Interview: Meeting the Challenge of Starting Over in Mexico
Interview with Victor Hugo Flores, Office of Representation for the Promotion and Social Integration for Persons with Disability, Office of the President, Mexico
By Ilene Zeitzer
Q. Please talk about the office that you're the head of in the Office of the President. This is a new office with President Fox, is it not? So please describe how it works, what it was set up to do, what influence it has and so forth.
A. Yes, the official name is the Office of Representation and Social Integration for Persons with Disabilities. In the year 2000, when President Fox invited us to work in the Office of Persons with Disabilities, he decided to take advantage of the momentum by creating three different smaller groups within the Cabinet. One cabinet is for social matters, another one is for security, and the other one is the economic cabinet. The correct name is the Human and Social Development Cabinet. It is the one that contributes the most ministers or secretaries in this area - he created 24 different ministries in different areas involved with certain aspects of administration. Once a week they have a working meeting. In each of these meetings, there are at the table, ministers and also the head of 16 different offices, specifically created by President Fox to coordinate policies over specific issues.
National Council on Disabilities created
In the beginning, President Fox spent at least one hour with each of us and we were asked to develop a master plan. In those meetings we had the responsibility to present what we were going to do, how we were going to do it, and with whom. Our office, the office that coordinates public policy towards disabled people, asked in one of these meetings that each ministry develop one specific program including or focusing on disabled people. There is a very close relationship, between President Fox and the Office of Persons with Disabilities. President Fox also had a very close relation with different ministries, but mainly with five specific secretaries: the Health Secretary, the Labor Secretary, the Education Secretary, the Communications and Transportation Secretary, and the Secretary for Social Development. As a matter of fact, within two months, my office created the National Council on Disabilities in which these five ministries are members and support it.
Q. So, the Ministers of Education, Communication and Transport, Labor, Social Affairs, and Health are all part of the National Council on Disability?
A. Yes. Each Secretary is assigned a specific Vice Ministry so they can operate or be responsible directly for the operation of this National Council. With these five Ministries or Secretariats we developed inside the Council five different programs that didn't exist before. We created a program for prevention and rehabilitation inside the Ministry of Health for all the national health system. The health system in Mexico is composed of five main institutions: the Social Security Mexican Institute; the Social Security for the Workers of the State i.e., federal workers; the health system specifically for Mexican Petroleum (PEMEX); and the health systems for the Navy; and for the Army. In this health system, we are trying first to create a system that enables doctors to become more aware about disabilities and how to prevent disabilities and also to ensure that the hospitals are accessible to disabled people. In order to develop this strategy we created a specific council inside the health system, namely the National Council to Prevent and Rehabilitate Disabilities. And there is also a head person responsible for each area of health who was given the responsibility to develop a plan for the next six years. The main strategy of the office was generally not to create or develop brand new programs, but instead to assign to each Ministry the main function that it should have and to work with them to resolve the issues or areas. For instance, we decided that we were not going to develop anything [new] regarding health or education, but rather that we would coordinate with the Ministry of Education so that they should become directly responsible for disabled people's education policy.
Latest focus: self-employment in rural areas
Actually, now, three and a half years later, we have stopped creating new programs. We already have each program in place now, so we are just following up on each of these programs that we created within the National Council, with the health area or the education area and people with disabilities. As a matter of fact, we created not only five but seven national programs. The last program that we developed was launched on September 5, 2003 and it was a rural area program to support persons with disabilities. This program comes with a change in the law for the specific Ministry that handles all the rural area and agriculture area and the Congress assigned to this specific program about $250 million. This program we are promoting is for the persons with disabilities that live in rural areas -- small areas in the country. It provides training, it provides technical support - the ministry pays someone to give training and also pays for an office to staff technical assistance to specific projects and to buy equipment.
Q. This training is for employment or this is all kinds of training?
A. It is a specific training, in order to create abilities in people to develop their own project. So they submit a project, and so they say, for instance, "I want to grow mushrooms. But to cultivate mushrooms, I need this. But I never had anything to do with mushrooms [before]." So they are given specific technical assistance, they train them how to grow mushrooms, how to grow the business and be accountable, how to develop the technology so they can meet a specific ambition.
Q. So skills development?
A. Yes, but this project not only supports agriculture for livestock and other types of farming, but also supports projects in skill development in services, starting a shop, or another type of enterprise, any kind of job development.
How new programs are being set up
Q. So this is all through the Council that you have created? The funding comes through the National Disability Council that has been created, is that right?
A. No. Each ministry comes with us to the National Council, and at the National Council, I think we missed that, we have 10 different working groups so we can sit down with people with disabilities, Disabled People's Organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations, specialists, and specific people at universities also, company people and people from each Ministry. So the organizations and persons with disabilities say, "We need job opportunities in the rural area." We start with one working group, "what do you need, how do you need it?" With this group, people will create a specific program and so the representative of the Ministry says, "Here we have this proposal for a program. In order to do it, we have to change this, and this and create this." So they talk about it and figure out what they have to do, then they do it and they announce that they have a program. Then the Ministry does what they have to do in order to get the results that they need from Congress and then they start applying the program.
Q. So you actually influence the programs the various Ministries create?
A. Yes.
Q. But you're not creating the program per se you're going to the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Agriculture or whatever and saying, "We're told by the disabled people organizations that you need to create a program that trains people on how to operate their own shops (or whatever it is)"?
A. Yes, exactly, that is one area where we are active. But, we are also trying to get all of the objectives moving toward the same goal or place. Prior to the creation of our office, a lot of things were being done for disabled people, but everyone made them or created them without any common objective. Now with the new office, we have told them that we are creating a common objective -- social integration of disabled people on the grounds of social development, not just on the basis of health matters or assistance.
Research and studies?
Q. Do you do any studies? Do you actually commission any research studies or anything of that nature?
A. We do not have the economic resources to hire the staff to create a specific study or investigation. But, if anything is working we try to take advantage of it, what isn't working we see if we can create something new or try to reshape it. So there were different studies that were being done through the years. For instance, in the Education Ministry, we had an agreement with the Spanish Government and they gave funds between the Education Ministry of Mexico and the Spanish Government to create a national investigation. When the results were ready, we came along with the Council, we invited the Education Ministry and then we consulted with all the Disabled People's Organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations about the results and the focus of this specific proposal or program. We are taking considerations in education, particularly in special education and in disabilities. And that's what we are trying to enhance, but you have to take into account that we are a transitional government, so a lot of things that were done in the past were kind of too complicated to be taken again. Because, for instance, the person that coordinated the entire educational area for Mexico in the past, she was the head of the Mexico City area, and somehow politically she became a very powerful person and developed a lot of strategies, but she was at the same level as the State Education Secretary. So now we have a new law, a transparency law that says that we should do what the law says, not what is convenient politically. So we developed the program and now all the states are working together with the same objective.
Another thing that we do is those responsible for each program ask us for specific support to talk with the Minister or the Secretary to resolve issues, in the development of a project or to start a new activity. Those responsible for this program, although it is a very important program, do not always have direct communication with their own Secretary, they are on different levels. One of my main tasks is that I can open the channel because I am the only one who is on the Secretaries' calendars. I speak with the Secretaries every week, every now and then I have in person meetings with them, so I learn what's happening with the program and report directly what's going on. I help with that by internal lobbying, with solutions.
Impacting policies: three different 'moments'
Q. Can you point to some ways in which the creation of this office has changed policy, impacted policy?
A. Yes, we can see in Mexico three different moments. The first moment was when the public council for disabled people was created, or funded, as social assistance. The second moment was when the office, the social assistance office, started creating and assigning specific problems to different ministries so that the public policy for disabled people is not only the responsibility of one area as it used to be, but is in different ministries. So it's a very balanced strategy, not a burden, but a strategy and task among different ministries. Our concept specifically now is that the public policy towards disabled people cannot be solved by only one institution, as in the past, now we can assign a specific task and strategies for different Ministries so we can come up with a better and integrated solution. The third moment that we see in the future of Mexico is that these programs should become long-term programs and that Mexico shall have a law for disabled people. This concept will guarantee that each Ministry will not have isolated efforts to deal with disability, but integrated and coordinated efforts and strategies, plans and programs for the long-term. In this scenario it is quite possible that this office will disappear at some point because it will have done what it was meant to when it was created and it won't be needed anymore.
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