Awhite paper lays out the figures in black and white: The trans-border region between the U.S. and Mexico contains four U.S. states and six Mexican states. The 1,952-mile (3,141-km.) border accommodates US$300 billion in trade flows annually. The region contains 83 million people. And it has a combined GDP ($3.3 Trillion) equivalent to 25 percent of total U.S GDP.
The white paper is authored by leaders of a new alliance seeking to establish a bi-national economic development zone in Brownsville-Matamoros. The regional challenges are also listed in black and white: drug cartel violence; stagnating employment growth (especially in Mexico); undocumented border in-migration to the U.S.; and an epidemic of obesity and diabetes.
The group, led by United Brownsville with support from the City of Brownsville, the Brownsville Public Utilities Board and the Brownsville Economic Development Corp., includes City of Matamoros Mayor Alfonso Sanchez, architect Roberto Máttus and Sergio Arguelles from Imagina Matamoros. It also includes Patton Boggs partners Read McCaffrey and Aubrey Rothrock in Washington, and Carolyn McIntosh in Denver; Robin McCaffrey (Read’s brother) and Carissa Cox of MESA Design Associates; and Dr. Juan Hernández, who served as U.S.-Mexico Partnership for Prosperity project coordinator under Presidents Vicente Fox and George W. Bush.
“It’s not two communities, it’s really one,” says Hernandez on the phone from Guanajuato. “You have the mayor of Matamoros who went to high school in Brownsville. People just go back and forth. Ask them about the border, and they say, ‘What border?’ other than the artificial one that Washington and Mexico City created.”
Hernandez says it’s about more than a free zone. “We’re talking about a community becoming the community it believes it is. To have this David against Goliath project, with these two little cities wanting to do what the federal governments have not been able to do, would benefit all of us.”
The push comes at a politically opportune time, as the Merida Initiative High-Level Consultative Group, led by secretaries of state of both nations, issued an April statement that included this plank: “Developing a secure and competitive border for the 21st century, that assures efficient and secure flows of legitimate commerce and travel while ensuring citizen safety and disrupting the illicit flow of drugs, weapons, bulk cash and other goods.” Among recent border infrastructure improvements the group cites was the establishment in 2010 of new international ports of entry at Donna, Texas-Rio Bravo City, Tamaulipas; and San Luis, Arizona-San Luis, Rio Colorado, Sonora.
“Some experts tell us that the drug cartel, the bane of border existence, doesn’t really enjoy being in areas where there is robust economic development, because there is no place to hide,” says Read McCaffrey, co-chair of Patton Boggs’ international practice and a senior partner in the firm.
The Brownsville-Matamoros group’s Bi-National Economic Development at the Border (BINED) concept suggests amending several programs and treaties in order to establish a sub-zone within currently recognized designations. It also calls for “considering the heretofore bifurcated city as a single social and economic entity with regard to capital improvements and ending the current approach to capital improvements that continues to dramatize and memorialize separation and differences.”
“Take a look at the satellite image,” advises Mesa Design’s Carissa Cox. “It doesn’t take much to see these two economies aren’t really effectively integrated. The infrastructure systems aren’t integrated, so that will affect commercial exchanges as well.”
“What is really needed here is not another treaty, but the creation of a physically demarcated area in which physical investment can be made,” says her Mesa colleague Robin McCaffrey. “It’s project-oriented rather than program-oriented,” says Cox. And for every degree of specificity gained in the planning, the perceived pre-development risk is lessened for major developers interested in the Brownsville-McAllen corridor, which McCaffrey calls one of the fastest-growing areas in the country.
“It’s always mired in political debate,” says McCaffrey of the border, “but everyone understands investment.” Redefining the proximity of these two places, he says, will create opportunity for that investment. “Instead of a gateway,” adds Cox, “a destination.”