BINATIONAL ECONOMIC BORDER DEVELOPMENT SCHEME IS A FRONT FOR UNITED BROWNSVILLE'S HIDDEN HAND

By Juan Montoya
We have railed here in the past about what we see as the mistaken approach by South Texas communities to economic development.
Now, under the guise of the high-sounding name of the called the Bi-National Border Economic Development  Trojan horse, the ususal suspects – IBC's Fred Rusteberg, Ambiotec's Carlos Marin, Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez, FINSA's Sergio Arguelles, and UTB's Juliet Garcia – are in the process of hijacking the direction of this region's economic development to benefit a select cabal of their fellow travelers.
The elected officials of Matamoros – notably the new mayor Leticia Salazar –are being assiduously courted by these same players to bring them on board and approve of their economic development plan which sounds suspiciously of the same gruel with a different package.
The look and feel of this "new" approach sounds suspiciously very much the same message that Rusteberg's Imagine Brownsville and Arguelles Imagina Matamoros have been hawking using public-generated funds without having had to go to the electorate and asking them if this is where we really want to go.
It is noteworthy to see that Mayor Salazar has never been invited to a conference at Brownsville City Hall. However, even before she took office as mayor-elect, she was invited to a meeting of these same groups at Rancho Viejo, where Rusteberg resides, to meet with Martinez, Marin, U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, and others.
This last meeting was held at the Gran Salon at UT-Brownsville, the fiefdom of Juliet Garcia, a cog in the Rusteberg shadow government machine.
At these meetings, Salazar undoubtedly thought that she was attending an officially sanctioned conference where Rusteberg, Marin, Martinez, et al were representing the wishes and interests of the residents of Brownsville.
And what did the like of the technocrats brought in by Martinez and United Brownsville have to tell us?
Read what the reporter of the local daily reports and read between the words.
"Robin McCaffrey, an urban planner and principal emeritus with MESA Design Group, said physical infrastructure — roads, rail, the port — is a big part of BNED, which is about nurturing clusters of industry and repositioning Brownsville and Matamoros to capitalize on changes in the world economy."
It is, they said "a fledgling effort to unite the Brownsville and Matamoros region as a single, coordinated economic machine driving prosperity on both sides of the border."
“It becomes a more organic economy,” McCaffrey said. “A bi-national city in many ways emerges.”
For instance, manufacturing is moving away from Asia into Mexico. The idea is that by combining cross-border logistics with inexpensive U.S. energy and cheap Mexican labor, the Brownsville-Matamoros border region can make itself attractive to manufacturing investment and thus capturing a portion of the “pass-through” economy — goods or raw materials that pass through here on their way to somewhere else.
This is new?
For the past three or four decades, the runaway manufacturers leaving the United States have preached that if we move our manufacturing base outside the United States and allow the corporations to reap the profits using cheap Mexican labor, those of us on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande will profit from the "trickle down" effects of them reaping their windfall of profits.
It hasn't happened, has it?
What has happened is that we have fueled a migration to the northern Mexico cities which keeps Mexican labor cheap, and those who don't get hired merely jump across the river and seek their fortunes on the U.S. side.
That vast pool of labor make sit doubly hard for those on the U.S. side to garner wages comparable to those of their fellow citizens in other parts of the country. The ones who benefit are those who pander to the maquiladoras – mechanical and industrial engineers and corporate bureaucrats who live on the U.S. side.
The majority, meanwhile, have to compete with the large number of unemployed to get a decent job.
McCaffrey said what United Brownsville paid for him to say.
He said, for example, that European countries have been following the model since 1957 — long before creation of the European Union. He said that Matamoros and Brownsville should be doing it too.
Not so.
The only reason that  industrialists like Arguellles and opportunists like Marin have been able to push forward this failed scheme is because our elected leaders have not been able to decide what we want our economy to become. With the demise of mass agriculture, this border region cannot decide whether it wants to hitch its wagon to tourism, retail trade, manufacturing, heavy industry, international trade, or a sane combination thereof.
Into that vacuum of public policy, the maquiladoras and their adherent sat the municipal, state, and federal government buttressed by lazy academics and economic adventurers, stepped in and reaped the fruits of this negligence.
And us? We have the poorest city in the nation, the highest poverty, education and economic indicators, and the highest unemployment rates for having served as their platform for "development."
The results has been a distortion of regional and national purpose and a handing over of our economic future to opportunist parasites like Marin and Rusteberg. These are supported by the likes of Martinez and Garcia who use their publicly-funded institutions to further their aims for the crumbs that may trickle down to them personally.

Martinez smells the lucrative contracts from representing runaway corporations on the Mexican side. Garcia thinks that continuing academic courses to teach industrial engineers to service that industry and speed up the production line will keep her classrooms full will make her look good in high places.
And when those corporations think they can get the job done cheaper somewhere else in the developing world they won't hesitate to pull up stakes and split. This is a long-term economic and employment strategy we should put all our eggs in?      

Even the Obama's administrator Washington D.C.-based deputy U.S. trade representative ambassador Miriam Sapiro said the administration is very interested in developing more business opportunities with Mexico.
Last May, Obama and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced formation of the High Level Economic Dialogue (HLED) to advance commercial priorities key to promoting economic growth, job creation and global competitiveness.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs,” Sapiro said. “We cannot do enough here.”
He's right about that. After three or more decades of allowing offshore corporate investment to abandon the country and relocate to the Mexican side of the border we did create jobs, but not here necessarily.
These people – using the public's money – is selling us the same bill of goods that got us here we are in the first place.
"Es la misma gata, pero esta vez revolcada."