Mexico in Transition

The Mexican Intellectual

One thing Mexico has in abundance is intellectuals. It nurtures some of the world?s great writers, poets, musicians, painters, and historians. The historical reviews ofEnrique Krauze, the short stories of Carlos Fuentes or Octavio Paz, the operas of Placido Domingo, and the paintings of Toledo bring joy to life. I have only admiration for each of these great individuals, and for thousands of other Mexican intellectuals. But I am concerned that as a class, they have almost completely ignored science and technology. To remain functionally illiterate in one of the world?s dominant languages is tantamount to a dual treason: of the principles that drive humans towards knowledge and of the trust placed in their ability to teach their country. Democracy, development, and social change are not possible without these knowledge components.

Beauty may feed the soul, but much of Mexico remains poor and hungry because components for building a modern economy are absent. At conferences like the Latin American Studies Association thousands of smart people discuss every subject imaginable?except science and technology. I don?t mean every intellectual should head for a lab. But some should, and the rest should be far more supportive of those who do.

Two centuries ago intellectuals read Latin and Greek, a century ago French and/or German. Then English was almost sine qua non. Intellectuals must be among the first to understand, debate, create, and transmit a new dominant language. Today the dominant language is Microsoft. Tomorrow?s will be genetics.

An intellectual class marginalized from the digital and genomic revolutions can help preserve the past, but it will be hard pressed to build the future. In 1960, when world economic output was one third agriculture, one third industry, and one third services-knowledge, low scientific literacy was not a fatal flaw for a country. There were other ways of making a living. This is no longer true. Two thirds of all value within the global economy comes from services-knowledge.

Today, countries that do not generate scientific knowledge become increasingly irrelevant, yet Mexico?s intellectuals have abdicated much interest, concern, or support for science and its practitioners. This has not been the case in the U.S., Britain, Taiwan, or Singapore where Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine, inventors with multiple patents, rocket scientists, and gene researchers are widely read, admired, and quoted.

A Long, Long Time Ago?

Mexico should have had a significant advantage in building a knowledge economy. One need only visit Chichen Itza on the day of the equinox to understand the sophistication of Mayan astronomy, mathematics, and architecture. The same is true of Tenochtitlan?s canals and drainage systems. Even during the onslaught of the Spanish conquistadors there were idealists building knowledge centers. Franciscans set up the first school for Indians in 1536 (Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco), teaching logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and medicine. The University of Mexico opened its doors eighty-three years before Harvard. Mexico City?s first printing press was uncrated ninety-nine years before its U.S. colonies? counterpart. By the end of the colonial period, over 15,000 books in Spanish and nine different indigenous languages, some with print run exceeding one thousand copies, filled libraries throughout the world.

Like most Colonial history, Mexico?s contribution to European intellectual life has been buried by a general dislike of things Viceroyal. (Enrique Krauze points out that there is no Mexico City statue of any of the sixty-three Spanish Viceroys who governed Mexico). Yet many philosophical works and ideals were on a par with those of Europe. For instance, Fray Bartolome de las Casas crossed the Atlantic eight times in an attempt to have Indians recognized as human beings. In the process he helped establish a tradition of international law and human rights that culminated with the works of the great Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez.

However, as the Enlightenment coursed through Europe changing the way people thought, Spain and its colonies remained mostly isolated. Besides that of Charles III, there were few attempts to reform educational curricula. Anglo-American productivity increased. Spain continued exporting olive oil, wine, brandy, flour, and dried fruits to its colonies. As Britain grew global textile exports, traditional cotton producers in Spanish America went broke. Quito exported 440 bales of cotton in 1768 and only 157 in 1788. Instead of helping upgrade their empire?s technology, in a desperate effort to protect their own declining industrial towns, Spanish kings ordered all colonial textile factories destroyed in a desperate effort to protect their own declining industrial towns. On November 28, 1800 a Royal decree prohibited manufacturing facilities in the Americas. By 1805 British cotton was dominant, Spain was getting poorer, and the Colonies were increasingly rebellious.

Freedom? at a High Cost

Few who led Latin America?s independence movements in the early 1800s can be called intellectuals, but some of these caudillos were inspired by scientists. Part of Simon Bolivar?s impetuous to return home was his talks with Humboldt. Domingo Sarmiento was inspired by Benjamin Franklin?s autobiography. General San Martin?s Patriotic Society included leading doctors. Unfortunately this enlightenment was mostly buried: first under the systematic Spanish repression of Creole intellectuals, and later under the pressure of keeping vast new countries together.

Despite continuous turmoil and violence some faith in science and education survived through the end of the XIXth century. Mexico?s Benito Juarez demonstrated how far a poor Indian from Oaxaca could get, given a decent education. In 1883-84 Jose Marti was running Las Americas, which published thearticles, "recent inventions- five hundred new patents," "newest telegraph machine," and "The electric brake, a curious invention." Marti concluded that a path to riches and greatness was "planting chemistry and agriculture."

Though Mexican leaders understood the importance of adopting new technologies, they did little to develop the ethos required to home grow them. Mexico?s government began installing electric street lights by companies like Western Electric and Siemens & Halske in 1881, but did not fund electrical engineering in state universities until the end of the 1880s. Applying new technology in places like Monterrey implied bringing in legions of foreign workers. The key hires at Cementos Hidalgo were from the U.S. Italians and French dominated the Compania Mexicana de Dinamita y Explosivos S.A. Vidriera Monterrey was mostly run by Americans from Owens and Libbey. However, this last company hints at what might have happened had Mexico better educated its own; the general manager was Roberto G. Sada, an MIT graduate who helped establish Mexico?s most powerful corporate dynasty.

The legacy of the Porfiriato was the worst of all worlds, alienating so many that the country bled from a revolution and de-legitimizing science led development. Being a "cientifico" in post-revolutionary Mexico brought little prestige. The brightest flocked towards political analysis, history, music, prose, painting, and poetry. This tendency survives to date. And while science powered U.S. multinationals, Mexican companies remained mostly commodity based.

The Intelligencia Today

Four years before the Zapatista rebellion broke out, the governor of Chiapas used part of his meager budget to bring together the elite of the intellectual class of his state with that of Central America. Generating new ideas and approaches was important; most people in these regions lived in poverty, faced daily insecurity, had little education, and rarely earned a living wage.

But Governor Gonzalez Garrido?s gathering did not address issues like agricultural biotechnology, computer literacy, or a knowledge economy. The themes covered were literature, theater, music, dance, painting, and sculpture. Each was relevant to the history of peoples of Chiapas and Central America, but the agenda ignored that the Mayans living in these areas had also been great mathematicians, astronomers, doctors, and botanists. There was a complete divorce between the intellectual class, the economic-scientific welfare of their constituents, and the intellectual history of the region.

Chiapas, Mexico, and much of Latin America suffer from intellectual amnesia. The Mayans used "zero" before the Hindus or Europeans did and created accurate celestial calendars. Centuries later some hope still remained for the rebirth of once great intellectual traditions. Chiapas, for example, remained part of the Capitania General de Guatemala at Independence and finally chose to secede to Mexico after a bitter debate in 1821. Those congressional records show that a key motivator for joining Mexico was science: "Guatemala has never given this province science, nor industry, nor any other utility, but has seen it with indifference."

The poverty and backwardness of Chiapas is not unique. Latin America as a whole is largely irrelevant in a science-knowledge driven global economy. In 1985 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean dedicated a hundred and forty pages to Latin America?s turbulent history, ninety-one to its rich culture, and eight to its pitiful science and technology. Within the hundreds of pages of The Course of Mexican History, there is no chapter heading or even index entry dealing with technology; science gets six pages, five of which refer to the pre-Independence period.

The Future Remains the Past?

As technology accelerates worldwide, it is easier to fall further behind. Those who misunderstand or ignore a key technology or a shift in markets may face bankruptcy. Just ask Lucent, Wang, or Xerox. Countries and their governments must be ever more technology savvy to survive. This requires a clear focus on scientific literacy among the intelligencia. Unfortunately, these themes are rarely on the agenda in Mexico, causing it economic crisis after crisis despite decades of economic reform.

Enrique Krauze, begins Mexico: Biography of Power with a quote that reflects why the country remains so strong despite centuries of violence and economic collapse but also why it is so hard for Mexico to focus on the future:

History endures in Mexico. No one has died here, despite the killings and the executions. They are alive?Cuauhtémoc, Cortés, Maximilian, Don Porfirio, and all the conquerors and all the conquered. That is Mexico?s special quality. The whole past is a pulsing present. It has not gone by, it has stopped in its tracks.

Some countries managed to remember their past while building their future. In 1975 a Korean factory worker earned about one fifth of his Mexican counterpart. But many of Korea?s leaders, students, and intellectuals focused on understanding and applying technology. By 1999, Korean patents had increased 27,260% while Mexico?s had increased 115%.

By and large, it is understanding and applying science that creates the new billion dollar corporations, pays higher salaries, and raises countries like Singapore, Korea, or Taiwan out of poverty. Yet few Mexicans realize that the green revolution was developed in the state of Morelos, and, despite his Nobel, few Mexicans recognize or include Norman Borlaugh when asked to name the great Mexican intellects.

The role of an intellectual class subsidized by a poor society should be, at least in part, to interpret, develop, and transmit key knowledge. Mexico should continue to support and revere great historians, musicians, painters, poets, or writers. But the intelligencia as a whole has to wake up and foster the development of science and technology within its rarified realm.

Juan Enríquez is the director of the Life Science Project at Harvard Business School and the author of, El Reto De Mexico: Tecnologia Y Fronteras En El Siglo XXI: Una Propuesta Radical and the forthcoming, As the Future Catches You - How Genomics and Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health and Wealth. He is also a DRCLAS research associate and a member of the DRCLAS Advisory Board.