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On the Viability of a Policy for Science and Technology in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Miguel S. Wionczek
Miguel S. Wionczek*
Affiliation:
El Colegio de México
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During the National Conference on Education, Science, and Technology, held in June 1976 as part of the political campaign just prior to the change of administrations, the spokesman for the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) stated, in the presence of the incoming president of Mexico, that:

It is presently impossible to doubt the need for a policy on science and technology in Mexico. Such a policy should not base the country's scientific and technological development upon the never-ceasing imitation of the research lines and technological solutions of the advanced countries. It is necessary for us to look for our own model of scientific and technological development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , 1981 , pp. 57 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. National Conference on Education, Science, and Technology, Mexico, June 1976. Institute of Political, Economic, and Social Studies of the PRI.

2. Among other sources, consult Salvador Malo, “Cuando la leche es poca al niño le toca,” Naturaleza 7, no. 6(58), Dec. 1976, and “Suerte te dé Dios mi hijo, que el saber poco importe,” Naturaleza 8, no. 1(59), Feb. 1977; Enrique Daltabuit, Rene Drucker-Colin, Augusto Fernández Guardiola, Salvador Malo, Antonio Peña y Ricardo Tapia, “Un análisis de la actitud del gobierno respecto a la ciencia en México,” Naturaleza 8, no. 3(611), June 1977; José Warman, “La ciencia mexicana: vuelo sin instrumentos,” Nexos, no. 1 (Jan. 1978); Carlos Larralde et al., “Saber no es poder: temas de la ciencia aplicada en México,” Nexos, no. 2 (Feb. 1978); Ruy Pérez Tamayo, “La investigación biomédica en México: espejismos y prioridades,” Nexos, no. 6 (June 1978); Joseph Hodara, “El intelectual científico mexicano: una tipología,” CEPAL, June 1977 (mimeographed). Also consult newspaper reports on the Symposium on Science in Mexico, Academy of Scientific Research, 9–10 June 1977; the visit by scientists to the Palacio Nacional, 13 June 1977; and the seminar on the situation of science in Latin America and its relationship to society's problems, UAM-Xochimilco, 4 October 1977.

3. Towards the end of November 1976, an English version of the National Plan was distributed to the several hundred research centers for scientific and technological planning in both the advanced and developing countries. This was in recognition of the interest shown by these centers in the plan's preparation in the course of the extensive institutional and personal contacts established by the CONACYT between 1973 and 1976. As a result of this measure, the plan was the subject of discussion in numerous universities and research centers in the United States, Europe, and Latin America in 1977 and 1978. Consequently, the plan has been discussed much more abroad than in Mexico itself.

4. Among other sources, see Dilmus D. James, “Mexico: Recent Science and Technology Planning,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs (Mar. 1980); Fernando del Río and Salvador Malo, “Mexico,” in Daniel S. Greenberg, ed., Science and Government Report-International Almanac, 1978–1979 (Washington, D.C., 1979); and Babatunde D. Thomas and Miguel S. Wionczek, eds., Integration of Science and Technology with Development (New York, Oxford, Toronto: Pergamon Press, 1979).

5. There is not even one fairly competent history of the development of science and technology in Mexico. Apart from this, James believes that in Mexico the process of the “socialization” of science and technology is far from over.

6. Miguel S. Wionczek, “El subdesarrollo científico y tecnológico: sus consecuencias,” in M. S. Wionczek, coordinator, La sociedad mexicana: presente y futuro. Lecturas 8, expanded 2d ed. (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1974).

7. Manuel Gollás, “La planificación de la ciencia y la tecnología: el programa de acción de México,” Symposium on Science and Technology in Development Planning, Mexico, 28 May–1 June 1979, WP/18 (mimeographed). The author speaks with disdain about “eager planning [that] apart from being pretentious never counted with solid theoretical bases in either economic theory or planning” (p. 2).

8. See a severe Marxist criticism of such abuse of dependency theories in Gabriel Palma, “Dependency: A Formal Theory of Underdevelopment or a Methodology for the Analysis of Concrete Situations of Underdevelopment?,” World Development (Oxford) 6, no. 7/8(July-Aug. 1978).

9. See a statement made by the director general of CONACYT to the effect that “it is necessary to overcome the obstacles to development in the area of science and technology such as the absence of a policy for science and technology and of coordination” (Excelsior, 1 Dec. 1979).

10. These activities are known through studies and documents published by CONACYT between 1973 and 1976 that include—without counting the three successive versions of the plan—some thirty volumes, all related to the problem of science and technology in Mexico and published in four series, Estudios, Documentos, Directorios and Catálogos y repertorios bibliográficos. In 1977 and 1978—perhaps for reasons related to austerity—CONACYT did not publish any study, analysis, document, or bibliographic information on the complex problems of fostering science and technology in the conditions of underdevelopment and dependency.

11. Pointing out that the style of CONACYT's magazine “has a dangerous tendency to resemble that of Reader's Digest,” a well-known member of the scientific community observed that he hoped that Ciencia y Desarrollo “would confront the problem of the relationship between the scientific community and the government and the public administration in general.” See Cinna Lomnitz, “Ya va de nuevo: Naturaleza y Ciencia y Desarrollo,” Nexos (Aug. 1978), p. 27.

12. National Science and Technology Council, Programa Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología 1978–1982 (México, 2 octubre 1978; printed in March 1979). James, “Mexico,” states that “the manner in which the projects were selected within the Program (leaving their selection to the bodies involved in the research, and classifying them according to nine broad categories) seems to be a method that was designed to affect the strong vested interests of the current structure of power and privilege within the scientific community as little as possible.”

13. United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development, Vienna, August 1979. Monografía nacional presentada por México, A/CONF. 81/NP.48, 10 May 1979.

14. Public lecture by the director general of CONACYT at the series of conferences on the 45th anniversary of El Trimestre Económico, El Colegio de México, 25 July 1978.

15. Ley del Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología y Exposición de Motivos, Artículo 1.

16. This lack of balance between CONACYT's political clout and its financial power has also been pointed out by foreign observers. See, for example, Diana Crane, An Inter-Organisational Approach to the Development of Indigenous Technological Capabilities: Some Reflections on the Literature, OECD Development Center, Industry and Technology, Occasional Paper No. 3 (Paris, Dec. 1974); and Eduardo Amadeo, “Los consejos nacionales de ciencia y tecnología en América Latina: exitos y fracasos del primer decenio,” Comercio Exterior (México) 28, no. 12 (Dec. 1978).

17. It is fitting to reproduce here, in its totality, the only reference to the National Plan in the Program, which appeared more than two years after the plan:

At the end of the past administration, CONACYT published the National Indicative Plan for Science and Technology (375 pp.), a report that analyzed the current theories on technological development in third world countries, discussed the problems of technological dependence and offered a detailed analysis of the difficulties and advances in the development of Mexico's scientific and technological system. The latter included both a global analysis and breakdown by sectors of productive activity and by available resources. It also analyzed the different options that would permit the implementation of the theoretical model of technological development and recommended the programming of concrete activities. (P 21)

18. In the initial phase of its planning tasks (towards the end of 1974), CONACYT organized a seminar on science and technology policy in which those responsible for such policy (or participants in its formation and implementation) in Argentina, Spain, India, Israel, Japan, France, and New Zealand participated.

19. See “Bases para la formulación de una política científica y tecnológica en México,” Report to the Director General of CONACYT, Mexico, 8 Jan. 1974 (mimeographed).

20. The nonintervention pact existed from the day of the agency's birth due to the fact, among other things, that CONACYT's first director general was simultaneously a minister. Another of the ministers, and the president of the board of directors of CONACYT at that time, said in September 1972, to the author of this essay: “The CONACYT is not my business. While it does not interfere in my activities, I will not interfere with its work.”

21. CONACYT, Plan Nacional Indicativo de Ciencia y Technología (1976), p. xii.

22. The formality of the national commission's support at the ministerial level derived from the fact that in the case of the plan for science and technology—like that of many others that were considered by the president's “collaborators” to be of secondary political importance—the secretaries of state had delegated their representation in the commission to intermediate level officials whose presence at the national commission's meetings were somewhat symbolic. Their objective was primarily to demonstrate the interest that different segments of the federal government had in a policy exercise that, although autonomous, was known to have strong direct support from the president of Mexico.

23. This discovery had political implication at times, since it was demonstrated, for example, that to a large extent so-called “research units” of the public sector were dedicated to compiling all sorts of second- and third-hand data and did not have any relationship at all to scientific or technological research.

24. According to the calculations of a professor of the National Polytechnic Institute, the internal cost of publishing a work in a well-known international journal was about three million pesos—ten times more than in the United States or Israel. This was the result of a lack of training on the part of a large number of the participants in science and technology activities whose productivity was close to zero.

25. Pérez Tamayo, “La investigación biomédica,” p. 11.

26. The situation has not changed much with two events that followed the change of government: the administrative reform and the transformation of the ministry of the presidency into the ministry of programming and budget. While certain new administrative procedures were introduced, formal accounting concepts still prevail in the allocation of financial resources and no indication of an awareness of the importance of science and technology for the country's development can be detected in the budgetary process.

27. Plan Nacional, pp. 26 and 28.

28. The National Plan estimated that it was absolutely necessary for public spending on science and technology to increase by twenty percent annually in real terms. With the present inflationary conditions, such a rate of increase would be equal to forty percent annually in monetary terms.

29. “Consideraciones que hacen las instituciones de investigación científica y tecnológica acerca de los criterios necesarios para la asignación de los presupuestos de 1977,” México, 18 octubre 1976 (mimeographed memorandum to the secretary of the treasury).

30. In 1979, a high-level CONACYT official explained that earlier preoccupation with the planning of science and technology was the result of “technological trauma” and that planning was not necessary since there were no “solid theoretical bases, even in the economic theory of planning,” (Gollás, “La planficación”).

31. Apparently the same tactic was used a few months later by another group of intellectuals that visited the president to ask that he draw up a national food program. None of the five members of the group mentioned that he had participated in such a program in 1976 under the auspices of the secretary of the presidency and the CONACYT.

32. Eduardo Amadeo, “National Science and Technology Councils in Latin America: Achievements and Failures of the First Ten Years,” in Thomas B. Babatunde and Miguel S. Wionczek, Towards the Integration of Science and Technology with Development (New York, London, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979).

33. For a serious look at this topic, see, among others, “Dinámica de la ciencia, la tecnología y el desarrollo,” Statement by the U.N. Symposium on Science and Technology in the Planning of Development, (Mexico, 28 May–1 June 1979).

34. James, “Mexico,” p. 187.