Peña Olivares: Mexico must take economic development to the next level

I read with great interest the Rio Grande Guardian’s recent article about Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum. Sheinbaum has no idea what to do with the Mexican economy or how to deal with the US. 

I am a Hispanic Republican and a 5th generation Tejano born and raised 5 miles from the Rio Bravo in Hidalgo County. I am a boy from South Texas and have always kept the values that my family instilled in me. When I graduated from the University of Texas in 1979, I went to Washington, D.C., and worked for former Speaker Jim Wright from Fort Worth, Texas. I have an undergraduate degree in Latin American History and an M.B.A. with Honors from Thunderbird. When the Speaker retired, I returned to Texas and worked for Governor Rick Perry when he was Commissioner of Agriculture. 

Mexico will continue to be a failed state as long as you have corruption, the cartels and poverty. One third of Mexico’s territory is controlled by the cartels. President Sheinbaum should focus on this instead of using the propaganda machine that ALMO created in Mexico to blame the US guns for her problem. And she should use the 10,000 troops to hunt down the cartels that are trafficking in children and drugs. We made great strides in drug eradication programs during the 1980s when Speaker Wright took an aggressive approach with Mexico. Kiki Camarena was in my hotel room the night before he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Rafael Caro Quintero. Speaker Wright was instrumental in making the Mexican government go to Costa Rica where Caro Quintero was hiding and arrest him. Sheinbaum, AMLO and the rest of the political elite knew what was going on with the cartels in the 1980s and chose to look the other way instead of stopping them when they had a chance. The same can be said today.    

I worked for Governor Rick Perry in the early 1990s when he was Commissioner of Agriculture in Texas and we made great progress in helping Mexico economic development with the NAFTA agreement. Governor Perry was instrumental in leading the American effort to approve the NAFTA program that has been a great success for trade between Mexico and the US. And economic development is the only way Mexico will survive. And that means getting the Chinese out of the country and cooperating with the US on eradicating the cartels. Mexico can’t feed itself and depends on US agriculture for that. As long as you have hungry people you will have undocumented immigration and that means Mexico will continue to be a problem for the US. 

I have worked in Mexico and Latin America for 50 years. You have to learn how to talk to the Mexicans and how to negotiate with them. Until Mexico takes their economic development to the next level, they will be a problem for the US. Sheinbaum will continue to try to play the US and the US needs to do what Governor Perry and Speaker Wright did, tell the Mexican how things are going to be from now on.   

Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned Ricardo Peña Olivares, a retired former government administrator and native of South Texas.

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