Silicon Valley for Indian men and Silicon Mountain for Latino women

Young Indian men are excited by the ¨Intel inside¨ sign on the computers which have opened a new window of opportunity for them to connect to, compete with and conquer the world.
The Latin American young women want to excite men with ¨Implant Inside¨to connect to, compete with and conquer the silly guys.

Costa Rica caters both to the ambitions of the up and coming young Indian men and the up and booming bosoms of the Latino women.

Intel Corporation has two plants in Costa Rica and is responsible for a shift in the country's top exports, from coffee and bananas to electric and electronic products. Electronics is now Costa Rica's largest sector with Intel as the largest player. The industry employs 12,000 and exports US$1.65 billion in products a year. The local support industry for Intel alone reflects a base of 460 suppliers and US$50-150 million in local purchases of goods and services per year. The relatively small size of Costa Rica to receive an investment of the dimension of Intel's (US$300 million or equivalent to 2.1 percent of Costa Rican GDP), over two years in 1997 with a total committed investment of about US$600 million, made Bob Perlman, one of Intel's vice presidents, declare that bringing his company to Costa Rica was like "putting a whale in a swimming pool".


After the success of Intel Inside, the next slogan coming out of Costa Rica is Implant Inside. In the first six months of this year, the country exported 134 million dollars worth of silicon implants, seventy percent of which are used to enlarge women´s breasts. Allergan, the silicon implant maker in Costa Rica is the second largest exporter of the country.

According to a report in today´s Argentine newspaper Clarin, the average age of women in the country seeking breast implant is 25. The increase in imports of breast implants last year was forty percent. In a night club called as Sunset in the Olivos suburb of Buenos Aires, they have raffles to choose the winner who gets a free breast implant. Such raffles are becoming popular in other cities too. The name of the Raffle is ¨Quiero mas lolas¨which means ¨want more lolas¨. The original organizers of the event has got this title even patented. Lola was the name of a popular Argentine soap opera in which the heroine is endowed amply.

¨Sin tetas no hay paraiso¨( without tits there is no paradise ) is the title of a Colombian soap opera currently being released in Argentina. The heroine Catalina finds it necessary to increase the size of her breasts to engage the attention of the men.

There is a debate on this subject in Argentina among plastic surgeons, psychologists and social scientists. There are those who are against this practice of cheap raffles encouraging young women to go under the knife to get men under their influence. But someone took the view that this is social justice, which provide opportunities for the have-nots to ¨have more¨. Otherwise it was the haves who had the means to have more. The entry fees, the women pay in these night clubs is between 4 and 10 dollars while the cost of breast implant is between 2300 and 4000 dollars.

The craze for silicon implants is the same story across the region, although Argentina is in the vanguard of social justice for the have-nots to have-more through cheap raffles. Latin America leads the world in breast implants and cosmetic surgery. Even American and European women come to Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina for front enlargements.

So here is something common between India and Latin America... silicon.

Indian men seek faster chips to conquer the silicon valley while the Latino women ask for bigger silicones to conquer the silly men.

Silicon has helped India succeed in the back-end work outsourcing, while it has made Latin America leader in the front end operations.