Juan Basurto Romero

A spry and energetic septuagenarian himself, Juan Basurto has created a movement to reduce the pain and despair of aging by prolonging the productive lives of elderly people beyond the arbitrary retirement age of 65.

Armed with an indomitable spirit and a sheaf of available projects, Juan Basurto is obliging Mexicans of all ages to reconceptualize the process of growing old. He launched an organization called the Club for those who Aspire to be Happy Centenarians to mobilize retired persons and convince them that the longer they utilize their mental and physical faculties, the less likely they will be to slip into dementia, boredom, or despair. At the same time Juan is reaching out to the broader society through the media, to insist that a new demographic momentum is carrying Mexico into an era in which it will depend on the productive contributions of its senior citizens if it is to remain competitive in the world economy. Juan also seeks to create cooperative businesses for the elderly, taking advantage of existing but underused government facilities and infrastructure, and using them as a base for the development of autonomous residential complexes for older people. His goal is to create an environment of meaningful activity and dignity for senior citizens, to turn a portion of the funding that is now spent on their care into a productive investment, and thereby to constitute a model that can be applied across Mexico and in other countries that face the same challenge of how to accommodate an aging population.

Improved medical technology and the fruits of relative economic prosperity are conspiring to increase the average life expectancy of the population further and further beyond the "three score and ten" years they might have hoped for not so long ago. This is as true in Mexico as elsewhere, but since public policy is not evolving at the same pace as the human life span, mandatory retirement or age-based hiring prejudices continue to push healthy, experienced people out of the labor force long before they have finished utilizing their productive potential. Such arbitrary employment termination threatens the economic stability of people who depend on pensions or social security payments that are often insufficient to allow them to live independently or comfortably. As a result, many older people are forced to move in with family members, which often produces resentment or a sense of guilt at becoming a "burden" to their children. Such feelings are compounded by an acceleration in the deterioration of skills and mental capacity in older people who are not fully occupied.

While individuals experience a sense of economic and psychological vulnerability on being forced into retirement, the state is also obliged to invest in safety nets for those who do not have savings or families to fall back on. As life expectancy increases, the proportion of active tax-payers funding programs for the elderly will fall relative to the overall population, and governments will be ever more hard-pressed to provide for indigent senior citizens. Unless some alternative source of revenue emerges, the situation will eventually reach a crisis in which younger workers refuse to contribute larger portions of their earnings for the maintenance of inactive senior citizens.

Juan's solution to this crisis is to create employment opportunities for people over the age of 65 which will enable them to support themselves and to contribute to the national economy, rather than being a drain on it. He began several years ago by soliciting money from the state-sponsored Solidarity Program to launch a carpentry workshop for senior citizens, which achieved financial viability for a time before running into problems of scale–the workshop was simply too small to respond to the more lucrative contracts it was offered, such as the chance to repair 5,000 pieces of furniture for the Social Security administration. This experience convinced Juan that he should think in larger terms. First, he secured a donation of industrial carpentry machinery from the Yamaha Piano company. Then he began to negotiate with the government for the right to assume control of an underused vacation facility in Oaxtepec, Morelos, run by the Ministry of Labor, with a view to turning it into a residential center built around artisanal workshops and agricultural production. Economic activities would be organized as cooperatives, funded by donations, investment from the senior citizens themselves, and low-level state subsidies at the outset. Cooking, washing, and maintenance services would be performed as wage-earning occupations by senior citizens, and administrative and even medical needs would be covered by retired professionals still eager to exercise their skills.

Taking advantage of media contacts he developed through the Club, Juan ran a free full-page advertisement (in a local indigenous dialect) in a Mexico City daily asking for senior citizens interested in investing, living and working in the site he designated City of the Elderly. In less than two weeks of constant calls to his home telephone, he received over 500 responses from people who hope to participate in the project.

While he awaits approval of the donation of this (or some similar) facility in order to constitute his pilot project, Juan has introduced the Club into the broader policy debate on services for the elderly, creating the first effective lobby group in Mexico made up of senior citizens themselves, rather than their "advocates." They are already modifying plans for the construction of "homes" for senior citizens to emphasize independent living features, and they are pushing for the replacement of "recreational" activities in state facilities with productive workshops. Juan has already launched chapters of the Club in states outside the Federal District and has achieved extensive media exposure to argue his position. His plan is to replicate his residential/productive model nationally through the Club's chapters, in the hope that it comes to be seen as a viable alternative for all industrial societies confronted by the aging of their populations.

Juan spent his professional life as a medical doctor in an isolated rural area, before returning to Mexico City upon his "retirement." At the age of 62 he settled into a sedentary routine, until by chance he and his wife happened on a course of physical exercise and recreational activity sponsored by the National Institute on Old Age. As his physical conditioning improved, he became personally convinced that the best way to preserve his faculties was by using them and resolved to seek active employment again, this time outside the medical field. Taken aback by the obstacles that were placed in his way, Juan decided that if senior citizens were to extend their productive lives in the interests of maintaining physical and mental vigor and a sense of personal dignity, they would not be able to depend on any other sector to provide them with the opportunities. It was at that point that he founded the Club and began a revolution that has as much to do with changing attitudes as it does with creating work for older people.