Expatriate of the Month

Each article in this series features an interview with an expatriate living in Mexico. SolutionsAbroad has sat down with many fascinating and successful expats who have made Mexico their home. They share their experiences and offer advice to newcomers in Mexico.

Tim Parsa 

CEO of Nova Azteca, Film Maker, Writer, Contemporary Artist

Tim Parsa came from New York to Mexico almost ten years ago to work for Grupo Salinas which is headed by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, the third-richest man in the country. In his own words Parsa is "a crazed, psychotic multitasker," CEO of several companies, film-maker, writer, soon-to-be contemporary visual artist and a self-proclaimed heterosexual. He's also an avid fan of polo so much so he owns 15 horses and can name each of their names off the top of his head (and in alphabetical order). Parsa took time out from his chronically congested schedule to talk to SolutionsAbroad.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am a heterosexual male, raised and schooled in the U.S. and driven to make both art and money. I think those are probably, in order of importance, the salient facts. More specifically, although less relevant, I am single, divide my time among Mexico City, New York City and San Francisco and dedicate my waking hours to writing, making movies and starting and running companies for an extremely wealthy Mexican entrepreneur. I just turned 39.

As an expat living in Mexico on an expat package do you feel you´re in a privileged position.

There is a dirty joke that a less discrete interviewee might construct out of the phrases "expat package" and "privileged position," but I resist the temptation. And so:

My Fabulous Job

I am employed by Grupo Salinas, a Mexico-based business group that includes TV Azteca, Elektra, Banco Azteca, Iusacell and Unefon. Basically my job is to think up ways we can make money from new technologies—either applying them to existing businesses or basing new businesses around them. So, for example, I figure out how to use the internet and cell phones to enhance TV Azteca´s principal broadcast television business. I created a business out of pre-paid dial-up internet called Todito Card. I also am in charge of developing new content for TV Azteca through a production house called Azteca Nova that I founded. In Azteca Nova we develop films and television programs, as well as hybrid content concepts that incorporate TV, internet and cell phone-based content. Whenever there is a weird new business idea or new technology in the group, it usually gets thrown my way.

My Enormous and Ever-expanding Package

My compensation is tied to the results I produce and is competitive with what I would earn in the U.S. working in a similarly large business group. Every year I renegotiate my compensation based on the businesses I am running or the projects I´ve been asked to develop and I try to tie my upside to the upside of the people I work for. I have learned to really despise high fixed salaries that people earn whether they produce results or not.

My Amazing Serendipity

I know without the slightest doubt that I am in a privileged position and have been since I was born. I had enough to eat, parents that pushed me to develop my abilities, and was raised in a culture that rewards effort and talent and where ambition, creativity and hard work are core values. I went to Yale for my undergraduate degree in biology (I come from a family of doctors), a ludicrously expensive institution, half of which my parents paid. I went into debt to attend law school at New York University after living for two and a half years in Guatemala as a Peace Corps volunteer. Having learned Spanish in Guatemala, I joined a big law firm in New York City after graduation from law school and was assigned to work on TV Azteca´s initial public offering. That is how I came to work in Mexico City; I moved here in October of 1997.

The Peace Corps was an experience that really opened my eyes to the basic factors that influence success and failure. Smart Kids + Poverty = Few Opportunities. I had seen it before in New Haven where I participated in the Big Brothers/Little Brothers program mentoring kids from poor and usually fatherless families. But when you live in a poor community you really see how things like poor nutrition and crappy infrastructure can impact people´s lives on a day-to-day basis. But you don´t have to live in a village of subsistence farmers to understand that 99% of the people in the world lack the basic conditions to potentialize their genetic endowment and/or the opportunities to fully exploit whatever abilities they do manage to develop.

A huge part of my success can be chalked up to being born to the right people at the right point in the history of the human race and on the right part of the planet. I have little time for those who are given huge opportunities and don't take advantage of them or those who act as if their success were due solely to their worthiness and determination. Mexico is a good example of a place where a classist culture and extreme poverty severely limit the possibilities of millions of people.

Does Mexico offer a lot more opportunities for expats than in their home countries especially if they come from first-world countries?

I think that is more perception than reality. My sense is that the foreigners who hit the ball out of the park (economically or artistically or any other way) in Mexico would have done as well eventually on their home turf. Likewise foreigners who have mediocre existences in Mexico City probably would have been equally mediocre in New York or London. You just wouldn´t notice them as much and maybe they´d feel a bit worse about their situation than they do outside their home culture.

What I think Mexico City does offer to foreigners is the possibility to reinvent yourself and to try new things. Part of that freedom is due to the lack of context that is inherent in living outside your society and without many peers. It means you aren´t so easily pigeon-holed by yourself or others. Part of it is also due to the fact that everything is done so badly in Mexico City in general that it's not as daunting to try your hand at activities that back home would have seemed to lie in the unapproachable realm of credentialized experts. I would never have started making movies if I had stayed in New York. Nor would I have opened a restaurant. But in Mexico City there is a sense that as bad as whatever you try turns out, it won´t be as bad as some of the stuff that is already out there. I guess that means there are more opportunities for foreigners but they are necessarily self-created opportunities born of individual initiative rather than ones that are bestowed upon expatriates by Mexicans. In my case, it's been grand—the first short film I made in 2003 went to Sundance and my bar/restaurant, Cibeles, is one of the coolest places to get a drink or a pizza in this entire fetid megalopolis.

I think a lof of the expatriates I meet in Mexico City are just flailing and would be much better off going home.

Bring on the hate mail! (all responses should be addressed to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Was the end of the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) a good thing for Mexico? And in particular a good thing for Todito.com?

The change was certainly good for Mexico, although I think the decline of Mexico´s PRI-dominated sham democracy is merely the overture to the establishment of a representational government for all Mexicans. It´s going to take a while to break old political habits. The minority ruling class is very cynical. The poor masses are very resigned. There is not enough competition and too many people are too ok with the status quo on both ends of the socio-economic spectrum.

Todito.com was one of the first projects I set up back in 1999 during the internet boom. I was a lawyer learning how to do business and it was exciting. At one point this little web portal we put together was valued at US$800 million. It turned out not to be such a good business for reasons too numerous and boring to elaborate in this space. So, I don´t think the 2000 election had any impact either way on that business; we are in the process of shutting it down. However, Todito did give rise to Todito Card—a multi-service pre-paid card that can be used for dial-up internet, long distance phone calls and online payments. That is a very cool and innovative and successful business. I no longer run Todito Card but am on the board of directors.

Apart from being the CEO of several companies, you're also a published writer, were an editor for Details magazine, and had a film at Sundance. Would you describe yourself as a Renaissance Man or just your Average Joe?

Maybe it should be: Average Joe Renaissance Man with a Fabulous Package.

I think I am an example of a growing phenomenon of active minds using new technologies to pursue multiple interests. Perhaps I am more curious about the world than most. When I enjoy something, I usually want to learn how to do it, be it a restaurant or a movie or a short story or an art installation. The history of our species up until very recently has been about specialization and division of labor with individuals subordinating their identity to the identity of their clan, tribe, state or nation. The world rewarded individuals for becoming very good at one thing and becoming the local supplier of their specialized product or service. So you were the hunter, then you were the farmer, then you were the doctor, then you were the hand surgeon.

But then came all these new technologies—the internet, cheap digital image-making equipment—and the barriers came crashing down with regard to researching about activities that interest you or sharing the fruits of your creativity or communicating with like-minded individuals or creating still or moving images. I think this is causing people like me with active imaginations and discipline and a will to achieve to, as Walt Whitman said, contain multitudes. I started out as a writer, but now I feel like I am also a business guy and a film maker. I am doing two large-scale art projects and so I guess I will soon also contain a contemporary art dude as well. I think increasingly the world rewards multi-tasking, multi-dimensional, multi-media productivity more than it does specialization.

I´m bored by people who come across as Average Joe and feel sorry for anyone who refers to themselves as such. Then again, I think anyone who refers to themselves as a Renaissance Man probably deserves a smack to the head.

You were also behind the vitriolic column El Pinche Gringo for Chilango magazine. Do you find the expatriate world, especially in Mexico City, an amusing affair?

I published a monthly column for about two years in Chilango—I think I stopped last June. I originally did it as a favor (although I was paid a decent fee for each column) for my friend, John Reuter, who has done an amazing job as the CEO of Grupo Expansion, the magazine group that publishes Expansion, Chilango and Quien, among other periodicals. But I really got into it from the very first column. It gave me a chance to write about Mexico City from an outsider´s point of view and so comment acerbically on issues that Chilangos don´t even notice but that are really quite shocking and telling of Mexico City culture: the rampant racism, stunted sexuality, crappy contemporary art scene, homophobia, attitudes toward drugs, lack of civic ethos, etc. I stopped writing the column because I wanted to dedicate more time to writing short stories and because of the careless and amateurish editing and copy-editng at Chilango. They would publish the column without correcting my spelling and punctuation errors; sometimes the editors would add some of their own. It started really pissing me off and so I decided to stop. Anyone interested can find all of the columns (typos included, sadly) at www.pinchegringo.com.

In my columns, I didn´t write principally about the expatriate world (though I remember a great one about sex and expatriates that was very amusing), but rather from an expatriate perspective. I do indeed find the expatriate world inherently comic and interesting. There is comedy in the tension between foreigners and locals, as well as between expatriates and tourists. I like the knowing insider quality of long-term expats who are intimately familiar of the best and worse that their adopted city offers. It´s a sub-culture with its own customs and dialect and values. I like the different sorts of expatriates and how their archetypes vary—from the boozy journalists to the uptight diplomats to the vulgar business guys to the crusty backpackers to the expats that have gone completely native and won´t even deign to talk to other expatriates. I think there is a lot of self-delusion among expats as to what their life in Mexico City means—a lot of self-referential mythology and a great dearth of self-awareness—that is really hilarious. You get these foreigners living extremely mundane lives but you can tell that because they are in Mexico City they feel like buccaneers.

Any thoughts on the Baby Boomer phenomenon that is occurring in Mexico? Do you see yourself living out your twilight years here?

I guess that is more a phenomenon in Baja California and Puerto Vallarta and San Miguel de Allende. I think it´s an interesting trend, one that is driven by the same forces that cause so many Mexicans to risk their lives to cross the border into the U.S.—cheap labor. I think it's unfortunate for Mexico that because of poor government policy and lack of competition that so many Mexicans have to spend their lives cleaning the toilets of gringos, whether the toilets are located in New York City or San Miguel. I am writing a play about a nursing home for gringos in Mexico—a radioplay, in fact, for the BBC world service.

I doubt I will live full-time in Mexico much longer, although I will likely make movies and television programs and consult on businesses here over the next five years. I don´t know where I´ll spend my twilight years. I find the concept of twilight years to be silly. Your mind either works or it doesn´t. If it does, then hopefully it will be high noon until it is moonless night, that is to say, until you cark it.

How do you see Todito advancing in the coming years?

I imagine Todito.com will disappear completely by the end of the year, it´s most popular services merged into an expanded Tvazteca.com that is the principal web strategy for TV Azteca.

Todito Card will probably be sold by the end of the year to a group that is interested in expanding the business into rechargable pre-paid debit cards.

What's it like working for one of the richest men in Mexico? And related to that, does it suprise you that the richest man on the planet now is a Mexican national?

Working for Ricardo Salinas has been one of the luckiest events of my life in terms of economic and creative opportunity and in terms of learning how to start and run businesses. Ricardo is a brilliant businessman and a ballsy risk-taker. He inherited the Elektra business and grew it from forty stores to over 1,000. He transformed Mexican culture and politics by offering an alternative to Televisa when he bet money on TV Azteca. Working for him has taught me a lot. I am very lucky.

The fact that Carlos Slim is now at the top of the heap says a lot about how clever he is and also speaks volumes about how little competition there is in Mexico. Like Ricardo Salinas, Señor Slim has taken big bets on the future of Mexico and those bets have paid off. People decry his stranglehold on key sectors of the economy, principally telecommunication, and without a doubt one of the reasons that Mexico´s economy grows so slowly is due to the lack of competition caused by Slim´s virtual monopoly on cell phone service, broad band internet and long-distance telephony. But that isn´t the only problem, nor do I see it as the biggest drag on the spread of prosperity in Mexico.

A bigger problem is the ridiculous amounts of corruption, incompetence and inefficiency at every level in Mexican government. Then comes the huge, corrupt and inefficient unions that control education and oil production and distribution in the country. Then you have the state-run petroleum industry itself, whose incompetence and corruption and sheer cynicism is so staggering and flagrant as to be comical. No advantage will come of, say, breaking up Slim´s control of the telecommunications sector if reform isn´t carried out in all these other areas. And, anyway, who has the strength or the balls to wrestle the golden goose from the iron grip of the richest man on the planet? In my opinion, Slim should be faulted for not using his massive influence to reform Mexico´s government, unions and petroleum sector. Let him keep all his money, but let him use it to crush the bureaucrats and bloodsuckers that are causing Mexico more and more to resemble Bangladesh.

What advice would you give to a virgin expat coming to Mexico?

Learn the language. Try new things. Don´t do too many drugs. Work hard. Drink tequila. Eat tacos. Stay away from the embassies. Invite friends to visit. Travel around the country. Try to make Mexico City a better place while you are here. Don´t stay forever. Go to Cibeles (Plaza Cibeles in the Colonia Roma).

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