Ten Keys to Boosting Cultural and Creative Industries in the Productive Strategies of Southern-Southeastern Mexico

Context

The cultural and creative industries (CCI) of Southern-Southeastern Mexico — encompassing the states of Yucatán, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Campeche — represent significant potential for territorial economic development. The region concentrates exceptional cultural wealth, with artisan traditions, emerging audiovisual production, and a diverse creative ecosystem that nonetheless faces structural barriers to full integration into state productive strategies. As part of a collaboration between the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and UNIT, the aim was to identify the critical factors that allow CCI to be articulated with economic development policies at the subnational level.

Challenge

Despite its cultural wealth, the states of Southern-Southeastern Mexico lacked effective mechanisms to incorporate CCI into their productive development agendas. Cultural and economic policies operated in a fragmented manner, without spaces for intersectoral coordination. Creative enterprises faced obstacles related to formalisation, market access, capacity development, and financing. The lack of strategic data on the sector and the absence of aligned incentives made it difficult to prioritise CCI as an engine of territorial economic development.

Approach & Methodology

The study was developed as part of the Southern-Southeastern ICC Executive Roundtables project, implemented by UNIT for the IDB between 2023 and 2024. The research combined analysis of roundtable implementation in three states — Yucatán (audiovisual sector), Oaxaca (artisan sector), and Chiapas (artisan sector) — with a review of international and regional good practices. The process included territorial fieldwork, interviews with creative ecosystem actors, analysis of current public policies, and systematisation of lessons learned from more than 200 participants and 80 institutions involved in the roundtables.

Key Findings & Results

The ten keys are organised along two dimensions. In the institutional domain: committed political leadership, dedicated institutional capacity, incentives aligned with the creative sector, strategic use of data, and integration of CCI into strategic economic and tourism agendas. In the creative ecosystem domain: capacity development and professionalisation, formalisation of creative enterprise, multi-channel commercialisation, promotion of associativity, and building of public-private alliances. The report also identifies five emerging opportunities, including the audiovisual sector, the artisan sector, tourism linked to the Tren Maya, and new technologies.

Significance & Implications

This report offers a practical, evidence-based framework for subnational governments and cooperation agencies to integrate CCI into their productive development strategies. The keys identified are transferable to other territorial contexts in Latin America where CCI represent an underutilised strategic asset.

Key Takeaways

1. Integrating CCI into productive strategies requires political leadership, dedicated institutional capacity, and aligned incentives.
2. The strategic use of data about the creative sector is fundamental for prioritising interventions and measuring the results of development policies.
3. Formalisation of creative enterprise and access to multi-channel commercialisation are necessary conditions for sector sustainability.
4. Associativity among creative ecosystem actors multiplies the impact of interventions and strengthens collective bargaining capacity.
5. Public-private alliances and intersectoral coordination are key enablers for connecting CCI with territorial development agendas.