Wonderful Women of Wyoming | Silicon Valley Turns to Mexico

American tech firms are setting up research centers south of the border, targeting an affordable talent pool they’re increasingly unable to find at home.

Maria Fernanda Lopez had a paying job lined up even before she graduated in computer systems engineering from Mexico’s prestigious private Tec de Monterrey in Guadalajara — a city broadly considered the country’s Silicon Valley — two months ago. Then she applied for another one and got it. “The salary and the amount of benefits that I have right now … I mean, it’s insane,” she says. Nearly all of her fellow students in a class of 23 already have jobs.

They’re riding a boom that could fundamentally transform Mexico’s economic relationship with the U.S. across their contentious border. For decades, American outsourcing south of the border has evoked images of factory assembly lines where agile, working-class hands put together electrical appliances or cars. Now, a whole different sector of businesses — tech companies from Silicon Valley and several American cities — are moving engineering and other technical operations to Mexico in search of intellectual talent. That, in turn, is feeding Mexico’s own startup industry and ecosystem, and changing the working culture of companies on both sides of the border.

The stock market doesn’t correlate with electoral success or failure, but Trump is right to be spooked.

Democrats will endanger your retirement fund. That was the message the president delivered Thursday, an indication of the fear on his mind the day after the Dow Jones Industrial Average freaked out about a global slowdown and dropped by 3 percent.

“You have no choice but to vote for me, because your 401(k), everything, is going to be down the tubes,” Trump said. “Whether you love me or hate me, you’ve got to vote for me.”

The roaring stock market has been a central part of the case Trump has made to this point for his reelection, along with record-low unemployment and other indications of a strong economy. It’s left his potential Democratic foes in “Yes, but” mode when talking about the economy. Yes, but wages haven’t grown as much as they used to. Yes, but Trump’s trade wars are hurting farm country.

This year, Wyoming celebrates the 150th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the state — 51 years ahead of the rest of the country.

When we think of women’s suffrage in the United States, places like New York and Massachusetts come to mind, where conventions and marches were held in support of women’s suffrage before the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. But Wyoming, a state known for cowboy culture, wide-open spaces and frontier history, has the oldest suffrage history in the entire country.

In fact, it was the first territory in the free world to grant women the right to vote. The Cowboy State, which is actually the Equality State, is home to many firsts for women throughout history: the first female governor, the first female jurors, the first town that was governed entirely by women — to name just a few. Wyoming was so passionate about its women that when it was invited to join the Union on the condition of women’s suffrage being revoked, it said, “Nah, we’re good.”