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): Perhaps a human right is a right to hope. In your conversation, you
tell us how young people who have no hope for the future are the most vulnerable to
organized crime. What do you think about this?
Angel Marín (MA): If you have no self-respect, how can you not have a hard time respecting
or defending a woman from violence at home or a stranger in the street? It is very simple. I
believe that the problems we have in Mexico and worldwide have been studied enough. Why don’t we change? Simply put, it is not convenient for us. The secondary effect is that we are now seeing drug addiction in our towns. At some point, Mexico was not a consumer; it was a transporter. Today there is addiction.
CR: We know the Mexican constitution is one of the best legal frameworks in history.
The problem is sometimes the impunity or the twisting of words for the purposes of
delinquency, crime, or other factors. But how can we support the legality? That is to say, where should the legal framework go in order to help young people have a better future?
AM: We have to look at two issues. One is the criminalization of drugs. I think that we can all recognize today that the so-called “war on drugs” did not work. I am not going so far as to say that we should all have access to drugs, but rather that we should have the opportunity to raise children in a town that doesn’t want drugs, to have rehabilitation opportunities, and to give them other opportunities through education and reintegrate them. I think Mexico is at its best moment.
The name of our company, INMTEC, is formed from the words Inmobiliaria Tecnificada (Tecnified Real Estate). Our beginnings were in land use modifications to enable access to surplus land in Mexico and improve agriculture. Mexico has been blessed with energy, agriculture, and tourism—all aspects that create more employment. We work in several fields.
We can talk about how we have worked with the ejidos so they do not run out of land and money in a single generation but reinvest in themselves. (Ejidos are village lands communally held in the traditional Indigenous system of land tenure that combines communal ownership with individual use.)
An example is La Peñita, one of the most productive ejidos because we taught them how to sell a part of their land and reinvest in the first Pemex gas station in their town. With growth came stores, shopping centers, and commercial growth.. In the Nayarit area, we are working on these same issues. In Oaxaca, we work with cattle and agriculture. In Guerrero, cattle, and milk have disappeared, and although Alpura is there, we are teaching small producers how to restart these activities and work hand-in-hand with consortiums.
CR: People have an idea that Querétaro is a city that had much real estate growth in the last 10 to 15 years and much of the construction and many of the developments are more speculative. What can we do to have responsible growth?
AM: First of all, it is important to mention that for me, Querétaro is a success for development. It benefited from a 50-year planning process initiated in 1970, including all the industrial corridors. But it also started from an educational system and ended in employment. In other words, it is a city and a hard-working corporate state. Other places may have received an impetus like Querétaro, but those cities have fallen behind Querétaro’s sustained growth patterns, such as San Luis Potosí with a population of 1,100,000 and Querétaro with a population of 1,100,000. San Luis Potosi has a middle class population of 24 percent, while Querétaro has grown to be 84.6 percent middle class. Querétaro is a leader for all of Mexico and a global leader as well. In Querétaro the educational and nutritional level and the lifestyle are paired with a vision—like all this natural reserve in front of us Peña Colorada—of how to take care of it and ensure responsible development. The figures I have indicate that we have enough water to continue—at least with the systems we have today—for the next four years of growth, and we are currently installing sewage treatment plants and rainwater water treatment plants to put into use. It is an avant-garde city, and, of course, change is difficult, even the beneficial changes, but we can applaud those who have guided the state of Querétaro in terms of security and economy.
The city of Querétaro has more than 240 companies with American capital, representing 34% of our strong companies. And this is just the beginning; what was built is an instrument with foundations and planning in terms of safety and traffic flow. Now Avenida 5 de Febrero is under construction, it is a necessary evil to widen the arteries, entrances and exits. Regarding the growth of Querétaro International Airport, I believe it benefited most after construction closure at the Mexico City airport. Querétaro is the bellybutton of Mexico, and in due time it will be known as the «jewel of the Mexican Crown.»
