Mexico and Calderón Double Down on Digital City in Guadalajara

During the week of January 30th, Méxican President Felipe Calderón made a special trip to that nation’s second largest city Guadalajara to launch a new program: the Digital Creative City Project (gobienofederal, 2011). This project estimated to be worth US$10 million dollars is looking to attract entertainment, design, and digital art companies to the Jalisco region of México.

As Calderón enters into the final months of his presidency; he is embarking on a major push to use the sizable numbers of multinational companies that exist in Guadalajara and the surrounding Jalisco area (which happens to be México's second-largest population center) to lure major media players like Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp., the Walt Disney Company, and Sony Entertainment with the promise of sizable federal funding from the Méxican government. All of these moves will be made in order to try to put Guadalajara on the map as a major destination cog in digital media design and entertainment sector. This would enhance the region’s designation as the Silicon Valley of México.

In his 25 minute long address, Pres. Calderón touched on a wide area of initiatives, possibilities, and long-term goals in introducing the prospect of the Jalisco high-tech project (Walten and Doyle, 2012). As Calderón touched upon the various areas in his speech; the overreaching theme was the advancement of opportunities and the long reaching financial and social benefits of a successful project and what it would mean for the future of not just Guadalajara but for the entire Méxican nation. 

The entire speech can be heard at the link that I’m providing here on this blog piece. While the president mentioned international neighbor Canada often, the omission of possible partnerships with the government of the United States were clearly missing from his prepared text. This leaves one to wonder if this is another demarcation point for possible future strategic cooperation with other nations in the Western Hemisphere but not with the United States in particular.

In conclusion, Calderón's speech sets out some very interesting benchmarks in the terms of possible tremendous goals for not just the Méxican people; but for the emerging strength in terms of economics for Metropolitan Guadalajara. It will be truly interesting to see if these plans can take root and come to fruition in the policy of the next central government in México City. 

BBC. (2011, January 21). Profile: Felipe calderon. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12242685

gobienofederal. (2011). Presentation of the guadalajara digital city [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yqzySp0tLsM

TeamNAFTA. (2012). Guadalajara industrial profile[Web]. Retrieved from http://www.teamnafta.com/index.php/Market-Profiles/guadalajara.html

Walten, K., & Doyle, D. (2012, February 3). Ciudad creativa digital. Retrieved from http://www.mexipreneur.com/tag/ciudad-creativa-digital/