national market. This unit evolved to became Birmex, which main objective is to guarantee the supply of vaccines and other biological medicine to the Mexican National Health System.
Birmex’s main financial source is the Mexi-can federal government, who is the company’s main shareholder. But the company generates profits each year, which are reinvested on in-frastructure and equipment to modernize its production plants, as well as research and de-velopment (R&D) of new biological products.
Research & DevelopmentBirmex has always been interested in the de-velopment of products regarding vaccines and diagnostic tools. To reach its objectives, the company hires a lot of experts in these fields and is currently leading eight different
Birmex: The Mexican Health Company
Birmex is a government-owned company, which produces and markets vaccines, serums and diagnostic products. Founded in 1999, it is inheritor of a long history of research and discoveries focused mainly on maintaining the health and wellness of the Mexican society. Nowadays it pretends to grow and become a state-of-the-art company.
by JosÉ antonio aguilar
Photos archive
Mexico’s Partner birMex
projects, some of them are made under joint ventures with other research institutions in Mexico, such as CONACyT.
Some of these projects include the develop-ment of bacterium vaccines for Pertussis, he-mophilic influenza B (HIB) and tetanus toxins (TT); viral vaccines against rabies, rubeolla, paroditis, rotavirus and influenza. Birmex is also interested in antidotes for scorpion, snake and spider bites; and other vaccines against morphine and heroine. Finally, Birmex also lead several epidemiology studies.
In 2002, the research for a new technique to produce the anti-poliomyelitic vaccine on Vero cells concluded. This technique repre-sented several advantages such as increasing in efficiency and capacity, therefore a decreasing in costs and in the production time. Moreover, this new technique halted the use of the Afri-can green monkey kidneys, which were diffi-cult to import. In contrast, the new technique employs a safe and perfectly characterized cell line that is obtained with several biological ma-terials suppliers.
Birmex FacilitiesBirmex has three production plants: the Na-tional Hygiene Institute, the National Virol-ogy Institute and the newly acquired plant in C uautitlán, which laboratories for production are in construction process. All these plants are located in the Mexico City metropolitan area. The Cuautitlán plant will be finished by late 2010 and the influenza vaccine produc-tion will begin in 2011. In addition, in this plant some other labeling and packaging will take place.
The National Hygiene Institute produces bacterium vaccines against diphtheria and tet-anus, as well as the tetanus and diphtheria an-titoxins. Additionally, hyper-immune serums are produced for the treatment of intoxications caused by snake bite or scorpion sting. In its fa-cilities, there exists a whole area dedicated to research of vaccines and serums.
The National Virology Institute produces viral vaccines, specifically the triple vaccine for poliomyelitis, employed to keep the country free of this disease and contribute to eradicate it from the world. It also develops research projects for new viral vaccines.
Actions & ProductsCurrently, Birmex produces the oral triple anti-poliomyelitis vaccine (OPV); the anti-diphtheria and tetanus vaccine (TD); as well as the scorpion and viper antidotes and the
tetanus and diphtheria antitoxins. In addi-tion, it manufactures the secondary produc-tion of the influenza vaccines (labelling and conditioning), anti-pneumococcus and triple viral vaccines (measles, rubella and mumps).
Among the most important products com-mercialized but not produced by Birmex are: the anti-influenza vaccine, double viral (mea-sles and rubella), triple viral, anti-pneumococ-cus; the vaccine against Human Papilloma Vi-rus (HPV); anti-hepatitis B, the anti-rabies and the triple vaccine (diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus). Unfortunately, Birmex is not finan-cially ready to produce by itself these products or new ones because of the lack of technology and infrastructure. Both require huge invest-ments that are out of reach of the company, in spite of the profits generated each year. The main shareholder does not have enough re-sources to develop all these needs.
FutureThere are a lot of long-term objectives for Bir-mex, but as a health company it has to comply with the short-term requirements too. Howev-er, the technological development and the en-hancing of the production capacity constitute the mid-term priorities of Birmex.
Its plans are divided by each facility in which they will take place. The Cuautitlán plant, acquired in December 2007 will al-locate the production of the stationary and pandemic influenza vaccine by 2011. The area of the plant is 74,000 square meters, therefore it is possible to build new vaccine plants there. Other projects that will be developed in the Cuautitlán plant are the production and pack-aging of the Double Viral Vaccine (measles and rubella) and Triple Viral (measles, rubella and mumps), as well as the construction of a con-ditioning plant (labeling and packaging). How-ever, those projects had to be differed due to the lack of funding and to give priority to the influenza project. Finally, in the long term sev-eral production lines are to be built within the Cuautitlán plant, facilities to produce rotavirus vaccines against heroine, morphine, rabies, sal-monella, and the influenza antigen.
Regarding the National Virology Institute, the projects are divided in two stages: the first one was the modernization of the laboratories and it was concluded in 2008. The second stage, currently in execution, pretends the modern-ization of the quality control laboratories; this stage will conclude in December 2009 and will allow Birmex to get the Certificate on Good Production Practices of the National Regulatory Agency (COFEPRIS) and pre qualify the OPV, looking forward to export the overproduction of this vaccine that will not be used in Mexico. In ad-dition, the new facilities will be able to produce the monovalent vaccine against poliomyelitis cur-rently under research. This vaccine has started to be used in some countries to contribute to the eradication of this disease. On the other hand, the National Hygiene Institute is under maintenance and remodeling works in order to keep the facili-ties updated. These works will be finished in the first quarter of 2010 and they pretend to guaran-tee the production and supply of anti-snake and anti-spider serums and other vaccines.
In terms of technology, Birmex’s priorities are focused on the increase on the number of research projects in the upcoming years, the liaisons with other research centers and the diversification of financing sources, pointing to-wards the development of technologies required by the company, and to increase the production volume. In terms of infrastructure, the program to increase the company’s capacity considers the modernization of the facilities and the equip-ment of the National Virology and Hygiene Insti-tutes, as well as the construction of new plants and the installation of equipment to produce the influenza vaccine in the Cuautitlán plant. n
Currently, Birmex produces the oral triple anti-poliomyelitis vaccine (OPV); the anti-diphtheria and tetanus vaccine (TD); as well as the scorpion and viper antidotes and the tetanus and diphtheria antitoxins
34 Negocios Photo courtesy of innovamÉdica
Innovamédica aims to swap the old “Made in Mexico” badge for “Invented in Mexico." The company was founded in 2000 by entrepreneur Emilio Sacris-tán Rock, who was determined to create links between health, new technological developments, academic research and the private sector.
It is currently one of the Mexican companies developing medical devices, seamlessly linking academy to industry and with the laudable purpose of help-ing to save lives.
As a student of Boston’s Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Emilio Sac-ristán returned to Mexico in 1995 with a Masters and a Doctorate in biomedical engineering along with a broad experi-ence of working in various medical tech-nology companies in the US. His subse-quent teaching work in Mexico led him to the conclusion that there was a miss-ing link between the medical industry and academic research.
“That’s what Innovamédica is all about, providing that bridge between
university research and new project launches. That’s our driving force. We develop medical devices but our links with scientific research is innovative in its own right," says Marcus Dantus, CEO of Innovamédica since February 2008.
inventors put Mexico on the Map Dantus, also an entrepreneur with broad-based experience in the creation of technol-ogy companies, clearly remembers having seen a map in 2003 that marked the main countries that developed technology:
Innovamédica is the only 100% Mexican specialist medical device company in Mexico, successfully positioning itself as a bridge between the private sector and academic research. Its mission is “To Make Technology to Save Lives” with products developed by Mexican scientists. It now has two divisions and a sales office in the US and its first major projects will hit international markets between 2010 and 2011.
by cristina Ávila-Zesatti
Mexican talent that saves lives
He says: “I didn’t expect Mexico to fea-ture at the top of the list. But I was amazed to see that it wasn’t even on the map. At Innova-médica we want to change that because we have innovative talent here and our achieve-ments in recent years prove it.”
The OECD’s most recent report in 2009 highlights the current disparity between re-search graduates from universities and poly-technics and the number of patent registra-tions for products “invented in Mexico."
According to the OECD’s document, that draws on statistical data from 2005, out of the almost 50,000 patents registered during that year, over 15,000 belonged to the US, followed by Japan with over 9,000 and Germany with 6,000 new inventions. During that period, Mexico had only registered 10 patents.
Between 2003 and 2008, Mexico record-ed one of the lowest investments in science and technology. That was 0.35%, and by 2005 there was just one Mexican scientist per thousand workers in the economically active population. However, these trends are shifting thanks to the work of companies such as Innovamédica.
a paradigm ShiftThe success of Innovamédica’s business model lies in its versatility. The company works in several spheres; through research, developing new technologies for medical de-vices and providing specialized biomedical engineering services.
“We are an incubator. We seek and dis-cover talent and projects coming out of uni-versities – projects that can be developed, patented and have market potential. But our company also does its own research and cre-ates its own inventions, generally for longer and more expensive projects. Our team also generates business by providing services on commission from others," explains Dantus.
soMe devices develoPed by innovaMédica
Ventricular Assist Device
Anaesthesia Machine Design
Epidural Space Localizer
Gastric Impedance Spectroscopy Monitor (measuring blood perfusion in the tissue of the gastric zone)
Cochlear Implant Effective Stimulation Monitor (an implant to help hearing, especially for babies)
Trocar design (device for minimally invasive surgeries)
Intrubag (system to collect and remove specimens during laparoscopic surgeries)
Design for a laparoscopic camera support
Electromagnetic Accelerated Recovery System for chronic injuries
Electrosurgical pencil
Neurostimulating band to treat cephalagia (headaches)
01
04
07
02
05
08
10
03
06
09
11
Mexico’s Partner innovaMÉdica
“Our team is 100% Mexican but we don’t just aim our products at the Mexican market. Instead, we decide where there might be most demand for our products. Take our work on cardiovascular issues, for example. The US accounts for 75% of
the world market, Europe 23% and the rest of the world 2%, so our target market for certain products is obviously the US.”
It runs a tight ship. Innovamédica knows that being a pioneer in its field implies opportunities —but also risks. And given the size and cost of its projects, it remains ever vigilant.
Over the course of its nine-year history, Inno-vamédica has worked on approximately 25 top of the range medical devices, completely developed with home-grown talent. At least 30 of its 40 cur-rent employees are members of an interdisciplin-ary team of highly-qualified engineers, designers, scientists and doctors.
Founder Emilio Sacristán Rock and CEO Marcus Dantus see the lack of technological de-velopment as an area of opportunity rather than a drawback as they have set themselves the chal-lenge of making Mexico an international point of reference in the field.
Dantus says that his mission is to give the company a strong international presence and after two years at the helm, his accomplishments are clear for all to see: until 2008, most of the company’s clients were Mexicans but now 60% hail from other countries.
The company now has links to various uni-versities in the US, such as the University of California in its San Diego and Los Angeles cam-puses, Stanford University and the University of Colorado Denver, as well as the yale School of Medicine and the Texas Heart Institute.
Its strongest academic link in Mexico is probably to the Metropolitan Autonomous Uni-versity (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, UAM), where Emilio Sacristán is a professor, al-though it also works in collaboration with other institutions such as the Technological Institute of Monterrey (Tecnológico de Monterrey, ITESM), the Institute for Scientific and Technological Re-search of San Luis Potosí (Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, IPICyT), the National Institute of Cardiology (Instituto Nacional de Cardiología “Ignacio Chávez”), the Military School of Graduates in Healthcare and the Military College of Engineering.
36 Negocios
international healthInnovamédica currently has three offices in the US. Two of these are divisions of the company itself and the third is its sales office. Its Mexico operations are based in Mexico City, although plans are under way to set up offices in other Mexican cities.
“Our team is 100% Mexican but we don’t just aim our products at the Mexican market. Instead, we decide where there might be most demand for our products. Take our work on cardiovascular issues, for example. The US accounts for 75% of the world market, Europe 23% and the rest of the world 2%, so our target market for certain products is obviously the US," explains Marcus Dantus.
Among its medical engineering inventions, Innovamédica has created a “Ventricular Assist Device” that helps pump the blood of patients with weak hearts.
Another of the company’s inventions is the “Gastric Spectroscopy Monitor” (EIT, by its Spanish acronym). This device is designed for patients in intensive therapy and it measures the condition of the gastric mucosa and its blood flow with an electronic monitor. This de-vice could help save many lives of critically ill pa-tients as it is a preventive measure to avoid clini-cal complications and to reduce mortality rates.
Marcus Dantus says, “When we talk about medical devices, we are really talking about everything from the simplest to the most sophisticated technology, from intel-ligent needles to artificial hearts. All these projects generally require a long time to research and develop, as well as to comply with regulatory requirements. It is an expen-sive process to achieve the desired outcome.”
Its latest project is the “Epidural Space Loca-tor” that enables doctors to accurately identify this zone, the epidural space, before giving an in-jection that is one of the most painful for patients. This device measures and locates the exact cav-ity where the injection is to be given, without the risk of causing any unnecessary pain.
Although Innovamédica has yet to of-ficially launch any of these devices on the market, various studies attest to their clinical effectiveness and they are now at the regula-tory approval stage. The CEO indicates that these inventions may be available between mid 2010 and early 2011.
“These projects require several years’ de-velopment before being launched. Research takes time and, as these are medical devices, their effectiveness is of paramount importance to us. Then comes the regulatory phase, the registering of patents worldwide, etc. These
projects also require large amounts of funding; thousands of dollars for some, such as the Epi-dural Space Locator, and millions of dollars for others, such as the Gastric Spectroscopy Moni-tor)," says Dantus.
On top of these financial outlays, each pat-ent now costs between 8,000 and 12,000 usd each year and the registration needs to be made worldwide. Innovamédica’s specialist team therefore takes commissions from third parties to develop medical devices to be able to continue with the company’s own research and development work.
“Innovamédica’s business model has cer-tainly proved itself and does not only need to be applied to medicine. Our links to academia are highly valuable because, otherwise, univer-sities’ discoveries and research would not be made available to the public, which should be the ultimate purpose of any kind of invention,” says Dantus.
“In my view, there should be many more In-novamédicas in other sectors as this would give an unprecedented boost to Mexico’s competi-tiveness because Mexico can feature on that map of technology-developing countries on which we are currently absent. We have the talent, the in-ventiveness and ability. We just need the initial impetus," concludes Marcus Dantus. n
Although Innovamédica has yet to officially launch any of these devices on the market, various studies attest to their clinical effectiveness and they are
now at the regulatory approval stage. These inventions may be available between mid 2010 and early 2011.
Photos courtesy of innovamÉdica
Mexico’s PartnersMexican Exports by ContinentJanuary – October 2009(Millions USD)
Source: Banco de México
Asia6,050.59
Oceania468.40
America
167,558.08
Africa499.28
Europe
9,757.31
Negocios figures
inFo
gr
aP
hic
s o
ld
em
ar
US148,700.04
Canada6,602.53
Guatemala 948.35Panama 642.83Costa Rica 530.68El Salvador 389.08Other countries 577.12
Argentina863.13
Chile 829.20
Peru456.02
Bolivia50.50
More Mexico in AmericaMexican Exports by CountryJanuary – October 2009, Millions USD
Venezuela1,167.88
Colombia2,041.33
Paraguay71.78
Uruguay74.64
North America
155,302.56
Central America
3,088.06
Brazil1,950.07
Ecuador391.02
South America
7,908.09
Source: Banco de México
38 Negocios inFograPhics oldemar
European Union
9,199.33
Source: Banco de México
Algeria179.49
Libya26.36
Kenya1.33Republic of
the Congo3.00
Egypt28.59
Niger25.92
Angola52.84
South Africa105.10
Africa 499.28
Liberia2.09
Morocco44.47
Tunisia14.38
Cameroon2.73
Swaziland2.73
Germany 2,561.39Spain 1,946.34Netherlands 1,392.30UK 920.35Belgium 550.04Italy 428.31Finland 415.37France 390.42Ireland 157.33Hungary 96.38Czech Republic 56.18Sweden 55.15Denmark 51.40Poland 40.92Portugal 29.02Austria 28.65Lithuania 25.29Greece 20.40
More Mexico in Europe and AfricaMexican Exports by CountryJanuary – October 2009, Millions USD
Countries Outsidethe EU 557.98Switzerland 357.70Turkey 56.08Romania 54.97Norway 40.47Russia 29.27
40 Negocios inFograPhic oldemar
Other Countriesin Oceania
16.08
Source: Banco de México
Oceania 468.40
Asia6,050.59
Australia421.85
Kazakhstan42.53
China1,812.43
India817.32Saudi Arabia
113.93
UAE299.89
Japan1,309.91
Korea371.60
Qatar10.42
Pakistan62.11
New Zealand30.47
Indonesia61.95
Malaysia113.01
Philippines33.45
Israel68.56
Taiwan126.31
Thailand86.67
Vietnam86.05
Hong Kong283.77
Singapore291.04
More Mexico in Asia and OceaniaMexican Exports by Country January – October 2009, Millions USD
The lifestyleT h e C o m p l et e G u i d e of t h e M ex i c a n Way of L i fe .
Pho
to f
ed
erico
gam
a
cecilia garcía-
huiDobro“Chileans and Mexicans
are meant to undesrstand each other"
Op. 46
interview
Mexico At Its Best On Broadway
p. 58
42 Negocios i The Lifestyle Photos archive
ScieNce
Scientists Map Maize Genome
iNNOVaTiON
heaLTh
Investment in researchThe Instituto Carso de la Salud will invest 65 million usd in research in genomic medicine. The three-year investment will be used to detect the origin and treatment of diseases like cancer, diabetes and kidney failure. The project, named Slim Genomic Medicine Initiative, is the result of an alliance with the Broad Institute, af-filiated with Harvard University and MIT, and the National Institute of Ge-nomic Medicine of Mexico.
www.saludcarso.org
A team of researchers from the US announced on November 2009 that they had sequenced the genome of maize. They specifically sequenced the genome of an inbred line of maize called B73.
Simultaneously, a group of researchers from the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiver-sity of the Research and Advanced Studies Center of the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico (Cinvestav – IPN) announced that they had suc-ceeded in sequencing another maize variety.
Luis Herrera-Estrella and colleagues se-quenced the variety Palomero, a maize from the Mexican highlands, and compared its features to those of the modern inbred line B73. They found that the genome was around 22% smaller and contained 20% less repetitive DNA.
The team also identified several genes, mainly for heavy metal tolerance, that were present in both B73 and Palomero but were absent in the maize ancestor teosinte. Herrera-Estrella and colleagues suggested that environ-mental factors related to the metal contents of local soils may had been important in maize domestication.
These achievements will boost research ef-forts to develop higher yielding varieties of one of the world’s most important crops.
www.ira.cinvestav.mx
A group of students of biochemistry en-gineering at the National Polytechnic In-stitute (IPN) created a drink made from hibiscus flower extract that helps reduce glucose levels.
The invention is called Jamaigüita and
it contents glycine, an amino acid that causes decreased levels of blood glucose.
The beverage has the same effect that in-sulin, but is less expensive. It was developed as part of a class in which students must carry out a project on innovation in the food area. They chose this project based on stud-ies on the properties of hibiscus and due to the high figures of diabetes in Mexico.
www.ipn.mx
Healing Beverage
The Lifestyle briefs
Ph
oto
co
ur
te
sy
of
fu
nd
ac
iÓn
co
le
cc
iÓn
Ju
me
X
tHe arcHitect
David Chipperfield Architects has designed a number of museums around the world, including the anchorage Museum in Alaska, the Figge art Museum in iowa and the ansaldo city of cultures in Milan, italy.
JumeX collection neW museum
The Jumex Collection —considered one of the largest and most prestigious private collections of contemporary art in the world— unveiled plans for a permanent museum in Mexico City, designed by David Chipperfield Architects.
It looks a bit “simple,” as one major Mexi-co City's newspaper put it.
In November 2009, when the noted British architect David Chipperfield came
to Mexico City to present plans for a new mu-seum for the Jumex Collection, he was met with some level of skepticism. One reporter wondered outloud during the press conference at the Uni-versidad Iberoamericana architecture school why the design didn’t have much of a “wow fac-tor.”
After a long and uncomfortable pause, Chip-perfield responded flatly: “I’m not Frank Gehry.”
The challenges facing the expansion of Eu-genio López Alonso’s art empire have been ap-parent since the beginning. For years, art-lovers in Mexico have had to make an hour-long trek to the far outskirts of the city, to a Jumex juice plant
in Ecatepec, to view exhibitions of López’s mas-sive contemporary art collection. The distance kept the Jumex Collection somewhat isolated from the rest of the Mexico City art establish-ment. For just as long, leaders at the Jumex Col-lection/Foundation have talked about building a more centrally located museum, with potential sites emerging and then forgotten.
Finally, López settled on building at a new cultural and commercial campus in Polanco, near where Carlos Slim was set to build a new home for his Soumaya art collection. Chipper-field emphasized that the new Jumex museum will be purposefully “simple.”
“This is a significant foundation, doing really important work. It doesn’t need the fireworks of architecture to make its point. It needs a solid home” asserted Chipperfield.
The architect responded to these needs with a relatively low (four levels) block structure, covered in concrete and Mexican limestone. The two top levels will be large and flexible exhibition and activity spaces, nearly doubling the space that the Jumex Collection currently operates in Ecatepec. Lower levels will feature a café and a kind of open viewing area to the streets below, while low concrete walls at ground level will shield the new building from street traffic.
“It will have a strong and massive ap-pearance,” Chipperfield said. “But at the same time, this massiveness is constricted by large areas of glass and openness.”
The new museum is set to open in 2011, said Jumex media relations director Mariana Huerta. Ground will be broken in March 2010. n
by daniel hernÁndeZ
Photos courtesy of herzog & de meuron44 Negocios i The Lifestyle
Mexico will soon have a new world-class muse-um. That is Barranca, Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo (Barranca, Museum of Mod-ern and Contemporary Art) that will be built in the city of Guadalajara. The new space will oc-cupy a building of approximately 10,000 square meters, in a privileged place in the city, on the Parque Mirador, on one side of the Huentitán Canyon, northeast of the urban area.
A New Space For Art
The new museum will house permanent exhibitions of modern and contemporary art from Mexico and Latin America and also scheduled special exhibits, both developed by its own curating staff and by other museums from around the world.
The construction of the new museum, which is expected to be finished in September 2012, will be funded by the association Capital Cultural Guadalajara, the municipality of Gua-dalajara and the Government of Jalisco.
The architectural design is by Herzog & De Meuron Basel LTD, an international firm that includes such works in its portfolio as the Tate Modern in London, completed in 2000, a former power station transformed into a modern art gallery, the Young Museum
in San Francisco and the Schaulager in Basel.One of Herzog & De Meuron’s most sig-
nificant buildings is the Forum in Barcelona, which was the emblem of the Universal Fo-rum of Cultures 2004. Herzog & De Meu-ron has also excelled in the construction of sports venues, such as the Allianz Arena in Munich and the Beijing National Stadium (Bird Nest), home of the 2008 Olympics.
Barranca, Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo aims to become one of the greatest architectural achievements of the century, through sustainable and environ-mentally sensitive architecture, which is expected to serve as a model for state-of-the-art technology while being practical and feasible. n
lifestyle briefs Museo barranca
Huentitán CanyonThe Huentitán Canyon, also known as Oblatos canyon, is a geographical accident caused by the Santiago river, the second largest river in Mexico. it is located in western Mexico, north of the city of Guadalajara and in the range of the municipalities of Tonalá, Zapotlanejo, Ixtlahuacán del Río and Zapopan in the Guadalajara metropolitan area. it measures approximately 1,137 hectares and has an average depth of 600 meters.The area is considered a biogeographic corridor since it hosts a large biodiversity. in 1997 it was declared a protected natural area.This canyon has been the scene of several notable events in the history of Mexico. During the conquest, there were clashes between natives from huentitán and the Spanish. it was also the site of battles during the Mexican revolution. Today the center of art, architecture and Design of the University of Guadalajara, the Zoo of Guadalajara, the Metropolitan planetarium, several residential developments as well as infrastructure for recreational activities, sports and education are all located in the area.
46 Negocios Photos courtesy of the ministry of tourism of the state of Jalisco
“I am not a historian, I studied philosophy but love history.” This is how Cecilia García-Huidobro explains her passion for historical and cultural heritage, not only in her home country, Chile, but also in the whole of Latin America. This simple phrase explains why she has devoted over 15 years of her life to activities linked to the preservation of historical buildings, convinced that one of the main concerns of all nations should be the preservation of their ar-chitectural heritage, regardless of whether it is managed by a public or private entity.
In Chile, this passion led her to assume different responsibilities. She was in charge of Chile’s Cultural Heritage Corporation, presided over the Federation of Friends of Museums, was vice president of the Naval and Maritime Heritage Corporation and, a few months before she moved to Mexico, she founded the Chilean Association of Owners of Historic Houses and Parks, which she still chairs. Also, she has participated in several restoring projects for historical buildings.
In Mexico, it is such passion that has led Ce-cilia to discover a country she has always been fascinated by and has motivated her to partici-pate in different projects related to the preser-vation of historical heritage, although this time through an ambitious “Latin American scope.”
Cecilia has focused on building a network of owners of historical buildings in Latin America and is currently involved in the cre-ation in Mexico, Peru and Ecuador of similar associations to the ones she heads in Chile. Also, with the support of the Banamex Cul-tural Foundation, she is organizing a world meeting of associations of owners of histori-cal buildings.
All this has a very clear goal: to strengthen the links between Latin American countries, from the shared interest of preserving the cultural and historical splendor reflected in their architecture.
While this version of Bolivar’s dream comes true, Cecilia is working to achieve this and at the same time is enjoying her life in Mexico, fasci-nated by the wonders of its culture, its people and its everyday life.
—how did you come to Mexico?My arrival in Mexico was quite an accident. I came because the company my husband works for, a German company, offered him a new position in Mexico City. I have a passion for heritage and culture but the most impor-tant heritage of all is my family, so I decided to embrace the changes with a positive attitude and a great deal of optimism, as Mexico is a country I have always been fascinated with, like most Latin American people. And so I came to Mexico intending to find and enjoy the best of the country.
—How do you like your life here?I love Mexico. I think that anywhere you go people is the most important element and Mexico has a fantastic human capital. There is an underlying charm, a fascinating sense of humor and a way to enjoy life. There is also a dose of madness that I find very appealing. It is almost surreal, the most unexpected can hap-pen, things that may not seem a 100% reason-
able but are part of the country’s enchantment. Mexico’s problems are cyclical rather
than structural. I insist, Mexico’s best asset is its people and I am sure its leading position will last, not just within the Latin American region.
I am only discovering this nation and I constantly get signals from everywhere. Cur-rently I am only reading Mexican literature, especially essays, and I also try to watch as many Mexican films as I can.
—What are your best experiences in Mexico?There are so many interesting people! I have learned a lot and I have made great friends. I have been nurtured by all the people I have met. Mexicans are very kind and the best hosts ever!
I am really enjoying myself. Mexico is a vi-brant city. It is not the dangerous and chaotic place some people see from the outside.
I love going to the Centro Histórico. Some-times I think “I am going to stroll down one street, only one street”… And it never ends! There is so much to see! Let alone zones like Colonia Roma!
Mexico’s heritage is alive, one that is con-stantly evolving, inspiring currents. It is there, intact.
When I walked into the house of Barragán, for instance, I nearly died. Seeing the work of such a genius in architecture was impressive. His proposal had a huge impact on me. It is not the same as just seeing it in books. Actu-ally being there and understanding his vision of space and the vision of the man behind his architectural proposition.
And then there is the food… simply ex-quisite! Whatever I find, I have to taste it. I was in yucatán and I tried dishes that even now I do not know what they were, but they tasted delicious.
“Chileans and Mexicans are meant to understand each other”To Cecilia García-Huidobro, the cultural and historical heritage of a nation should not only be admired but also preserved. Born in Chile, she has been a determined advocate of initiatives to preserve historical buildings and public spaces. Here in Mexico, where she came to stay in 2009, she decided to pursue this work promoting projects with a Latin American scope.
interview cecilia garcía-huidobro
"Mexico’s architectural heritage is never ending [...] Mexico’s heritage is alive, one that is constantly evolving, inspiring currents. It is there, intact."
48 Negocios Photo federico gama
—Do you miss chile?I keep very close to my country. I am part of the National Council for Culture and the Arts in Chile and therefore I travel home very often. Also, I keep very close ties with the Chilean Association of Owners of His-toric Houses and Parks, which is an organi-zation I helped found in order to build social networks amongst the owners of historical buildings who are interested in preserving this heritage. That also intends to create awareness in society about the importance of preserving the cultural heritage of the country.
Also, I think that the relation between Chileans and Mexicans, no matter how dif-ferent we may be, works particularly well. Both Chileans and Mexicans are meant to understand each other and that is why we should work more in reinforcing communi-cation and cooperation channels between our nations, because we really work great together.
As a Chilean woman in Mexico, I am trying to contribute to finding new cultural links between our nations. For instance, upon an invitation from the Ambassador of Chile to Mexico, I am currently involved in the organization of a literary encounter be-tween Mexico and Chile, together with the Universidad Veracruzana.
—could these ties be built from topics such as preservation of cultural heritage?Of course. I am certain that we need a cultural and heritage initiative with a Latin American approach. This kind of initiatives make our na-tions come together.
—Do you think there is a solid ground to fuel an initiative of this sort?Mexico’s architectural heritage is never ending. There are a lot of people who own properties with huge value and historical relevance who are currently doing very interesting work.
For example, the Banamex Cultural Founda-tion along with the Pedro and Elena Hernández Foundation, are doing excellent work in terms of restoring and preserving yucatán's and other states' heritage. I would say it is a one-of-a-kind work in the world.
Also in Colonia Roma, in Mexico City, there are historical houses owned by private indi-viduals who have been willing to preserve such heritage. It is wonderful to see them doing so.
What matters is that these efforts should not be isolated. That is why I am supporting the creation of an organization like the Chilean Association of Owners of Historic Houses and Parks in Mexico, integrated by private individ-uals but working systematically with the gov-ernment, through the National Monuments Council. I think it is essential to understand
that the preservation of heritage should not regard public and private sectors as rivals but as allies. The most intelligent thing to do is to work together and not as competitors.
This is a decade long system in Europe. The owners of historical buildings are a very well organized group, very well informed and per-fectly coordinated with public officials.
The basic idea is to do the same in Latin America; hence it is very important to create an organization of this nature in Mexico. But it is equally as important in other countries, such as Peru and Ecuador, where we are also working.
My purpose is to plan an International meet-ing of such organizations in Mexico, in order to develop ties and exchange experiences. It is some-thing I am currently working on with the support of the Banamex Cultural Foundation. The idea is to hold this meeting at the end of this year.
—What would be Mexico’s role in such an ambitious initiative?Undoubtedly a project like this should be led by Mexico because of several reasons: the impor-tance of its heritage, its history and the roots of its cultural heritage.
I think that if we move from here we may be able to boost a project with a Latin American reach. We have a lot in common and Mexico is an indisputable leader in Latin America, a long-time role model. n
“I love Mexico. I think that anywhere you go people
is the the most important element and Mexico has a
fantastic human capital. There is an underlying charm, a
fascinating sense of humor and a way to enjoy life.”
“i am only discovering this nation and i constantly get
signals from everywhere. currently i am only reading
Mexican literature, especially essays, and i also try to
watch as many Mexican films as i can.”
“Mexico’s architectural heritage is never ending. There
are a lot of people who own properties with huge value
and historical relevance who are currently doing very
interesting work.”
“The relation between chileans and Mexicans, no matter
how different we may be, works particularly well. Both
chileans and Mexicans are meant to understand each
other.”
arcHitecture postal palace
adaMo boari and the postal palace in Mexico cityby guadalupe castillo aJa*
50 Negocios PHotos guadalupe castillo aJa
At the end of the 19th century, Mexico began to look in other directions and opened up to the world, importing aesthetic and cultural patterns then in
style from Europe and the US. In the architec-tural field, it boosted the education of such pro-fessionals in European schools and welcomed the work of international architects, some of whom were even admitted as scholars to the National School of Fine Arts. Such is the case of Italian architect Adamo Boari, who original-ly came to Mexico to take part in the contest for the Legislative Palace, announced in 1897. Boari did not win that contest but in 1902 was appointed as head of the Postal Palace project. And so the history of this building, once the tallest in the city, began. Inaugurated in 1907, it is today one of the finest urban landscapes Mexico City can offer its visitors.
According to Israel Katzman, member of the National Architecture Academy and author of several books on Mexican architec-ture, the Palace Boari is similar in its exterior shape to that of Monterrey, located in Sala-manca, Spain, and classified as Spanish Goth-plateresque. Boari is said to have been a firm believer of the idea that if something was good enough to be replicated, instead of looking for inspiration resulting in a mediocre work, you should steal shamelessly. “Copy, but do it right,” the Italian architect used to say.
Undoubtedly, this knock off came out just fine. The facade is certainly a delicacy to the eye, due to its pace, texture and shades. It is almost like a score that seems to be singing eloquently.
The Postal Palace is part of the cluster of his-torical buildings located on the east side of the Alameda Central, west of the Zócalo of Mexico
City, where it neighbors the Fine Arts Palace, also co-authored by Boari, the Bank of Mexi-co headquarters and, a little further east, the Palace of Mining and the National Museum of Art, the former Palace of Communications. All of them are first class buildings amongst which the Postal Palace stands out due to the color of its ashlars, made of a soft-shaded golden stone, brought from the nearby town of Pachuca, Hi-dalgo. Its main facades are along the streets of Tacuba and Eje Central. One of the side facades lies along the Condesa alley, a pedestrian street in Mexico City’s downtown, and the back of the building holds a patio and service access.
The visitor may walk around the whole building to get a glimpse of the different sur-rounding atmospheres like the traffic chaos at Eje Central and the pedestrian calm of the Condesa alley that prompts one to contem-plate the facing in full perspective, which en-hances its beauty.
One can also appreciate the repertoire of shapes and solutions Boari applied to the dif-ferent facades, accomplishing a full integration of asymmetries and variations within its span.
Particular attention must be paid to the main entrance on the chamfered corner of Tacuba and Lázaro Cárdenas streets. It is cov-ered by a golden bronze marquee suspended by two chains serving as tensors and its stone enclosure is carved with fantastic figures of excellent quality. The chamfer accentuates its magnificence with a monumental clock that crowns the entire facade.
After such a generous display of reper-toire on the outside, Boari does not disap-point the eye inside which, albeit modern, in-cludes a free space on the ground floor, with a reticule of columns and two patios which allow the access of natural light into the
building. The central staircase may be the typical image of the Palace. A bronze filigree, covered by light passing through the stained glass window covering the patio on the third floor. The detailed interior decoration is rich in images and shapes.
The Postal Palace underwent a restora-tion process in the last decade of the 20th cen-tury, recovering the splendor once slashed by mistaken interventions and inadequate use. The original Italian bronze forge pro-duced by the del Pignone melting house in Florence, Italy, had been covered by layers of enamel hiding its richness, the elevators were disassembled and a number of attach-ments filled the estate.
arcHitecture postal palace
Where:The postal palace is located in Mexico city’s historic center, at number 1 Tacuba street.
a MuST See:The central staircase below the stained glass window designed by Boari.The monumental clock mechanism. It can be seen from the Museo de historia y cultura Naval, on the fourth storey of the building.
Postal PalacecuriOuS FacT: The directory of the building includes the Ground Floor and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors, which means that the ground floor is considered the first storey, when normally the floors in a building are counted from the ground floor and then 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etcetera. The “first” floor, or storey in the US is the “ground” floor in Europe. The “second” floor in the US is the “first” floor in Europe, and so on.
Currently, the ground floor of the Postal Pal-ace continues to operate as a post office of the Mexican Postal Service and is open to the public. The second floor holds the offices of the e-Mexico National Center, a permanent exhibit hall for the Postal Culture, the Postal Library and an interac-tive hall for an introduction to philately. The third floor has limited access and is used for offices. The fourth floor is home to the Museum of Na-val History and Culture overseen by the Ministry of the Navy and includes scale reproductions of ships of the Mexican Navy fleet, as well as some famous vessels from other countries. n
* This article was originally published in Mexicanísi-
mo, number 19, September 2009.
52 Negocios i The Lifestyle Photo courtesy of mitchell keenan
interview Mitchell keenan
Mitchell Keenan, Mitch to his friends, has been making a name for himself in the Real Estate business in yucatán since he left his native US for Mexico some 13 years ago.
His online business has been a great suc-cess story as Mitch has helped hundreds of US citizens buy the property of their dreams in and around Mérida on the sun baked yucatán Peninsula.
Mitch says he first moved to Mérida for love but it wasn’t long before he fell in love with Mexico too.
Keenan, GRI, CRS, received his Colorado real estate license in 1989. He obtained his GRI (Graduate Realtor Institute) in 1993 and his CRS (Certified Residential Specialist) in 1995. Since 1992, he has consistently performed in the top ten percent of Realtors in the US and Mexico.
A 1981 graduate of Fort Hays State Univer-sity in Kansas, Mitch received a BS Degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in marketing. He began a career with Continental Airlines in 1984 where he worked as a flight service manager and in-flight safety, service and motivational instructor for 10-years. Conti-nental offered him an early retirement package with flight benefits, in 1993.
He was seduced into the real estate business by his friend and mentor, Charlie Gerretson in 1988. In 1989 he became a partner and vice-president of marketing for Gerretson Realty, Inc. In 1996, Keenan sold his shares of Gerret-son Realty, Inc. and joined his brother at Keenan & Company - Metro Brokers.
With retirement travel passes and a desire to open a real estate business in Mexico, Keen-an hit upon the idea to create a web site that promoted property in the country. Thus was born Miguels Mexico –the first Internet site of its kind, promoting real estate in Mexico.
The original website promoted properties in Acapulco, Cancún, Cozumel, Mazatlán, Mérida and Puerto Vallarta.
MitcHell Keenanfalling in love with a country
Thirteen years ago, Mitch Keenan decided to move from the US to Mérida, Yucatán. There he has found love, business opportunities and most of all, a great place to live.
But Mitch fell in love with Mérida and in 1996 he opened the Mérida offices of Propiedades Las Pirámides. In 2004, the company name was changed to Mexico International Real Estate.
Mitch now lives on a quinta in the countryside with his companion and their dogs Lover, Lucky, Wazer and Junior.
—Why did you decide to set up your busi-ness, and your home, in Mexico? I fell in love with a Mexican and wanted to live in Mexico to be close to my beloved. Now, I’m still in love with Mexico but not with my ex.
the world when I worked for Continental Airlines in the 80’s and 90’s. I fell in love with Mérida for its architecture, cleanliness, safety, culture, food, people, cost of living, nightlife, shopping, weather, location near the beach and positive energy. This is the best place in the world to live!
—is it easier for foreigners to buy property in Mexico now than, say, ten years ago?The mechanics of owning property has not changed much in 10 years. But the number of businesses serving the foreign commu-nity has increased dramatically.
—What is your business ethos?Our philosophy of business is simple. We are in the business of creating and main-taining relationships. We are not looking to make a one time deal. We want your business for life and we want your friends, families and associates businesses too! We know that we have to do the job right the first time to get your return business and referral business.
If you treat all parties fairly and every-body walks away from the closing happy, you will be on the road to creating and maintaining a valuable relationship with those clients for many years. Be honest. Be genuine. Answer questions honestly. If you do not know the answer don’t make some-thing up. Tell people you do not know but you will find out.
—How does the future look for both buyers and realtors in Mexico? The future for real estate on the yucatán Peninsula is excellent! We have had a strong market correction in 2008 and 2009. I believe we will see very good growth and appreciation going forward. n
by graeMe stewart
Mitch fell in love with Mérida and in 1996 he
opened the Mérida offices of Propiedades Las Pirámides.
—What are the main differences between operating a real estate business in Mexi-co and the uS?There’s less brain damage in Mexico. No li-censing, boards, commissions, state or federal over sight agencies. No finance or inspection contingencies in the contracts. An honest busi-nessman with a good ethical foundation can do well in Mexico.
—What effect did the credit crunch have on your business? Well, we are a cash business so we have never had many deals that were based upon institutional credit. However, the worldwide financial crisis scare has had a negative ef-fect on our business.
—You operate from Mérida. Why Mérida?I have had the opportunity to visit and know many cities in Latin America and around
54 Negocios illustration Jorge silva
by ricardo ibarra
curating Mexican artcurating in Mexico only began as a profession at the end of the twentieth century but it has since developed into an occupation that has iMproved understanding of Mexico’s culture and history. Negocios spoke to three specialists about curatorship in Mexico.
Curators are observers. Their work in-volves contemplating and suggesting in-terpretations of the world, in disciplines as wide-ranging as music, literature and especially the visual arts. In art displays, curators are responsible for selecting the works to be included and for making the exhibition work as a whole.
For Carlos Aranda, a specialist historian, critic and member of La Esmeralda Exhibi-tions Committee in Mexico City, “a curator captures a moment and then re-expresses it," because his job involves understanding a country’s cultural tradition to reinterpret it and bring it to exhibition galleries. There-fore, in Mexico’s case, curating involves knowledge of the country’s pre-Hispanic roots, its colonial heritage and the turbu-lent nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to provide a fresh interpretation. Curators need to acquaint themselves with artists’ ideas, objects and processes to make them publicly accessible. “This is how curators re-express reality," affirms Aranda.
For Ricardo Duarte, a cultural promoter, curating has become valued as a way of de-fining how to understand one or several art-ists. The curator shows the creators’ view of the world and their interpretation of it, for observers to empathize in a specific way.
And for Luis Rius, a specialist art histo-rian and director of the visual arts program of the Escuela Superior de Artes de yuca-tán, a curator is a mix between a museolo-
gist, critic, manager and artist. He is a creative type who circulates art. “Where there is an excess of artists, a curator provides an opening for prolific artistic creation," he says.
A curator can rescue an exhibition by mak-ing an extra piece of information about the art-ist and his work available to the observer. He sets out to surprise and alter day-to-day per-ceptions of the world, saving artistic creations from obscurity and opening up commercial markets for art. He needs to be well versed in history and philosophy, to understand lighting, to write about the artist, to know about multi-media support. “He’s like an orchestra conduc-tor," adds Rius.
Carlos Aranda considers that curating began 25 years ago in Mexico and in the 1990s curators graduated from merely be-ing administrators to becoming creators of new interpretations of Mexican culture. During this period, Mexico increased its art exports with an improved understanding of the curator’s role, which can be educational, historical, scientific and even philosophical, always aimed at creating a system of thought out of thin air.
Luis Rius, winner of the Luis Cardoza y Aragón art criticism award, believes that curat-ing has a higher profile in twenty-first century Mexico because it has redefined the meaning of several concepts in a prevailing climate of pragmatism. Therefore curators re-conceive ideas from new horizons to synthesize every-thing around them.
expansionCarlos Aranda sees that curators now work alongside artists to define new ways for their work to be displayed. There are currently at least 300 curators in Mexico, supporting over 15,000 Mexican artists.
This sudden and sharp increase in the num-ber of curators can be explained by a number of factors: the sheer amount of Mexican art, cu-rators’ training at academic institutions such as the Ibero-American University or the Cloister of Sor Juana University —both of which have introduced academic programs for curator-ship as part of their art faculties—, the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) with its scholarship program for studies abroad and associations such as Teratoma, founded by Ol-ivier Debroise and Cuauhtémoc Medina.
The private sector has also played a key role in promoting arts and developing curatorship in Mexico. The Jumex Collection Foundation, Coppel and the Carlos Slim Foundation are a few examples of private foundations that have produced collections, galleries and museo-graphic institutes throughout Mexico.
Ricardo Duarte thinks that institutions, museums and galleries have professionalized their approach to create their own exportable artistic projects and that they have managed to produce intellectual work for an intelligent au-dience seeking high-quality exhibitions.
Everything is a ReflectionCarlos Aranda says that a curator can be an ed-ucator who works at universities or museums, an author who brings about the organization of an oeuvre or even a philosopher or an editor, because any human activity can potentially be curated. Exhibitions of art, history and science can be curated for different kinds of people, such as for the elderly or the illiterate.
According to Aranda, curation needs to be approached with great care because an
art curating Mexican art
art exhibition is a fragile and complex dialog between various components: experts and novices, experiences that are delicate and that blend perceptions, moods, feelings, memories, dreams and desires.
A work of art is always a mirror of our in-ner selves. It will attract or repel us depending on our identification with it. But at the same time, each work requires a permanent dialog in space and time with other works. Not just between one painting and another but be-tween a painting and a film, a poem and a
sound installation, a catchy tune and a novel. Visual images are only a small part of the
challenge. A curator’s work involves placing emotions at stake, so that complicity with the observer circulates art. A brief instant in a gallery, a museum or an address finds its best echoes with the passage of time.
“Curating is a reading from the past and the present that we will only understand in the future. It comes from a public assault on sensations, feelings and ideas that are ex-pressed in various art works created in the
past yet displayed in the present in order to be read and understood in the future.” says Carlos Aranda.
Specialists in Mexico —the south with Luis Rius, the west with Ricardo Duarte and the central region with Carlos Aranda— agree with the art critic and writer, Ingrid Suckaer, who says that curators need to be empathet-ic, responsible and ethical in order to create imaginary discourses that allow us to redis-cover our inner child, at a distance from our adult concerns.
They also need to be sensitive, imagina-tive and noble and, metaphorically speaking, must be willing to place themselves at the ser-vice of the artist, whose work is the reflection of their willingness to create their own reality —parallel universes they wish to share with the observer. n
the private sector has also played a key role in proMoting arts and developing curatorship in Mexico. the JuMex collection foundation, coppel and the carlos sliM foundation are a few exaMples of private foundations that have produced collections, galleries and Museographic institutes throughout Mexico.
56 Negocios i The Lifestyle Photo archive56 Negocios i The Lifestyle Photos courtesy of felipe ehrenberg
Felipe Ehrenberg: The Witness
A riddle, a riddle. Who is the painter, print-maker, performance artist, writer, teacher and publisher born the same year the Earth gave birth to the Paricutín Volcano –that’s 1943? It is Felipe, Felipe Ehrenberg.
From collective murals, to various edito-rial projects, a wide variety of conceptual art works and moving from country and continent every so often, if there is one word that defines this eclectic artist that is mobility.
Ehrenberg’s most recent multi-disciplinary work was presented at the Lakeside Theatre at the University of Essex. Xocoyotzin The Penulti-mate is a thoughtful performance created in re-sponse to the British Museum’s Major Exhibition Moctezuma Aztec Ruler.
The scenery features a pyramidal staircase covered with grass, pineapples emerging from each step. On top, there’s a complex structure that enables Felipe to read a very long scroll were he has given expression to his testimony. The screen in the back shows a juxtaposition of im-ages from the pre-Hispanic world and contem-porary Mexico.
Ehrenberg’s captivating voice that tells riddles
brief bio
Felipe ehrenberg was born in Mexico city in 1943. From 1968 to 1973 he settled in Devon, england, and collaborated in a new editorial project, the Beau Geste Press. Back in Mexico he established a movement of alternative press publications called Neográfica. Ehrenberg now lives and works in Brazil. Felipe Ehrenberg’s performance took place on December 5, 2009 and was organized by the university of essex Knowledge Transfer Fund, the Tate and the embassy of Mexico in uK.
by fidelia fadel
in English is joined by two other speakers record-ed in the audiovisual. The first one is in Spanish, the other is in Nahuatl. The first one, a woman’s voice, Teresa Rábago’s, is not simply Spanish, she speaks Mexican, that means her discourse blossoms in diminutives such as “jicarita” (small clay jug), and her playful speech is sometimes naughty, always affectionate. As for the third
voice, that of Nicolás de Jesús, it is remarkable that he speaks contemporary Nahuatl. It is not a language from the past, it holds the musicality, colors, the vivid indigenous Mexico of today. So Ehrenberng didn’t rely on the comfortable zone of Netzahualcoytl’s beautiful poems –as many scholars tend to do when trying to incorporate the “wonders” of the native cultures.
The pyramid is surrounded by masked ghosts, all female bodies that keep moving to the rhythm of the polyphonic speech. A shy, nude Malitzin walks among them. A camera man dressed in black records pieces and parts.
—“i am Felipe, i am a witness.” That is your performance’s motto. can you ex-plain what is this history that you have witnessed as a Latin american artist?Moctezuma II, or better, Moctecuzohma xo-coyotzin, was the antepenultimate ruler of an empire which was not called Aztec, the name was coined by Baron Alexander von Humboldt. He was not killed by his own people but was treacherously murdered by the Iberians he had grandly received as guests in the Palace of Axa-
interview andreas heineckeinterview felipe ehrenberg
cayatl. Learning about this, dealing with issues like this one, strikes me as a fascinating possibil-ity to understand the exponential forces of min-ute events. What if he had survived? What if the Europeans had come simply as traders, like the Chinese who first arrived 300 years before? The “what-ifs” of life are a major mystery; they lead to revolution and evolution.
—Despite the devastating encounter that you address, you also seem to enjoy the chaos that takes place on stage.I can’t conceive myself making art without enjoying doing so, without experiencing the deepest possible feelings, pleasure, fear, without being adventurous and unfettered. Perhaps contemporary art accumulates the largest brunt of dogmas that art has ever had to bear.
—Do you think great influences from your school days can be traced back in your current works?I’m not a graduate of an art school. I was formed under the apprentice system, learn-ing from older artists in their studios, a totally eclectic array of great people. Matias Goeritz, founder of the School of Altamira (1948); muralist José Chávez Morado, a powerful nationalistic artist; Feliciano Béjar, an experi-mental sculptor… I very much enjoyed and was influenced by my mother’s marvelous col-lections of what people call “folk art.’’ n
MOcTezuMa: azTec ruLer
01
02
03
London’s British Museum Exhibi-tion explored the Aztec civiliza-tion through the political figure of Moctezuma II and his 18 years in power from 1502 until 1520.
The exhibition was inaugurated on September 2009 and closed in January 2010.
Moctezuma, Aztec Ruler was acclaimed by art critics and cu-rators from all over the world. “Moctezuma himself emerges, amazingly, as some kind of iden-tity through the ingenuity of this show” wrote Laura Cumming, from The Observer.
58 Negocios i The Lifestyle Photos courtesy of thomas Jefferson musical theatre company
tHe lifestyle feature thoMas Jefferson Musical theatre coMpany
The name of the play is Anjou: un cuento de horror (Anjou: a Horror Tale), a pop opera from the Thomas Jefferson Musical Theater Company, a Mexican company based in Es-tado de México. Between September and Oc-tober 2009, the play sold out four times dur-ing the New York Musical Theatre Festival, regarded as one of the most important stage events in the world.
That happened even when the play was made up of a school drama group and spoken in Spanish –an unprecedented event in a New york festival– added to the fact that no one in the cast had ever performed professionally and that the cost of the play’s production was 300,000 usd –meaningless compared to any other play on Broadway, explained Edgardo Lar, the opera director and choreographer and founder of the company.
Now the cast will travel even further, to the International Musical Theater Festival of Daegu, South Korea, being held in June and July, 2010. Also, the producers are in talks to begin a tour in Europe as well as some Latin American countries, after they return from Asia.
Written by Guillermo Méndez and Lupita Sandoval, Anjou: un cuento de horror, tells of the gruesome obsession of queen Cath-erine de' Medici to enthrone her son, Henri d’Anjou, amidst one of the wars fought by Catholics and Protestants in France.
The pop opera features 47 Mexican per-formers, among actors, director, stagehands, costume designers and set designers and light technicians. The 25 actors and actresses on stage are between 16 and 22 years old and come from different backgrounds in Mexico. Most had never performed on a stage until recently. They were all invited, selected and trained for twelve hours a day, seven days a week during three months, says Lar.
Such extensive training led to outstand-ing reviews for the cast in different New york publications. “Leisl Lar, as the villainous Cath-olic queen Catherine de’ Medici, sneered and sang fabulously," wrote Adam Feldman on September 21, 2009 in TimeOut.
Mexico At Its Best On Broadway
A Mexican vision of the thriller and crimes committed in the 16th Century by queen Catherine de' Medici in order to enthrone her son, Henri d’Anjou, conquered the audience and critics at Broadway and awarded Mexican actress Liesl Lar for her Individual Outstanding Performance in her role as the controversial queen.
60 Negocios i The Lifestyle Photos courtesy of thomas Jefferson musical theatre company
tours. However, its participation in the New York Musical Theatre Festival was complete-ly unexpected, as Edgardo Lar recalls.
Claudia Villa, who for several years act-ed as production manager for the Mexican group and currently resides in New york,
had attended the festival a few times and was aware of the quality of Lar’s team, com-parable to any of the musicals on Broadway.
“Claudia encouraged us, so we submitted the company’s credentials, videos and re-
“The cast rivals any professional company for skill and commitment […] Here’s hoping the Thomas Jefferson Musical Theater Company brings more shows to New york to showcase more prodigious talent," wrote playwright and critic Heather J. Violanti, in the online theme magazine nytheatre.com.
“Both, the music and the performances are fierce and compelling," wrote The New York Times critic Anita Gates, on October 12, 2009. Worth mentioning is that the photo of the play’s cast was featured on the cover of several publications reviewing the festival.
The Thomas Jefferson Musical Theater Company was founded almost 25 years ago –when musicals stopped being performed in Mexico– as a musical theater program from the Thomas Jefferson Institute, which is a kin-dergarten, elementary and high school in Esta-do de México. Promoted by Lar and the school owners, Jeanene Bluhm and Ricardo Carvajal, 23 years ago, it became a foundation, support-ed by funding provided by a group of patrons which has helped the actors and actresses get training and travel at no expense for them. It has staged 29 plays with several international
views from several of our showcases," recalls Edgardo Lar. Shortly after, the participation of Anjou: un cuento de horror in the Big Apple was confirmed. “We were very surprised. It is the most important professional musical the-ater festival in the world. It speaks very well of us that for the first time in the history of the festival a non professional company with a play in Spanish was invited,” says the direc-tor and coreographer.
Humbly, Lar adds: “I am not saying that the Thomas Jefferson Musical Theater Company achieved a quality worth admiring anywhere in the world, but for the first time the critics were noticing us.”
—it is a curious fact that the script was inspired by a historical event that did not belong to Mexico.The theme was one of the elements that generated a great deal of attention. Enhanc-ing the folkloric aspects of our culture is not always a must. Anjou: un cuento de horror shows the great cultural heritage of Mexico and it is proof that our nation can also be cos-mopolitan and edgy. n
feedbacK casa de la sal
Mexico opened its doors to the first institution to help children suffering from the AIDS virus at around the same time that the world first became aware of the disease. Casa de la Sal was founded in 1986 and its care for HIV-positive children goes far beyond simply
supplying them with medicine.
It has achieved great results, such as the establishment of Latin America’s foremost child center of its kind. And most importantly of all, not a single child has died at the
center over the past 10 years. Having arrived at the doors of Casa de la Sal with the lethal illness, once inside, they have found a reason to live.
by cristina Ávila-Zesatti
casa de la sal, a lifeline
62 Negocios i The Lifestyle Photos archive
According to the AIDS Research Center of the Autonomous University of Puebla (Centro Universitario de Investigación sobre Sida de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Pueb-la), the first Mexican woman to be diagnosed with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV/AIDS) was in 1985. That was two years after the first case was confirmed, following the discovery of the disease in the early-1980s when the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in
Atlanta (Georgia) put out an alert following a “strange lung infection."
The high mortality rate that appeared to mainly affect homosexual men created a poorly understood stigma about the virus that we now know does not distinguish on account of gender, age or racial background.
The World Health Organization (WHO) currently classifies it as a “global epidemic”
that affects around 33 million people around the world. And today, almost 30 years after it was first discovered, no vaccine has yet to be found.
The WHO and UNAIDS “2009 AIDS epi-demic update” shows that over the past eight years there have been 15% less deaths linked to this virus that destroys its victims’ defense sys-tems and leaves them at the mercy of diseases that are harmless to non-affected people.
However, there are still not many good news about HIV/AIDS around the world. Despite more drug products being available to mitigate its effects (the so-called “anti-retrovirals”), the way in which the disease is spreading has changed due to various fac-tors, such as migrations and unprotected sexual intercourse.
The “feminization” of HIV/AIDS has im-plied an additional challenge for national and international health services because
many infected women transmit the virus when pregnant, so that thousands of chil-dren may be infected from birth.
Globally there are approximately 2.1 mil-lion child sufferers, the majority of whom have been infected perinatally.
The Disease affects all agesRecent figures released by the Mexican Health Ministry show that, as of September 2009, there were 220,000 adults in Mexico infected with HIV/AIDS. Over 85% of the total number of cases among children under the age of 15 between 1983 and 2008 were caused by mother-child transmission.
According to UNICEF, despite a relatively low infection rate in comparison to other countries, the situation is particularly wor-rying in Mexico given the large proportion of sufferers under the age of eighteen.
It is terrible for adults to live with this ill-ness, but it is worse still for children. Many die young without having understood either the origin or the cause of their affliction and most of them –although there are no sta-tistics available for this– are rejected even by their own parents and likely to be aban-doned or handed over to health clinics or orphanages.
Now, almost three decades after this vi-rus first appeared, the stigma prevails. It causes fear, disgust, discrimination and seg-regation. This leads some organizations, like MExSIDA, to estimate that there is a hidden number of cases involving children infected with HIV/AIDS which go unreported due to parents’ shame or fear that their children may be discriminated.
Official figures show that in Mexico there are currently 2,800 children infected by the virus (approximately 1,500 boys and 1,300 girls) with only a tiny proportion receiving proper treatment –not just in terms of the necessary retrovirals but also and, more importantly, the psychological and spiritual support that this illness requires.
a Vital condiment of LifeSalt is essential for life. Everyone’s blood needs a certain amount of this compound. Maybe that explains Rosa María Rivero’s decision to use this symbolism when naming the home for children with HIV/AIDS as the disease attacks its victims’ blood: Casa de la Sal (House of Salt)... Home of Life.
This non-profit organization was officially founded in 1986. Rivero had begun her altruis-tic work some years before, visiting HIV/AIDS victims at public hospitals. Prior to her death, one of these patients bequeathed his prop-erty for Rosa María Rivero to professionalize this charitable work. And so it happened. The work of Rosa María, a teacher by profession, took an unexpected but well-chosen course, for she would soon receive her first two pa-tients at Casa de la Sal: Jonathan, a three-year-old child and Azucena who was four, both children of parents who also suffered from the disease and passed it onto their children –who were at the terminal phase and in search of a place they could stay before they died.
On receiving them, the foundation chose a path that it still follows today. At its very outset, it was a kind of hospice but over time it has evolved into one of Mexico’s most well-respected institutions for its work with chil-dren infected with HIV/AIDS.
Today, 24 years after it opened its doors, Casa de la Sal can be proud that its center for children with HIV is unique throughout Latin America. It has a medical department, a psycho-pedagogical department, an area for extra-curricular activities, a canteen and a small gymnasium.
Around 100 volunteers and 30 employ-ees look after a total of 84 children, 24 of whom are completely orphaned and live in the home and receive all the necessary care,
while the other 60 children receive partial help because they live with their families.
“No More Suffering in Silence” Casa de la Sal could be said to have evolved together with the disease it is fighting against. In the same way that the HIV/AIDS mortality rate has dropped around the world, Casa de la Sal can also boast that none of its children have died in the past 10 years.
The organization does much more than just administering doses of medication. Not includ-ing anti-retrovirals, the monthly cost for each orphan infected with HIV/AIDS is around 1,200 usd. In other words, the institution needs 29,000 usd each month just to stay afloat, without taking into account the cost of staff, materials and a long list of other expenses including its support to 60 children who do not live in the home and around 50 HIV-infected adults who are also outpatients.
This “out-patient support” is not insig-nificant. It includes hospital visits, psycho-logical and thanatalogical advice, support groups, specialized individual, group and family therapy sessions as well as a perma-nent awareness-raising campaign on the is-sue that is of most concern to those fighting against HIV/AIDS.
The organization has set itself the task of raising more funds in 2010, as it aims to dou-ble the number of children in its care. There-fore it wants to strengthen the “sponsoring” system and to find more donors.
Casa de la Sal has accomplished its mis-sion so far, faithful to its motto: “No More Suf-fering in Silence." But the current situation means that HIV/AIDS, which the world has lived with for 30 years but not yet understood, must be given a more human face, a face with-out age or race. For this is a lonely disease that does not dare speak its name. n
feedbacK casa de la sal
the work of rosa María, a teacher by profession, took an unexpected but well-chosen course, for she would soon receive her first two patients at casa de la sal.
64 Negocios i The Lifestylein
Fo
gr
aP
hic
old
em
ar
Casa de la SalIt was the first Mexican institution to provide permanent housing and care to orphaned children with HIV/AIDS.
The age of the children in its care ranges from the early days of birth to 14 years old.
The institutionlegally adopts the children and takes care of their education andall expenses.
To adopt orphaned children who live with HIV/AIDS and lack any kind of resources and provide them housing and complete care.
To takeprevention measures to help reduce HIV/AIDS infection rate in Mexico.
To provide spiritual and psychological support to children and adults living with HIV/AIDS.T
he
Goa
ls
External AidProvided to non-orphaned children and adults living with HIV/AIDS,as well as their families.
www.casadelasal.org.mx / www.infanciasbreves.org.mx
Hospital visits - escort. Bank of drugs.Home support network.Self-support groups.