RHI-PEREZ (OF DUBIOUS UNITED B'VILLE FAME) WAXES NICE

By Juan Montoya
There is nothing quite as revealing as the pronouncements of an academic with a hidden agenda.
This past Sunday in the Brownsville Herald, none other than University of Texas at Brownsville  associate professor of business Pablo Rhi-Perez waxed somewhat eloquently about the prospects of border business as a result of Enrique Peña-Nieto's becoming the new president of Mexico.
The fact that Rhi-Perez was a consultant on Imagine Brownsville which produced the so-called Brownsville Comprehensive Plan adopted by the city commission in 2009 and is currently consulting with the city of Matamoros on a Imagina Matamoros, a similar project, should set off red flags and alarms.
He told the Herald reporter that both plans would emphasize interacting on joint projects to the benefit of both cities. In other words, taking part in each other’s strategic plan.
Boy, that sounds nice, don't it?
But what could the municipio of Matamoros possibly contribute to that "interaction" if its mayor and his family is actually living in Brownsville out of fear for their safety. In fact, most of the former mayors and heads of the federal and state entities there have been living here as well.
"Matamoros doesn't have enough money to provide toilet paper for its public facilities," said a prominent Brownsville businessman with economic interests in the maquila industry there. "If they think they're going to get the $1 million they got out of the city of Matamoros for their Imagine Brownsville they have another thing coming."
In fact, the businessman said, the mayor of Matamoros and 10 couples spent the weekend on a gambling trip to Las Vegas and apparently prefers to spend his time spending his city's money there than worrying about Rhi-Perez's alliances.
"He had proposed to buy 1,000 used street lights from a seller in the United States for the city and couldn't even raise the money for that," he said.
One of the ideas floated by Rhi-Perez is the "creation of secure business centers" located near the bridge on either side of the border as a solution to security issues dogging Matamoros. That would necessitate the beefing up of security at all levels of government and the purchase of real estate close to the Rio Grande by the Mexican partners.
Rhi-Perez apparently hasn't heard what the business people across the muddy Rio Grande are thinking. In fact, far from having more of a federal security presence along the border, what they want is for the Mexican government to remove the unsightly soldiers with their automatic assault rifles from the bridges and ports of entry.
Just a day after Perez-Rhi made his pitch for "secure" zones along the border, Julio Cesar Almanza Armas, president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism del Estado de Tamaulipas (FECAMCO), said that as an act of goodwill toward Tamaulipas Peña Nieto should do the exact opposite and remove the military from the environs around international bridges and tourism centers in the state.
"The president should give Tamaulipas the opportunity – specially its northern frontier – to lift itself economically and one of the strategic points to realize this objective is to remove this sense of fear that is generated by the presence of the military in tourism and international crossing zones," he said.
Sounding like a hopeful foreigner eyeing the potential economic boom that will follow the discovery of massive quantities of petroleum deposits in the deep Gulf of Mexico, Rhi-Perez advocated for  "strategic partnerships between Pemex and U.S.oil companies to move the Perdido crude to refineries in Houston and New Orleans via existing seafloor pipelines.
"Peña Nieto has, in fact, said he’s in favor of opening up Pemex to more private investment to boost Mexico’s oil industry. Brownsville and the Valley could stand to gain as well," he opined.
With the actual production of the Gulf wells years in the future, it will be interests to see whether Rhi-Perez's speculation that Mexico – which has strongly rejected the intrusion of foreign capital and exploitation of its petroleum resources up to now – will suddenly acquiesce to have gringos invade its territory and most lucrative resource.

He also said that as a result of the movement of manufacturing from China to Mexico means industrial parks south of the border are "booming."
In Matamoros, the Mexican government has authorized creation of a federal innovation center for scientists and specialists in advanced manufacturing, Rhi-Perez said, adding that the same thing should be happening in the Valley.
Funny, perhaps we weren't listening well to the announcement by the Matamoros office of the Seguro Social when they announced just two days after Rhi-Perez pronouncements of the Coming Bonanza that in the Matamoros manufacturing sector only 2,800 jobs were created in 2012 instead of the 5,000 the government had projected. In fact, the Seguro Social spokesman said none of the border cities had realized their growth projections.
That hasn't deterred Perez-Rhi, however. He said that in Matamoros the Mexican government has authorized creation of a federal innovation center for scientists and specialists in advanced manufacturing, adding that the same thing should be happening in the Valley.
And while on the one hand the academic economist hails the supposed return of the manufacturing plants from Asia to the border, he also blames them for the negative impact to the U.S. economy that resulted when they left this country.
The development of advanced manufacturing technology has suffered in the United States since domestic manufacturers began moving plants overseas, he told the reporter. The upshot is that most of the innovation and implementation of manufacturing technology that was originally developed in the United State snow occurs in nations like China and Mexico.
“We don’t control the technology anymore because we don’t have the manufacturing operations located in the United States,”Perez-Rhi said.
He then went on to posit (they do that)  that this year the President’s Economic Council identified restoration of. U.S.innovation in manufacturing technology as vital to the nation’s economic security.
“In order to accelerate this aspect, there has to be strategic alliances between the manufacturing technology and the innovation technology,” he said.
Don't that sound good?
The fact of the matter is that these gestalt ivory-tower economists like Rhi-Perez hailed the coming of the North American Free Trade Agreement as the balm that would spurt an economic renaissance throughout the borderlands. What we got in return was the flight of U.S. manufacturers to Mexico and then on to China with the border chambers of commerce cheering them on and picking up the scraps while the rest of the nation suffered.
It's easy to like Rhi-Perez's siren song. In fact, his Business Economics class is a favorite of the UTB students who took his course. A full 69 percent of them got As while 31 percent of them got a B grade. There were no other letter grades.
"Easiest class ever," wrote a student glowingly.
He may be the favorite of lazy economics majors, but he's going to have to have a lot more to offer besides pretty words to convince the Mexicans.
FECAMCO's Almanza Armas put it more succinctly referring to the pronouncements that Peña-Nieto has whispered in Mexicans' ears. It could apply to Rhi-Perez's  platitudes as well.
"It is necessary that the restructuring that the government of EPN (Peña-Nieto) has proposed be profound and not only in name and letterheads, because businessmen and investors don't want to hear about pipe dreams of fictions and demand concrete results from their government." he said.