Jerry Pacheco: John the Baptist in the Desert Promotes Mexican Trade and Building Projects by Garry Boulard Surveying for more than a quarter of a century New Mexico’s embrace of such industries as mining, tourism and technology, Jerry Pacheco notes “Until very recently we discounted the fact that the state’s biggest, most in-your-face sustainable economic development opportunities have come with trading with Mexico.” The long-time executive director of the International Business Accelerator, headquartered in Santa Teresa, Pacheco says an observer taking note of his repeated emphasis on improving economic ties between New Mexico and Mexico likened him to a “John the Baptist in the desert in camel hair, looking kind of crazy and yelling ‘The Future is Mexico! The future is Mexico!’” Fortunately for Pacheco he hasn’t actually been seen in any part of the desert wearing camel hair, while state leaders, he says, are finally listening to his message. “I would say that Susana Martinez and our state legislature get it,” he says of Governor Martinez and lawmakers in Santa Fe who are increasingly showing an interest in both trade with Mexico as well as joint projects with the nation of 113 million people just over the border. Part of that interest has seen Martinez and Chihuahua, Mexico Governor Cesar Duarte in 2013 announcing a joint initiative for the Bi National Community Master Plan, an ambitious effort laying out the industrial, commercial, retail and even residential development opportunities waiting to be plucked in the 70,000 acres surrounding the Santa Teresa-San Jeronimo border crossing. The Bi National Community is anchored on the Mexican side through the presence of the Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group’s manufacturing 640-acre campus in San Jeronimo and on the New Mexico side by the 2200-acre Union Pacific Intermodal Facility in Santa Teresa. “The premise is that we are going to build a border development jointly to create a development that is world class and will be known for industry on both sides of the border, and that will very much include residential development,” says Pacheco. “We have an infrastructure committee, a marketing committee, and a water alternative energy committee that is composed of private and public sector people on both sides of the border who are carrying out the vision of what we want this community to look like,” he continues. This spring it was announced that Mexico real estate developer Corporacion Inmobiliaria has broken ground on some 500 new houses on land that was previously vacant in San Jeronimo, with each house listed at around $20,000. “They are working with the state government and jointly building worker housing and their own industrial park,” reports Pacheco, who adds: “They are going to build 1,000 housing units a year for the next 5 years. At the same time, in Santa Teresa, the New Mexico-based Verde Realty wants to see housing built in Santa Teresa, with prices starting at $100,000. “It is all being done jointly and really represents an unprecedented level of cooperation,” says Pacheco. “It’s almost become a kind of incubator showing what we can do on both sides of the border when we come together.” Meanwhile trade ties between New Mexico and Mexico also continue to strengthen ties, although Pacheco argues that exports from New Mexico are stronger than is generally known. “Last year our overall exports actually decreased, but during the past 5 to 6 years our exports to Mexico have been growing at a 20 percent-plus clip,” he says. “We are now close to about $803 million in exports to Mexico, and even that is understated because quite a few of our exports going there get lost on paper.” Explains Pacheco: “If you are a Santa Teresa-based business and are using an El Paso customs brokerage firm, when they are filling out the shipper’s export declaration many just write down that it is a Texas export—and if it goes through a Texas port of entry, it is just easier for them to say that.” “So I believe that are exports may well be understated by 20 to 30 percent,” adds Pacheco. “And if that’s the case, we are close to $1 billion in exports from New Mexico to Mexico.” According to the federal Department of Commerce, at least half of that recorded $803 million figure originates in Santa Teresa. “And those exports generate employment, they generate investment, they are related to the investment of firms that are here in Santa Teresa and New Mexico that have established multi-million dollar operations and produce millions of dollars a day in product while creating a bunch of very good-paying jobs,” Pacheco says. Pacheco adds that the prospect of such trade ties between New Mexico and Mexico growing larger in the years to come can only be good for New Mexico: “It will benefit communities such as Anthony, Las Cruces, Chaparral, Alamogordo, all the way up to Albuquerque and Farmington.”
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 02:34:01 +0000
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