According to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, his participation at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum aims at placing Mexico as an attractive place to invest, re-designing the global financial system, meeting with international organizations and heads of state and government, discussing global issues, and attending three plenary sessions. Three of these five goals only require of the capacity to communicate, patience, and some appetite (there are many lunches to attend). Selling Mexico as a good place to invest and changing the global financial system require of a little more than that.
The idea of presenting Mexico as a place to invest is not new. Long gone are the days in which the world knew that Mexico was indeed a great place to invest. The years of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement put Mexico under the spotlight. It was only natural to invest in Mexico: it was close to the United States and it had cheap labor, a relatively peaceful political system and a pro-business government. Although many of these characteristics have not changed, Mexico is falling behind Brazil, China, and India; both economically and politically. In reality, Mexico is not longer a favorite of the international political economy and changing this path will require of more than the active participation of the Mexican President and four members of his cabinet and the governor of Mexico's central bank.
While Calderon is on a difficult mission at the Forum, the world and the Mexican media have been focusing on the fact that a single person working for drug cartels managed to dissolve 300 bodies and that a French citizen working for a research university was shot in the head during a robbery. These are the usual news (apart from soccer). What this means is that President Calderon has an incredible task ahead: to actually change reality in Mexico and to modify the way Mexican reality is (mis)represented in the media.
