Are there opportunities for the young in Mexico?

Are there opportunities for the young people today in Mexico?

Some institution dedicated to the regulation of elections in the state of Sonora, has been organizing for several years now a debate between high school students. This debate revolves around political topics in order to create or increase an interest for this area. I was interested and inscribed myself for the event that took place on Tuesday April 6th. The topics and the stands we had were decided by chance; people from the institution made a raffle and came up with the results. The topic I was assigned was “Are there opportunities for the young people in our contemporary Mexico?” and I had to firmly defend that there are opportunities.
I think this is not an easy topic because opinions are divided and, badly for me, most people believe that there are no opportunities. So I decided to blog about this because I found it amazing that everybody I asked about this topic told me that Mexico can’t provide what’s necessary for the young ones to develop, and because I want to give my point of view about it. Because, well, I think they’re wrong.
Are there opportunities for the young people nowadays in Mexico? That’s my question. My question isn’t, are there opportunities for EVERYBODY nowadays? And it makes a huge difference when we learn to separate these two approaches. First of all, there is no society that can provide complete opportunities for everybody. It’s like saying, are there opportunities for everybody to win a thousand dollars in vegas? Of course not! Not everybody who goes to vegas will win that amount, but there are still the opportunities for some to achieve this. The opportunities are for those who fight for them, for those who look for them, for those who defend them and mostly, for those who really WANT them.
We just have to read the next sentences to believe there are possibilities in my country: There are 6 million students with scholarships provided by the government, plus those provided by the non-governmental system. In Sonora, in the last 6 years, more than 4130 companies have been created, which at the same time develop in 128,000 jobs, whose required profiles fit to those of young people. At a national level, in only this 3 months of 2010, there have been 138,000 jobs created.
What does this data tells us? That of course we have opportunities, but we have to look for them and prepare for them. A lot of people say: “There’s no employment, there are no jobs in Mexico”. But I’m just going to tell you one thing: there ARE jobs today, the only thing is that they’ve become more demanding and for people that’s more competent. If you want something, work for it.
I’m not going to deny that Mexico has a lot of problems, but I’ll always remember this phrase: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” - Winston Churchill.