From Tex Mex to Mex Tech: A Study of Northern Inattention

In America two narratives about Mexico dominate. First, chiefly emanating from anti-immigrant ideologues who usually have never been here, holds that Mexicans have low IQs and cannot function at other than a primitive level. Breitbart News and something called Vdare are chief among these. They don’t quite expect to find all Mexicans either robbing banks or sleeping at the foot of cactuses win big hats and a burro, but they come close.

A Mexican software-engineering firm as conceived by Breitbart News The donkey is the brains of the operation as Mexicans do not have brains. Sigh. Some people need to get out more.

In stark contrast is what one hears from companies involved in high-tech fields. They speak of a large pool of Mexican engineers of high quality in everything from software to robotics. They hire them in droves. These are not assembly-line workers or even manufacturing engineers in traditional industries, such as cars. They are either in tech start-ups like Wizeline, below, or in software-development for big outfits like IBM, Intel, and Oracle, which have a large presence in Guadalajara. More on these in a later column.

The other day I want to Guadalajara to talk to Matt Pasarienski, of Wizeline, a software-services outfit based in San Francisco but with large and growing presence in Mexico. (Wizeline: “Intelligent Solutions, PPM Software, Services, and Chatbots”)

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