Verónica Uribe del Águila, “Making Innovation in the Mexican Silicon Valley: The Early Years of El Centro de Tecnología de Semiconductores (1981–2001),” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 46, no. 2 (April-June 2024): 24-37.
Verónica Uribe del Águila’s article “Making Innovation in the Mexican Silicon Valley: The Early Years of El Centro de Tecnología de Semiconductores (1981–2001)” masterfully de-centres the history of computing from its typical focus on Europe and North America, while simultaneously charting the global and globalizing influence of Silicon Valley’s ideologies and work practice. Professor Uribe del Águila’s work highlights the power of “innovation” discourse as an avatar for anti-labour and anti-local business practices: Guadalajara’s El Centro de Tecnología de Semiconductores (CTS), in the Jalisco IT cluster known as the “Mexican Silicon Valley, was initially intended to support domestic digital innovation, but ultimately became a vehicle for neoliberal knowledge and value transfer from Mexico to the United States. Uribe del Águila’s masterful synthesis of business, labor, and institutional histories provides a sterling example of how the computing industry has reshaped the world to its own needs, with Mexican white-collar workers one of the many groups who have suffered as a result. This is powerful and highly topical historical scholarship, and the committee extends its heartfelt congratulations.