By Carmen Rioja
In an exclusive interview with Atención, Lic. Ángel Marín Díaz, legal consultant and founder of INMTEC Legal Services, talks to us about the current challenges for Mexico and the United States.
Carmen Rioja (CR): In addition to the main branches of INMTEC, i.e., Agro, Energy, and Legal Services, what other pillars of your business can you tell us about?
Ángel Marín (AM): We look for ways to share good information in publications, sometimes as contributing columnists, and we are also working today in two magazines, “Mexico Today” and “Expat International News” that go hand in hand with” Mexico News Daily,” “Atención San Miguel,” and “Atención Bajío.”
CR: We recently saw INMTEC’s support of an event for Feed the Hungry in San Miguel de Allende. How did you achieve so much success? How long have you been supporting the community?
AM: My wife and I started the INMTEC Foundation 18 years ago. One very visible issue in Mexico was the distinction between brutal wealth—like cutting down trees for more golf courses—and poverty. I began to realize that to reach the developments we were legally supporting, I had to go through fishing villages where they no longer fished or agricultural areas where they no longer planted, much less harvested! The communities had turned into waitresses and housekeepers and their children, into dishwashers or waiters—service communities for the rich. They were losing the link to their culture, our Mexican culture.
When I realized this, it was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown at me. My pragmatic view was how I could be part of the solution. But to be part of the solution, I had to understand the bottom of the problem. And it wasn’t the expensive houses; it wasn’t the golf courses. It was the displacement without resources and without opportunity—again, loss of opportunity. So, we started with everything—here a baseball team for the ladies, a soccer team for the veterans, one for the kids, a bell for the church. Yes, yes, yes. That’s how it evolved. We began to realize that community and self-esteem were very important. And there were other factors: malnutrition, no opportunity, and empty cisterns. I began to realize something I call the broken social fabric here in Mexico. We even found cement school roofs without cement that could fall down at any moment. First, we started working on kindergarten facilities; we built decent facilities. We have built several elementary, middle, and high schools, with direct delivery to the SEP (Secretary of Education). Taking nutrition into account, we started a program where kindergarteners started to sow seeds in little cups. Then they passed them to the elementary school students, who went to our agricultural ranches and sowed them. The high school students were taking care of them, and the high school students harvested with a biodynamic vision. With our support, they organized organic markets to learn the value of work and to see the tangible benefits. They could also take home all the vegetables, and we began to see changes in nutrition and opportunity. Between computer science centers and programs like these, we ended up working with seniors who had experience in the fields, and we put them together with the kids—who already had some experience—and now they had a link. The result was a mentoring program!
CR: Where have you done this work, and what was the most troubling?
AM: In schools in the states of Nayarit, Guerrero, Jalisco, and Oaxaca. We started in tourist areas and have advanced to areas of greater need. The issue of self-esteem begins with children who had no self-esteem, no pride in their town, did not know their town or its history. If we are going to analyze it at the Mexico-United States level, we have gone hand in hand with all the benefits of the middle class and also with its discomforts. We now have digital leash kids coming from the United States. When the middle class grows up, mom goes to work, dad goes to work, and the child is left alone at home. In the 80s, there were six channels on TV. Today, who takes care of the children in Mexico? It’s the tablet, satellite TV, or cell phone. That is to say that now in poverty areas yet in housing with unfinished walls, everyone uses a TV, mobile or tablet—a total disconnection, i.e., everything that is limiting the child or that is taking away his or her opportunities. It’s even worse when combined with the economy. Let’s say that it is cheaper to give coca cola to your baby than milk and that the cornfield no longer exists. And this was my syntax for saying there is a social fabric that is broken. Of course, we can’t enter the houses. But why don’t we go to Oaxaca and recover public access to the beaches and make them dignified so the local community can enter the beach? And why don’t we make a mini-boardwalk with murals of the town’s history? This is what they were one hundred years ago, and here they are today. Then we started programs like Ciruelo limpio (clean), San Pancho limpio, Nayarit limpio, etc., involving the community. And we began to see changes: planting and reforestation of the main streets, children taking care of their areas, with no more garbage. This increased their self-esteem, and consequently, their grades in school improved. They wanted to go to school! The foundation supports a scholarship program, and we have already sent hundreds of children to university.
(To be continued)
