Southern Corridor: putting the puzzle together

New Mexico Business Journal, July, 1994 by Ed Ivey

Shelby, Montana, may seem a long way from El Paso, Texas, but it's not really. Upon close inspection, the two have a lot in common.

Shelby sits at the upper North American end of an emerging trade corridor that sweeps down to include Denver, Santa Fe/Albuquerque, Las Cruces, El Paso/Juarez, and Chihuahua.

It's tiny, barely 3,000 people, but the town has a huge railhead distributing freight to Chicago, Seattle, Denver, and Salt Lake City.

Big rigs exit Alberta, Canada, into the U.S. just north of Shelby, taking goods west from Alaskan and Canadian producers to Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, or down through Denver to New Mexico and El Paso.

El Paso, straddling the Rio Grande, a city of over a million including Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is more closely linked to Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe than to Austin.

Border crossings at area ports of entry, combined with El Paso's historic position as a railhead and trucking hub, make El Paso the obvious center of activity for this emerging trade corridor.

So, it seems, Shelby, Albuquerque, Las Cruces and El Paso do have a future together.

With free trade, some progressive observers see the emergence of linked economies in the corridor that connects the communities as the only promising venue for economic stability and healthy growth in the next century.

In a perfect world, goods will flow freely up and down this economic pipeline, creating manufacturing and distribution centers along the way and enriching the regions that take part.

"Even Pacific Rim countries will access our corridor, through Mexico's southern seaports. El Paso will have increasing business coming in from China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan," says Mark Smith, executive assistant to El Paso Mayor Larry Francis.

Francis, a first-term mayor strongly committed to business growth, has been touted as an essential advocate for building linked economies with corridor cities.

His frequent trips to Washington, D.C., and Austin to rally for the economic interests of the Paso Del Norte region encompassing west Texas and southern New Mexico are getting the area some badly-needed attention from Capitol Hill funding sources.

Along with Juarez Mayor Francisco Villareal, Francis and many interested groups are becoming increasingly involved in structuring the role of the federal governments of Mexico and the United States in sufficient advances in infrastructure to accompany free trade expansion.

"The ultimate focus is to make El Paso the centerpiece of a new economic corridor stretching from Alaska and Canada all the way to the ocean ports of southern Mexico," says Mark Smith. "We've found that the Clinton administration is committed to helping us develop this corridor, especially the I-25 section of the corridor."

The I-25 corridor connecting New Mexico's industrial-technological centers to El Paso and Denver follows the historic route of the Camino Real, tracing Spain's foray northward from colonial Mexico.

If El Paso can position itself to perform the same function as a communication and transportation center that it has for hundreds of years, it will remain essential to the continental economy, asserts El Paso architect-designer Lorenzo Aguilar Melanson.

Aguilar, whose grandfather was instrumental in building the Chihuahua Al Pacifico Railroad and whose father was one of the pioneers of the maquiladora concept that revolutionized industry in the El Paso-Juarez area, is asserting an active role in the growth of El Paso and Chihuahua.

His company, Perspectiva, is known as a progressive design, planning and construction management firm in El Paso, with its handiwork found all over New Mexico, West Texas and Chihuahua.

He contends that creating international alliances is the only way west Texas and southern New Mexico will truly prosper.

"In Sinaloa, Monterrey, Sonora, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, we see ourselves here in El Paso as being an area of influence," he says.

Perspectiva has several ongoing construction projects in New Mexico, including Las Cruces and Albuquerque. The company is building a state-of-the-art private high school in Dona Ana County, part of Aguilar's commitment to increase access to high quality education in the El Paso area.

Aguilar believes strongly in the industrial potential of Juarez, and has been effective in convincing companies like Japanese industrial giant Yasaki to locate several modern plants in rural Chihuahua.

"The Japanese saw the potential, and now the Yasaki chain's highest quality product comes out of Ascension, Chihuahua," says Aguilar. "When we started it, the town was really podunk, but now they have a plaza, hotels, paved streets and people are coming from Zacatecas, Tamaulipas, to find work.

"Workers come from Palomas, two hours away, every day to work in Ascension."

Aguilar says the Japanese have started small industrial communities in ranch areas such as San Buenaventura, where a 400,000-square-foot Yasaki plant is now operating.

"When you make a factory, the building isn't that much," says Aguilar. "It's a box, but the social aspects of this are incredible."