A Silicon Valley Dream Grows in Guatemala, Despite the Risks

Guatemala’s attempt to create a local Silicon Valley. For now, it is just a single brick building called Campus Tecnológico, with workspaces, programming classes and eco-friendly signs asking people to turn off lights in unused bathrooms. But the developers’ goal is to turn this five- or six-block area in the city’s center into an entrepreneurial campus, and a residential outpost for the hip, savvy, successful and young. A zone for meritocracy — that alone would be an achievement in Guatemala. Since the first coffee boom that began around 1875, Guatemala’s economy has been defined by wild swings, cronyism and wide income disparities, with ethnic and class divisions that have mostly kept the poor poor and the rich rich. The current era of drug-fueled violence has added another challenge. Indeed, for all its left coast breeziness, Campus Tec is still a place that must be protected with shotgun-toting guards and biometric keypads that require approved thumbprints for entry.