McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — The City of McAllen on Wednesday held a breakfast for representatives from several Latin American countries that have sister city partnership agreements that officials say are reaping economic gains from its diplomatic efforts.
Delegates from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala as well as local leaders attended Wednesday’s event where some startling new data was revealed showing how much shoppers from Reynosa, Mexico, are spending in McAllen.
“McAllen is super proud to be the leader in the Valley on the international stage. We work hard to build relationships, relationships that are important to bringing opportunity back to the constituents that we serve. We know that as we engage with our partners in Mexico, that we’re providing opportunity for the enterprises that already exist here, and creating avenues for growth and development of new enterprises to come,” McAllen City Manager Isaac Tawil told Border Report after the event.
McAllen has sister city partnership agreements with 13 Latin American cities in Mexico and Central America as far south as Costa Rica, Tawil said.
“I don’t think another city in Texas has that many. It’s really remarkable,” Carlos Ealy, assistant secretary of state for Mexican and border affairs for the Texas Secretary of State, told Border Report. “It’s not easy work. You have to get the mayors over here. You have to sign with economic development corporations of each city. So it’s, it’s really remarkable what they’re doing.”
“Assets alone don’t create resources, strategy does. And McAllen has a great story to tell the world,” Max Bouchet, director of subnational diplomacy at the Meridian International Center, a nonprofit center for diplomacy, told the audience of several hundred. “Its strategy can lay bridges as an asset for economic profits.”
Bouchet praised McAllen for its job growth; increased exports and “supply chain resilience,” infrastructure, health care, sports and eco-tourism and “global identification and city branding.”
Belinda Roman, associate professor of economics at St. Mary’s University, presented a new study conducted on behalf of the city that tracked the number of visitors from Reynosa, Mexico, who come across the Rio Grande to shop and visit doctors in South Texas and how they are increasing the city’s economic growth.
The study tracked cellphone activity from residents living in Reynosa as they crossed into McAllen during 33 shopping days from December 2023 through November 2024. This included 22 Christmas shopping days, Black Friday and during Semana Santa, the week of Easter when Mexican travelers come to South Texas to enjoy the beach and other amenities.
It found that $49.2 million was spent in McAllen by Reynosa residents during these days and that equated to $79.9 million in economic impact for McAllen and the region, Roman said.
The data also found that the average median income of a Reynosa shopper is $46,000, which is middle-income and a new class of shopper that previously had not been tracked spending money on the border, officials said.
“We knew that our efforts in Mexico had an impact in McAllen, what we didn’t know was how to quantify what that impact was, and Dr. Roman helped us make that tangible. It is so exciting for us to be able to show the community that the efforts we’ve engaged in for years are having a real impact on the families that live and work and the and the business people who have invested in McAllen, and we want the world to know that McAllen is a growing, thriving place of opportunity,” Tawil told Border Report.
Bouchet said McAllen has worked with southern partners at times when it wasn’t always politically popular to do so and he praised the outreach.
“From our perspective in Washington, this shows the importance of city and state diplomacy as a balance for U.S. alliances regardless of what happens at the national level,” Bouchet said.
“We need to separate economic development with politics. So if the rhetoric is negative right now, I think the economic development folks need to take charge and do the right thing and still approach Mexico. Because economic development has to keep going. The economy has to keep going, otherwise it’s going to collapse,” Ealy said.
Tawil promises they’ll continue to do just that.
“We have a binational economy. We cannot ignore our partners to the south, and we cannot take for granted that we are centrally located as a gateway between Mexico, Central America, and not only McAllen and Texas, but the entire United States. And so we don’t take for granted any day, opportunities to engage with our partners to the south and we will continue to trailblaze leadership and connections in Central America and Mexico to continue to build economic opportunity here in McAllen,” Tawil said.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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