US-MEX Border-Centric Think Tank Turns 30 Sandra Dibble - San Diego Union-Tribune
go to original September 6, 2012

The cafeteria at the social science institution Colef in Tijuana bustles with some of its researchers. The center, with eight offices along Mexico’s northern border, has grown into a rich source of study since opening in Tijuana’s Río Zone in 1982. (David Maung/San Diego Union-Tribune)

TIJUANA — Few eyes were on Baja California in the early 1980s when a sociologist at Mexico City’s elite Colegio de Mexico made a novel proposal: Move border studies out of the country’s capital and go onsite to research subjects such as immigration, maquiladoras and cultural trends in Mexico’s six northern border states.

Jorge Bustamante found scant support for his idea, but enough to fund a small office in Tijuana’s Río Zone. That was 1982 — and the birth of what has grown into a key government-funded social science think tank that focuses on issues arising along Mexico’s 1,933-mile border with the United States.

It would be hard to imagine northern Mexico today without Colef, as the institution is commonly known. The think tank’s 112 researchers delve into climate change policies in Baja California, land-use planning in Nogales, the effects of open space on youth and urban violence in Ciudad Juárez, labor conditions in Matamoros’ maquiladora factories, Tijuana’s latest expressions of popular culture, Mexico’s legal protections for migrants and other timely topics that often have repercussions in Mexico and the U.S.

“What the Colef did was make the border relevant,” said Tonatiuh Guillén, its president, a 53-year-old Ciudad Juarez native and a specialist in public administration. Colef, he said, has been instrumental in bring attention to issues that were long ignored by the centers of political and academic power. Today, its eight offices make it the only research institution in the United States or Mexico with facilities all along the international border.

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