Some History

These commentaries reflect aspects of my research. Early in the 1970’s as I taught a course on Criminal Justice and had the District Attorney, Ronnie Earle speak to my class, he and I began a field research project. DA Earle was concerned with the growing youth gang activity and asked me and my graduate students to assist a project the DA had of Neighborhood Conference Committees. The Committees would meet with youth offenders and deliberate on the charges and then assign neighborhood tasks such as cleaning a vacant lot as an alternative to incarceration. We involved the Austin Police in the efforts and a new chief, Stanley Knee and his chief of staff, Robert Dahlstrom set new standards in community policing. Another of my interests is dimensions of Texas State Government after a request for my research by Governor William Clements in 1979. Governor Clements asked me to meet with him in his offices and to assist him in gathering information on how employees in state government felt about their specific organization, the leadership, pay, benefits and work conditions. He told me in that meeting that from his experience of running organizations in the business world that it was critical to have regular communication with all members. He wanted to apply that orientation to his actions as a governor. Some years later I saw Representative Henry Cuellar in one of the hallways of the Texas House and he asked if I had shopped at Walmart yet. I said, “No.” He said, “Please go shop there and then let’s talk.” I did and met a Walmart greeter and understood what Henry was talking about. We met and he created state legislation to require state agencies to, if possible, contact citizens that used their services and ask the citizens to assess how well they performed.

These postings like this one that I send seek to reflect these efforts of building social capital. Given the flood of immigrants crossing the border with Mexico, even far more than the threat that Covid posed, are now the greatest challenge to life, freedom and prosperity in Texas, in the nation. The attached file examines these issues more fully. As we enter 2024 with wars in Europe and the Middle East, a heated battle for the American Presidency and some reason to be watchful of the strength of the economy in 2024, we  face a very demanding coming year!

Challenges For Texas

I will be adding narratives I develop as I watch changes on the Texas border with Mexico as well as issues with social threats and economic issues.

Challenges to Our State Organizations

Part 87

Sunday December 31, 2023

Month

World Virus Cases

World Virus Deaths

January 31, 2020

10,017

120

Sunday December 31, 2023

700,237,788

6,961,677

Month

Texas Virus Cases

Texas Virus Deaths

January 31, 2020

1,662

23

Sunday December 31, 2023

8,959,706

92,902

Immigrants

2,400,000 in 2023

A Record Year

Social Disorder

Houston

Austin

USA

Mexico

Homicides

345

75

25,448

35,162

Unemployment

2.8

2.3

3.2

5.8

Economics

Crude Oil

$72.00

DJI

$37,400.00

Overview

These reports grow out of my research on organizations, individuals and cultures. The common theme in my research, writing and community activity has been how to create situations from the individual, the small group to the full organization and community that are productive and rewarding. During the course of my lifetime since about the beginning of World War II and the ending of the Great Depression, we have seen and participated in great changes in American and world culture. The years of the 1940’s and 1950’s were when the United States became the dominant country in the world.

A hundred years earlier in the 1850’s and 1860’s, the country was mostly agriculture with very few large farms. The largest were in the South where slavery made possible large plantations that grew food and more important, cotton. Cotton unlike fresh vegetables, fruits and even to some extent grains could not readily be stored and shipped. Part of the reason for the Civil War was the effort to end people owning people but also because industrial development in areas like New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and other states of the northeast were needing labor in factories and in shipping. Labor was seen as an important resource to develop and development included making labor more mobile. Some of this was occurring in Europe where England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Holland were building industrial bases but also ending colonial empires that were like the slavery of the American South. This change was visible in Mexico where Spanish colonialism was overthrown and late in the 1800’s Mexicans of mainly Indian/indigenous descent began to overthrow colonial slavery both in the control of the land but in social mobility as well.

From 1900 until about 1950 America was changing from a land of many rural communities to cities with factories that attracted rural labor. Chicago is an example. It saw new factories created in electronics, automobiles, textiles, all drawing labor from rural areas and then sent products first by shipping in the Great Lakes and then by trains and trucks to consumers. Montgomery Wards and Sears and Roebucks are examples of this movement. Both companies began by mailing catalogs to small town and rural residents of goods that could be ordered and then delivered to homes. The Postal System and catalogs were the technology that created a different economy.

A comparable development with the creation of the Internet are companies like Amazon that provide products via the Internet and then ship purchases to the customer. Amazon began as a book seller operating out of a home owner’s garage (Jeff Bezos) in Seattle and in 2023 had annual revenues of $554 billion second to the world’s largest retailer, Walmart with $606 billion. These decades saw the creation of large multi-county and then multi-state organizations. Individuals became less anchored to the land such as farms and ranches and more as residents in cities and employees in organizations. Higher education levels were needed and until the Covid educational levels rose in the United States.

Impact of Covid

The year, 2023, has seen a recovery from the Covid shutdown that began in late 2019. Where the virus came from and how it was spread across the world is filled with controversy. The dominant explanation is that the virus passed from a bat or some other animal in China to humans. A secondary explanation is that the virus was created in the Wuhan Laboratory by adding functions to an existing virus. A related theory is that the funding and the expertise to add such functions came from research money through Department of Health and Human Services in the offices ofthe National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Centers of Disease Control. Two physicians, Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky, are the names most associated with identifying the virus, advising the President and Congress and prominent actors in decisions to control travel, work in offices and schools, fund research, advising on masking, etc. Through these offices funding was provided to organizations like the EcoHealth Alliance for research into bat viruses which in turn worked with the Chinese Wuhan Laboratory. Given two decades of rising tension between the United States and China concerns have repeatedly surfaced about efforts from the Chinese to create such diseases as a war strategy.

The Texas Border With Mexico

Whether there were actions promoting viruses in China laboratories that would threaten other countries, the actions of China are clear in Mexico where the chemicals used to create illegal drugs like fentanyl are created in China and shipped to the west coast of Mexico. No threat anywhere in the world has the immediate consequences as Mexican disorder has for the United States.

Moving manufacturing to low labor cost countries has been a pattern for three to seven decades. During those years from about 1980 the industrial might of cities like Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Cleveland has sharply declined leaving vacant factories, increased unemployment, high crime rates and migration out to states in the South and West. Texas has benefited from this by manufacturers moving to Texas with Tesla the most prominent in Austin and great increases in manufacturing in Mexico and border traffic between Texas and Mexico.

Mexican Government

Mexico has a different form of democracy than the United States or most of Europe. It has had historically a single dominant political party. From the ending of the last Mexico revolution about 1929 until 2000, a single political party governed, the PRI (Party of the Institutionalized Revolution). In 2000 a new more conservative party captured the Presidency. The party was named PAN (Party of National Action) and led by Vicente Fox. Fox started as a driver in central Mexico for Coca Cola and then became a large and successful regional distributor and then the President of Coca Cola Mexico. The President in Mexico can serve only one term. In 2006 the new President was Felipe Calderón, also of the PAN. The PRI recaptured the Mexican Presidency in 2012 electing Enrique Peña Nieto. He was replaced by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-present) from a new party, MORENA. Currently in office, he has implemented social programs aimed at reducing poverty and inequality. He is also known for his nationalist rhetoric and his criticism of foreign intervention in Mexico.

This November commentary from the Center for International and Strategic Studies provides a current perspective on the Mexican Presidential election in June of 2024:

“Mexico faces a monumental decision as the next presidential election approaches. Voters will decide either for a continuation of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) so-called fourth transformation or opt for a coalition of established opposition parties that have banded together to improve their electoral chances. In many ways, the election will be unprecedented. Political polarization will likely increase, and a deeper fragmentation of the traditional party system will likely result. On top of this, for the first time in Mexico’s history a woman is likely to be elected president. Despite the image of AMLO continuing to loom large, citizens are witnessing the end of his sexenio. Two women have emerged as the most likely presidential contenders. Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City and AMLO’s protégée, will represent the official governing coalition led by Morena, while Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator from the state of Hidalgo, will be the candidate for the Frente Amplio por México (FAM) alliance formed by traditional opposition parties the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). According to most recent polls, Sheinbaum is most likely to win next year—a trend that has held since the opening of the campaign. However, this ignores the fact that just months ago, it appeared as though Sheinbaum would not face an organized opposition with a viable, telegenic alternative. The erstwhile little-known senator Xóchitl Gálvez has burst onto the political scene in Mexico, leveraging a strong social media strategy and an affable persona with a flair for the theatrical. Importantly, as a woman with Indigenous roots, Gálvez’s humble upbringing appears to position her as less vulnerable to AMLO’s stinging, class-based rhetoric. Gálvez’s emergence has buoyed the opposition’s chances of competing next year for the presidency.

The third emerging political force in Mexico is loosely represented by the political party Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), which, adhering to electoral guidelines, has not yet revealed a chosen candidate. Several possible candidates from the party have declined to participate, including the governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, and the mayor of Monterrey, Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, partly to avoid playing into the hands of the president. However, the party’s internal processes remain plagued by a lack of transparency and muddled ambitions, which undermine their electoral possibilities, despite pitfalls manifested by both the FAM and AMLO’s electoral coalition. It is worth noting that the president has signaled a peculiar inkling to see the Governor of Nuevo León, Samuel García, fulfill his party’s entrusted task. With eight months to go until election day, the nascent campaign has reflected a continued expansion of the powers of the presidency under AMLO and, worse, a return to some past political practices thought to be left behind. At risk is an unbalanced scenario in which the wishes of party elites outweigh citizens’ preferences.”

https://www.csis.org/analysis/presidential-elections-and-fragmenting-political-landscape-mexico

The Mexico-Texas World

The United States is Mexico’s largest trading partner, accounting for nearly 15% of Mexico’s total trade in 2022. Mexico is the United States’ second-largest trading partner, accounting for over 14% of the United States’ total trade in 2022.

From the perspective of safe location, natural resources and capable human resources like government, schools and neighborhoods, Texas is one of the most favored locations in the United States and in the world. Mexico has two of these features, safe location and natural resources but its development of honest and responsive government has been a failure. The most distressing feature is the Cartels that control traffic in many areas of Mexico and human and drug crossing of the border.

This is reflected in sharp increases in illegals coming into the United States with the largest numbers into Texas. Record numbers have entered since 2020 and has reached over 1 million in the current calendar year. Increasingly, the illegals are not just from Mexico and Latin America with growing numbers of Chinese migrants crossing the Southern Border. More than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year. That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined! This creates an instability in the communities of Texas and is visible in Austin with rising crime including murders.

Looking Ahead

We may be entering an age where fewer people are needed. Most of Europe, much of Asia including China and the countries of North America are seeing populations growing below replacement rates. The United States only adds population from immigration. Africa is the only continent continuing with high birth rates but also the highest poverty and lowest education levels.

We have begun slowly a process to more self-sufficiency in Texas. Water, electricity, oil and open spaces favor us. But we have to recognize what we face and increasingly connect and work together! As we have noted in any community, state and nation, there are three forms of Capital. One is physical capital such as quality of land including grasslands and forests, natural resources (minerals, oil, water). Two is human capital which is the levels of education and training such as simple measures like the percentage of the population that has a high school degree. Three is social capital, which is the level of engagement and trust among individuals including family, neighbors, community and organizations.


And a couple or five articles that seem germane:

The recent attacks — all in the past month — are the latest in a string of mass killings in Mexico that have drawn renewed attention to the government’s struggle to control the violence raging across the country.

Violence in Mexico

“Wherever you look, there is a nephew, a brother, a friend dead,” said Angélica Zamudio Almanza, whose nephew was killed in the shooting at the holiday party on Sunday in Guanajuato, one of the most violent states in Mexico.

Harvard and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

As universities across the country strained under pressure to take a public position on the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, few were as tormented as Harvard. The decline of these universities particularly moving from measures of achievement such as quantity and quality of research to the vague intents of DEI are disturbing.

Chinese Companies in West Texas

Quoting from the newspaper: “None of this would be known had Mr. Yu’s company — BitRush Inc., also known as BytesRush — not run into troubles in the tiny Texas Panhandle town of Channing, population 281, where contractors say they weren’t fully paid for their work on his mine there.

A flurry of lawsuits over the work has shaken loose documents that bring to light transactions not normally made public as Chinese investors have flooded into the United States, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build or run crypto mines, after the Chinese government banned such operations in 2021.”

Image

December migrant encounters at the southern border are on track to exceed November’s numbers by 30%, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol sources confirmed to NewsNation Monday. CBP encountered roughly 130,000 migrants in the first 17 days of November. For the first 17 days in December, CBP reported about 167,000 encounters, according to a CBP source. That is a jump of 37,000 encounters, or 28%. CBP suspends operations at two rail bridges into Texas amid migrant surge. Migrant encounters have spiked in the Tucson Sector, but the sector is also leading the charge in self-surrenders. NewsNation’s Ali Bradley reported that a majority of those surrenders crossed through holes cut in the border wall by human smugglers. Roughly 10,000 or more people were apprehended daily last week and every day surpassed 10,000 migrants with the exception of Sunday, which only saw 9,900 encounters. Friday surpassed 11,000 migrants.

This surge in migrant crossings has overwhelmed local officials in southern border towns in areas such as Eagle Pass, Texas. On Monday morning, over 2,000 were waiting to be processed!

https://www.borderreport.com/immigration/december-migrant-encounters-up-nearly-30-from-november-cbp/

We end with a chart of the prices of oil. It is the key to much of the economy in America, even the world and especially Texas. Oil above $60 and below $100, things are in harmony.

The World Depression and The Immigration Flood

This site was created with the publication of my book on Mexico and the Border 9 years ago (2014). It contains historical memories of visits to Mexico, my two decades of research in the border regions and in Mexico with the State of Texas and the Federal Government of Mexico as well as my current thinking about issues in Mexico. The coming year, 2023, will be extremely important for Mexico, the Border and all of the United States.

Then

As a young boy in the 1950’s, I traveled with my parents to Juarez twice and once to Tijuana. The trips were side excursions from auto trips to California traveling the road before IH 10 was built. Both cities were quiet and Juarez would feature Indian women from the mountains about a hundred miles to the south and west of the city of Chihuahua. These are the Tarajumara and the women would sell handcrafted wares to American tourists. They spoke no English and only limited Spanish. One of the items I have from my boyhood is a wooden object that looks like a 2 inch pig about the size of your thumb and has legs that move. You put an insect like an ant in it and as the ant moves inside, the legs move.  The women would make these small items to sell to visitors. They would sit alone and not have much interaction with Mexican people.Image result for mexican state of chihuahua and tarahumara indians 22 Amazing Facts About Tarahumara Tribe | OhFact!

Decades later as I completed my doctoral work at Penn State and the University of Oklahoma, I took a faculty position at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. My wife and our one year old son first lived in a rental house on the west side of El Paso. Housing was more varied and less expensive than what was available in Las Cruces. In addition to teaching psychology in New Mexico I taught statistics in the Sociology-Anthropology Department of University of Texas at El Paso, UTEP.  Our family would drive over to Juarez 3 or 4 times a week. Groceries were about half the price over there and restaurant meals were very good and very inexpensive. Crime was low, and bars and “houses of ill repute” were restricted to very specific neighborhoods. One of the more prominent was just across the Rio Grande from the campus of UTEP.

During the two years we lived there, we saw an interesting development created by a man that built and rented warehouses in Juarez. He was Jorge Bustamante and was creating what were called maquilas, factory assembly plants. He would rent a warehouse to an American factory that would ship partially finished items such as the mother board on a computer that needed to have components inserted. The worker would sit at a place on an assembly line and do a single step repeatedly. That step could be done as readily in an American city like Minneapolis, Kansas City or Dallas, but in Juarez at a far lower cost. Such factory labor in an American city would be 2 or 3 dollars an hour. The Mexican workers were paid 10 or 15 cents a hour. The plant manager and any engineers would live in El Paso and commute daily to the factory in Juarez.

This innovation was an early step in globalization and created fundamental changes in a Mexico that was mainly agricultural with most of the population living around Mexico City 700 miles to the south. The Mexican population then was 50 million with most living in central Mexico near Mexico City. Spanish was the predominant language but millions spoke only a native Indian language. Then and even now in many parts of rural Mexico Spanish was not the dominant language but instead an Indian language. Over 80 percent of Mexicans speak Spanish as the dominant language but about 20 percent speak only a native language. Apart from Mexico City most employment until late in the 20th Century was on farms and ranches.

I did some interviews in the maquilas and found that almost all of the assembly line workers were women. They came from towns and rural areas in the south of the state and other states south of Chihuahua. When I asked why they came, they uniformly said they were there to have a new life, very different from their mothers and sisters back home. They did not want to marry or marry later in life not as a teenager. They spoke about having their own money and being able to shop in El Paso.

A surprising effect of the maquila was to change the culture of Mexico, particularly of women. Both Jorge Bermeudez and his wife, Olivia, told me that they did not anticipate the culture change that came with the maquilas but were proud of what they saw as modernization of life in Mexico. Yet these changed roles of women created conflict with men and for many years cities like Juarez had increased rates of homicides of women.

Now

Contrast that world of 30 years ago to the one today. Mexico is urbanized not rural and farm based. The population is over 130 million with rapid growth of cities along the border. Most citizens earn their living working in a job. Services is the dominant occupation with mining and oil field work as much smaller areas. Tourism is an important source of jobs with about 62 percent working in such service. Manufacturing is second with just over 20 percent. This job structure represents how important having tourists is to the Mexican economy as well as the impact of globalization that brings jobs to low-wage economies.  Earnings from Mexicans working in other countries is significant in the nation’s economy with about 5% each year coming from funds earned in other nation’s and sent to Mexico. Most of this comes from the United States.

Mexico’s transition from a rural, farming and ranching world to an urban world involved in trade, tourism and manufacturing has been a journey of the last 50 years or so. One of the headaches in this transition is developing a government that meets its responsibilities and has the respect of the population. That transition has slipped in the last two decades. A clear measure is the rate of crime and in many ways the most simple is homicides.

A disturbing measure is the rate of homicides. El Paso is on track to have a record number in 2022 of 65. Juarez will have about 1,000 in 2022! The population estimated for El Paso is 975,000 and 1,600,000 for Juarez at the end of 2022.

This puts the immigration on the border into a broader picture. Mexico is a very violent land and some of the extremes are along the border with the United States. Here is a regularly updated graph of violence in all the states of Mexico and many individual communities: https://elcri.men/en/violence-map/

There is a similar pattern at the other large twin city in the far west in California and Baja California.

Population      Homicides

San Diego           2,000,000       60

Tijuana                 2,200,000       1,000

                                                                                                   

Week’s Summary

Monday October 22, 2018

Immigration At The Mexican Border

In April of 2018 a caravan of people from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras gained worldwide attention as the organizers emphasized the group would enter Mexico and then travel north to the American border to enter the United States. Organizers declared that there should be no borders between countries and people should be free to move from country to country.

 

Some think the development of the caravan was in response to the efforts of the new American President, Donald Trump, to have more control over immigration into the United States. News coverage noted that much of 2017 had lowered rates of attempts to immigrate to the United States along the border with Mexico and that was felt to be the result of statements by President Donald Trump in his campaign. Then after the election his statements to stop such immigration by building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border among other efforts added to pressures against immigration. Those statements appear to have had an effect for much of the first year, 2017, of the Trump Administration as year-to-year comparisons showed lowered rates of apprehensions of immigration attempts.

 

Another Caravan Headed Toward The Border

However the lowered rates ended late in 2017 and have begun to rise most months of 2018. This rise is in the context, now, of a second large caravan of Central Americans, mainly from Honduras, traveling through Guatemala and entering Mexico with the intention of coming to the United States border.[1]

[2]

 

Substantial attention to such immigration efforts was directed to events during the summer of 2014 when tens of thousands of children (unaccompanied minors) from Central America entered the country particularly in the Rio Grande Valley. The numbers overwhelmed the resources of the Federal Government that has the responsibility of patrolling the borders, Customs and Border Patrol, CBP. CBP personnel had to deal with child welfare responsibilities. This necessitated the Texas Highway Patrol and other Texas Department of Public Safety resources as well as county and municipal authorities to address disorder and organized crime at the border, which is a Federal responsibility.

 

Immigration Components and Numbers

CBP breaks immigration numbers into three separate categories of Unaccompanied minors (children), Adults and Family Units. These compose the CBP category of Inadmissables. CBP policy is to take children that present themselves at the border to childcare facilities, separating them from parents. This includes children that are traveling with families.

 

Entering the United States without documentation and permission is a law violation. American law and custom is to remove dependent minors from parents or adult providers of American citizens and any others residing in the United States that are charged with committing crimes and having the state, usually child welfare services, arrange for temporary or permanent custody. The logic in the law and tradition is that a child should not be raised by persons, parent or not, that are charged with crimes.

 

That policy became controversial in the summer of 2018 with various American political groups traveling to the border to visit such facilities and calling for an end to these Federal regulations of separating children from families.[3] Those political pressures may have had the impact of increasing the number of families coming to the border instead of adults or unaccompanied children.

 

There seems to be an emerging recognition of those that seek to come to the United States that having a child as part of the group increases the likelihood of clearing Border Patrol stops. The Washington Post has reported DHS statistics for October, yet to be released, which show a 30 percent increase over the comparable period of 2017. Border Patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September, the highest one-month total on record and an 80 percent increase from July.[4] The picture below is from an immigrant detention center this week in the Rio Grande Valley.[5] Reports are that this center in McAllen is receiving 3,000 persons from Central America each day. Estimates have been offered of 500,000 in this area for 2018, highest ever.[6] Centers elsewhere in Texas as well as Arizona are reported full.

 

[7]

Immigration Holding Facility in McAllen, Texas

Impact Of Demographics

These numbers of immigrants reflect the sharp demographic and economic differentials between the United States, Mexico and the countries of Central America. These differentials help to explain why people leave Mexico and Central America to come to the United States and also to increasing degrees, travel even to Canada. The economic growth from increased global trade that was expected to come to these countries to our south has not materialized in sufficient degrees to make attempts to come north less attractive. If robotics and automation continue to replace labor, then economic conditions are not likely to improve thus leading to larger numbers from poorer countries attempting to immigrate to the United States.

Economics, Demography and Education[8]

Country Population in Millions Median Age Median Education Level Average Weekly Income
U S 325 38 14 $857
Mexico 130 28 7 $190
Guatemala 17 22 6 $60
El Salvador 6 27 5 $70
Honduras 9 23 5 $50
Canada 37 42 16 $986

 

Immigrants with low levels of education will increasingly encounter difficulties finding work and work with incomes that will support the higher costs of living in the United States.

 

These costs to parents illustrate the financial demands of having children. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides a widely cited guide to estimates of what it costs to have and raise a child to 18 years of age in the United States.[9] In 2017 the costs are estimated to be $233,610.[10] Those costs are born by the family or the state if families do not have sufficient income or if the child does not have a family.

 

In today’s world and in the future, a high school education is not sufficient to secure adequate income and a 2 or 4-year trade or college education is advised. Estimates are $50,000 per year for board, room, books and tuition for students staying away from home. Staying home reduces the cost to about $25,000 per year with substantial variations between 2 year, 4 year and public and private institutions. Thus raising a child that will be educationally prepared for work and life in the United States, today, requires an expenditure of nearly half a million dollars. This explains part of the reason for the trend of smaller American families and women delaying having children until later in life.

 

An important question is how fully can the immigrant through work and social participation repay the draw against resources that come from the community? High levels of unemployment and low wage earnings mean that the community must subsidize the immigrant.[11] These are the immediate and long term costs of an immigrate.

Stability of Neighboring Countries

Low income and limited work opportunity, a primary force, in many countries have long played a role in causing immigration to the United States. The hope of the immigrant is better employment and living opportunities. That hope is perhaps greater today than it has been for decades and the result is reflected in rising rates of immigration to the United States and projections for coming decades.

 

A newer force promoting immigration is the growing violence in Mexico and almost every country of Latin America. Mexico continues to have higher rates of violence in 2018 than in 2017, the year that set records of violence for more than two decades. This violence threatens the integrity of national and state governments in Latin America, is accompanied by organized and transnational criminal organizations and threatens the security of borders in many ways including terrorism efforts.[12]

 

A third force promoting immigration with populations coming from other parts of the globe may be climate change and failing agriculture.[13] [14]As the United States has seen in 2018 with Hurricane Michael this fall and then for a current example with record rains in the Texas Hill Country, the climate seems to be getting warmer providing more intense storms and weather variability. Crop failures can lead to starvation and there is evidence of this in some of the current immigrant flow. Guatemala, as an example, had serious declines in coffee production from leaf rust that killed coffee plants starting about 2011. Coffee production is an important part of the economy in Guatemala and source of jobs. The rust may have come from wetter and warmer conditions. Rust, warmer conditions and lower coffee prices have contributed to Guatemalan farmers abandoning fields and seeking to migrate to the United States.

Summary

Economic, Political and probably Climatic forces are increasing the numbers seeking to immigrate to the United States. Persons traveling by land will come from the southern border with Mexico. The largest numbers will come to Texas and most heavily to the Rio Grande Valley. The immediate problems are how to maintain order, shelter and feed the immigrants. Communicable disease will be an issue. The numbers and disorder will provide cover for organized crime and terrorists. Immediate costs are in the tens of millions of dollars and farther on the horizon are costs in the billions. There is no ready solution as for many of the immigrants any punishment in the United States is less severe than simply trying to live in many of the communities of Central America.

Crossings From Guatemala Into Mexico 10/20/18

 

Since 1960 the United States has been the top destination for migrants all over the world with one fifth of the world’s immigrants living here. There are approximately 44 million immigrants in the United States today. There are additionally 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States with most residing in California, Texas, New York and Florida. Most of these immigrants come from Mexico and Central America. [15] [16] Estimates are for authorized immigrants to exceed one million a year for years into the future. As the current caravan may suggest, rising rates of unauthorized immigrants are developing and Texas will likely be the initial destination. The initial estimates from areas like McAllen warn that the unauthorized numbers each year will exceed those of authorized immigrants.

 

These pressures of immigration will affect communities and nations. Housing, feeding, education and health care will be the immediate impact. All of Europe and the economic union, OPEC, are fracturing over immigration issues with migrant populations there coming from the Middle East and Africa.[17] [18] Millions of persons coming into the United States and with a large percentage first arriving in Texas is a challenge of many dimensions.

 

Societies and countries develop policies and programs to address external threats. Border controls and standing armies exist to protect against armed invasions. China built its great wall beginning in 771 BC to protect against invaders from the northwest. France built the Maginot Line after World War I to protect against German invasion. The United States and European countries created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, to protect against conflicts with the Soviet Union and now Russia. Currently the United States budgets for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, a total of $598.5 billion for defense.

 

What the size of the disruptions these immigration patterns represent and what programs are needed is a complex policy and budgeting decision that now looms for government! The only thing partially clear is the numbers of immigrants will run annually in the millions and continue for years. Here are some graphs we have seen before but none have 2018 data.

Over The Weekend

The caravan is reported to have formed again in Mexico north of the border with Guatemala and grown to an estimated 7,000 persons. A Roman Catholic Cardinal in the Vatican has given open support to the movement designated as part of the share the “Global Pilgrimage” announced by Pope Francis in September of 2017.[19] President Trump speaking at a rally in Arizona condemned the caravan in the strongest of terms speaking of sending the Army to the border to protect against persons seeking to enter the United States and threatening to punish Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador by stopping aid.[20] Groups in Mexico and the United States are supporting the caravan. The most visible in the April and now the current caravan is Pueblo Sin Fronteras with offices in San Diego, Ca.[i]

 

 

 

 

 

[21]

 

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/honduran-migrant-caravan-grows-4000-amid-spike-u-s-border-n921286

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/honduran-migrant-caravan-grows-4000-amid-spike-u-s-border-n921286

[3] https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Rallies-still-planned-in-El-Paso-Tornillo-13012166.php

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/record-number-of-families-crossing-us-border-as-trump-threatens-new-crackdown/2018/10/17/fe422800-c73a-11e8-b2b5-79270f9cce17_story.html?noredirect=on &utm_term=.4b1aa83b37fb

[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mcallen-texas-immigration-processing-center-largest-u-s-n884126

[6] https://riograndeguardian.com/zabaleta-kaplan-immigrant-caging-on-the-texas-mexico-border/

[7] Photo from a colleague visiting an ICE detention center in the Rio Grande Valley

[8] Sources: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html; https://www.worlddata.info/average-income.php

[9] https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/tools/CRC_Calculator/default.aspx

[10] http://time.com/money/4629700/child-raising-cost-department-of-agriculture-report/

[11] https://cis.org/Report/Record-445-Million-Immigrants-2017

[12] https://cis.org/Bensman/What-New-White-House-National-Strategy-Counterterrorism-Says-about-US-Border-Security

[13] Emanuel, K., 2017: Assessing the present and future probability of Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall. Proc Net. Acad. Sci., doi/10.1073/pnas.1716222114.

[14] https://journals.tdl.org/twj/index.php/twj/article/view/6463

[15] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states#Unauthorized

[16] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2017

[17] https://www.wsj.com/articles/immigration-standoff-shakes-merkels-fragile-government-1528912541

[18] https://cis.org/Huennekens/Whats-Going-Brussels

[19] https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2018-10/migrant-caravan-mexico-us-share-journey-interview-bishop-vasquez.html

[20] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/10/21/migrant-caravan-united-states-increases-despite-donald-trump-threats/1719819002/

[21] https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration

[i] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/who-s-behind-migrant-caravan-drew-trump-s-ire-n862566

Now

Contrast that world of 30 years ago to the one today. Mexico is urbanized no longer rural and farm based. The population is over 130 million with rapid growth of cities along the border. Most residents earn their living working in a job. Services is the dominant occupation with manufacturing, mining and oil field work as much smaller domains. Tourism is an important source of jobs with about 62 percent of all residents working in service jobs with many in tourism. Manufacturing is second with just over 20 percent. This job structure represents how important having tourists is to the Mexican economy as well as the impact of globalization that brings jobs to low-wage economies like Mexico. Earnings from Mexicans working in other countries is significant with about 5% each year coming from funds earned in other nation’s and sent to Mexico. Most of this comes from the United States.

Mexico’s transition from a rural, farming and ranching world to an urban world involved in trade, tourism and manufacturing has been a journey of the last 50 years or so. One of the headaches in this transition is developing a government that meets its responsibilities and has the respect of the population. That transition has slipped in the last two decades with national governments as the long dominant PRI lost two national elections (6 year terms) to a more conservative party, the PAN, returned to power in 2012 and then a sharply leftist party appeared in 2018. It was created by the current President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and is named Morena. The Mexican economy has stagnated during the last decade and violence has increased across the nation. A clear measure of effectiveness of government is the rate of crime.

Compare this disturbing measure: the rate of homicides. El Paso is on track to have a record number in 2022 of 65. Juarez will have about 1,000 in 2022! The population estimated for El Paso is 975,000 and 1,600,000 for Juarez at the end of 2022.

This puts the immigration on the border into a broader picture. Mexico is a very violent land and some of the extremes are along the border with the United States. Here is a regularly updated graph of violence in all the states of Mexico and many individual communities: https://elcri.men/en/violence-map/

There is a similar pattern at the other large twin city in the far west in California and Baja California.

City Population Homicides

San Diego 2,000,000 60

Tijuana 2,200,000 1,000

Societies In Decline

Since the worldwide pandemic, social disorder and poverty have sharply increased. Here is a for the world to return:

When Social Capital Is Low

Since the 1920’s the concept of social capital has been discovered and increasingly understood. First reports of social capital can be traced to the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, a scholar from France that traveled and wrote about the United States in the early 1800’s. Government in America was radically different from Europe. There and in the United States before the American Revolution, societies had relatively low rates of social change and one’s status in the society was determined by one’s family not one’s achievements.

The world in the 1800’s viewed America as a radical social experiment where all persons were created equal and one’s status in life was determined by one’s efforts. Being equal became a path of conflict and attainment for the years to come, but the departure began in 1776 and 1791. De Tocqueville noted that one of the defining characteristics of the America he visited was the presence in community after community of open meetings that discussed problems and arrived at resolutions. Rather than looking to the tradition of royalty or the Church for direction, he found these informal meetings as one of the defining characteristics of democracy in America and made our country distinct. A hundred years later in 1919 L.J. Hanifan, in a state role of working with public school systems in West Virginia first used the term social capital noting the importance and ubiquity of neighbors working together to create and maintain public school systems.i

Robert Putnam in 2000 elevated attention to social capital as well as physical and human capital, all together determinants of the wealth of a community. Physical capital refers to the natural and man-created capital including productive land, minerals, roads, utilities, coasts, ports and other physical features that support life and social activity. Human capital is the educational level of a community. Social capital is the level of trust and reciprocity in the community. A community that has high social capital will have low levels of crime, few people unconnected with others and considerable interaction among neighbors, employees, all citizens. A classic measure of social capital is dropping a wallet in a library, grocery store and measuring the rate to which the wallet is returned. Communities with high social capital have high return rates of the dropped wallets!

Social Capital in the Pandemic

Since March of 2020, our country has probably seen one of the greatest declines in social capital in at least the last hundred years. The cause of the decline has been fear of becoming infected from a virus from another person. Public health and medical officials have said that everyone should avoid being in public situations, and, when in such situations, to maintain at least 6 feet from another person and wear a facial mask. Governments have taken such warnings and made them laws ending public assemblies and closing sporting events, restaurants, bars and small retail settings. This decline has had serious economic consequences bankrupting thousands of small businesses, decreasing travel and thus oil consumption and tax revenues. Parents are out of work and trying to assume the tasks of being teachers for their children. Unemployment in 2020 rose to 15%, and even today when one includes discouraged workers that have given up looking for work, real unemployment is probably at 10% or greater.ii

Work, talking with neighbors, people you see on the street and shopping are vehicles of social capital. Attending school and college is the next largest venue of social capital activity. With all these venues closed or sharply reduced, the level of opportunities to create social capital has been sharply reduced.

Low social capital means more poverty, homelessness, mental illness, increased crime. One measure is homicides, the measure of crime that is the least underreported. Violent crimes may be a response to sharp declines in social capital and examples in March include the murders of 8 persons in Atlanta and 10 in Boulder. While both of the murderers appear to be very anti-social persons, high social capital acts as a control as well as a socializing element for all persons. High levels of social capital make people feel more secure and less alone and thus alienated. Nations with high levels of social capital such as the Scandinavian countries, Canada, Japan have lower crime including murder rates.

An important effort during much of 2020 and continuing today is efforts for lessening the rate of infection and hospitalization from the Covid19 virus. But now it is clear that increasing social capital is just as critical. The wealth and healthfulness of every community is based on these three sources of capital. It is social capital that has experienced the greatest decline since March of 2020.

Texas State Agencies and Colleges have long served the citizens of the state through their programs but also as vehicles to build social capital. Agencies use websites to ask citizens how their services are and agency personnel are active in civic organizations where they live as well as their careers. These efforts build social capital. With the sharp decline in social capital in the last 24 months, restoring social capital will start to make all citizens safer and will engage the process to create better lives for all.

i https://www.socialcapitalgateway.org/content/paper/hanifan-l-j-1916-rural-school-community

 

Catching Up Since 2020!

During the pandemic that began in late 2019, I have tracked its impact and spent less time watching issues in Mexico. Now time for a change!
Since my years of living in El Paso and Las Cruces in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I have had an eye on the border and Mexico. This include having an office in Mexico City and working with officials of Mexico. Last week I had an ATT repairman at my home and he mentioned that he had moved this year from El Paso. We talked of the Juarez of 30 and more years ago and how in those years it was a safe city to visit, go to restaurants and for that matter that was true for all of Mexico. 
 
Three major changes in Mexico in the last four decades have been increased urbanization with most people living in urban areas and working at jobs rather than on farms and ranches. A second major change has been the movement of factories to Mexican border cities and Northern Mexico. Products with a high labor content can be made much cheaper in Mexico where wages are a fourth or less of those in the United States. These products then are exported to the United States and Canada. A third major change has been the instability of the border and the rate of immigration attempts at the border.
 
A safe and prosperous Mexico is essential to life in Texas. Texas is the nation’s largest exporting state and Mexico is the first customer! Instability in Mexico is a direct threat to Texas and the fact that matters now are so serious that the State of Texas must respond to what is a Federal Government responsibility to have safe borders is a grave warning!
 
During the Spring and expanding all weeks since then have be rising rates of people coming to Mexican border cities and intending to move to the United States. Some are Mexicans but others are from Central America, South America and now other areas of the world. We have previously addressed these issues as we looked at the impact of the covid-19 virus on Texas and then in Mexico. In the last several weeks immigrant attempts to come into Del Rio have drawn the efforts of the Federal agency, the Border Patrol and then the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard. Immigration crossings this year have surpassed levels going back over 20 years and pose a variety of health, public safety and other economic concerns. 
 
For many reasons these matters are more of a challenge to Texas and all of us than what we have seen the last 18 months or so from the virus.

Sunset In Texas

We have written since late January about the corona virus that appeared in November-December in Wuhan, China and its spread across the world and particularly the impact in Texas. This week 53 million cases have been reported worldwide with 1.2 million deaths. In the United States the current reports are 10.6 million cases and 250,000 deaths. Texas has had over 1 million cases and 20,000 deaths. Infection rates are rising sharply in northern states as cooler weather forces people inside and increases the risk of infection. The risk of death is about 2 cases out of a hundred; 2-2.5%. But deaths are much more likely in older persons and those with other health problems such as overweight, diabetic, lung and circulatory disorders. Early identification and treatment are important in reducing the impact and knowledge is improving both for the layman and the health professional. Here is a protocol summary from a medical school in Virginia. Several vaccine trials are underway and promising. We can be hopeful that broad immunization activity will be occurring in 2021.

By March efforts were underway nationally and in Texas to reduce social interaction and thereby reduce infections. For Austin this effort was marked by the City cancelling South By Southwest in the second week of March. Since then travel, dining out, going to bars, sending children to school, closing college classrooms, using social distancing and masks in shopping all have been efforts to control the spread and efforts to keep from overwhelming hospitals.

These efforts to control the pandemic have had other effects that will prove to be more far reaching than the pandemic. For Texas it is triggering an economic depression that is accompanied by increased unemployment, homelessness and crime. It means much of the Texas economy based upon oil, agriculture, exporting and electronics will be challenged and changed.

There have been several cycles of prosperity and depression in Texas. The cycles are created by forces including population migration, climate conditions and scientific innovations.

Examining Some History For Answers

Several thousand years ago, Texas experienced population migrations from the north and west. There were several waves of migrations of people and cultures from Asia moving across the Bering Straits of the Artic seas during periods of lower ocean levels. Archaeological findings and theorizing and more recent genetic data offer evidence that first human presence occurred in North America 33,000 years ago.[i] Colder global temperatures resulting in ice buildups that lowered sea levels made a land bridge available. There were several periods when this occurred from Asia into what is now Alaska. Over the centuries groups would cross the land bridge and populate first, North America and then South America. These human inhabitants would have found lands filled with both animal and plant species proving food including deer, bison, abundant fish, grains particularly corn and edible plants like potatoes, squash, chilies, tomatoes, and beans that would permit large populations.

First Kingdoms

4,000 years ago the Maya and Inca kingdoms were established in Central and South America. Other smaller cultures developed in the Americas but the largest were in the temperate lands beginning in southern California and central Texas extending south of the current countries of Brazil and Argentina.

About 1200 AD a large drought lasting a hundred years occurred in western North America and caused sharp population declines and migrations south. Abandoned cliff dwellings exist today in the Four Corners region of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado presumed to be left from that era. Some view the consequence migration to the central lakes of Mexico City and the creation of the Aztec Empire as the result of this Four Corners’ century-long drought.

European Contact

By 1500 AD Europeans began to appear in North America with Spanish and Portuguese in Central and South America, the Caribbean and on the Gulf Coast of North America. French, English, Dutch and other immigrants began to come to North America but unlike the Spanish and Portuguese came as farm families rather than military units. They brought farm animals including cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, dogs and cats as well as plants native to Europe and England. Some contact with native populations was peaceful but much was violent and the wars along with diseases unknown to the Native Americas devastated the indigenous populations. The population in what is now Mexico is estimated at 1500 AD of 20 million people with the population in the United States estimated then as 18 million. Two centuries later Mexico had an estimated indigenous population of 1 million and the 48 contiguous states of the United States estimated at 600,000. Disease far more than warfare caused the greatest loss of life but conflict and forced migration added to the disaster for indigenous populations.

Texas Frontier Times

Frontier times in Texas from 1800 to 1880 consisted of American migration from the states of the South like Louisiana, Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia and the West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee mountain areas into east Texas, with Spanish-Mexican missions in El Paso, San Antonio and the lower Rio Grande Valley. Limiting Spanish and Mexican settlements expanding north were roving Indian bands of mainly Comanche from Kansas, south into the Mexican states of Nuevo Leon and east to Austin. The Comanche quickly adapted to runaway horses from Mexican ranches and then rifles, obtained through trade and conflicts, to both harvest native bison and to raid Hispanic missions and Texan farms and ranches.

The Comanche domain ended by 1880 as railroads extending west hired buffalo hunters to remove the bison and 60 million, almost all, were destroyed. That and wars with Texans reduced the Comanche population from an estimated 90,000 to less than 10,000 persons. The most powerful band under Quanah Parker was captured in north Texas in 1875 in the Red River War and forced into a reservation in Indian territory(Oklahoma).

With the removal of the Comanche, the driving of large herds of range cattle from south and central Texas to railheads in western Kansas accelerated and created a surge of wealth to Texas. In time the railroads were extended to Ft. Worth and its stockyards and connection to the railroads created a first wave of prosperity from cattle.

The Empire of Oil

Even as the railroads were being extended, another far greater resource was appearing in Texas: the discovery of oil. 1894 in Corsicana is the date and location of the first oil well in the state when a driller seeking water hit oil. Initially oil was used for home heating and then fueling trains on the railroads, but the explosive demand came with the automobile particularly the car for everyone, the Ford Model T. Its price made it a car for the masses leading to passable roads, paved highways, gasoline stations in networks of one for every 100 miles or so and an explosive demand for oil.

Saudi Arabia’s Destruction of the Texas Oil Economy in 1986

Rising oil demand in Texas, the United States and the world continued through the 20th Century even in the Great Depression of the 1930’s without a break until 1986. Prices peaked in 1980 at over $30 a barrel ($109.00 in current dollars!) but fell to $8.50 in 1986-88! The cause of the crash was increased production from Saudi Arabia to punish members of OPEC that were producing beyond the agreed on levels. Texas was not a member of OPEC but affected by its production.

The remainder of that decade and much of the 1990’s were a difficult time for Texas. Oil demand was low, banks and savings and loans that had loaned heavily on real estate became bankrupt as business activity nosedived. Unemployment grew as the Texas boom ended. Crime exploded and reached a peak in the middle years of the decade of 1990’s. In that decade during the administration of Governor Ann Richards, Texas created a huge increase in its number of prisons and prison cells! The chart is annual Uniform Crime Reports Indexes from the 1960’s through 2019.

[i] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-first-americans/

Challenges to Our State Organizations

Friday July 31, 2020

Month World Virus Cases[i] World Virus Deaths
January 31 10,017 120
July 31, 2020  estimated 17,000,000 700,000
Month Texas Virus Cases Texas Virus Deaths
March 27 1,662 23
July 31, 2020 420,000 6,100

 

These data as reported to various sources need some commentary. First case data is dependent on test resources. These vary greatly from nation to nation. In general Africa and Latin America with high rates of poverty are/will be under-reporting. Death reports also are approximations. With the elderly the virus often accompanies other morbidities such as circulation problems, cancer, diabetes, respiratory declines and other conditions found with aging populations. Both the USA and Texas data show a leveling and perhaps a comparative decline in the later part of July. Mexico’s numbers are still climbing and showing about a 10% fatality rate as compared to less than 2% in the United States. Mexico’s population is 130,000,000. Texas’s population is 30,000,000 thus Mexico is more than 4 times as populous. Almost identical case numbers comparing Texas suggest a severe undercount of cases in Mexico.

Known Facts on the Virus and Impacts

It is a virus neither bacteria or fungus. That means as a virus it is a tiny bit of biological information that cannot live or reproduce on its own. It is a biological code, DNA or RNA, which enables it to enter a cell of a host and use the components of the cell to maintain the life of the virus and permit it to multiply.

It is thought to have first appeared in the city of Wuhan in southeastern China in November or December of 2019. It is a variety of a virus, a corona virus that is common. The name corona virus comes from the appearance of the virus with many raised points on the surface as a crown (a corona) has. The raised points function as keys that fit into openings in cells permitting the virus to enter the cell.

There are an estimated 1 million viruses that exist in vertebrate animals. There are estimates as well of 1 million species of bacteria. Most viruses cause diseases and are often harbored in other species. The most common host is bats.

Part of the official story of how the Covid-19 came into being was that in a food market, live bats were kept for butchering for customers as well as other animals that the population eat including pangolins, chickens, cats and several other species. The virus dropped from the bat to perhaps a pangolin and then when the pangolin was eaten, the virus came to a human its new host.

A different explanation of how the virus came into being was that it escaped or was released from a biological laboratory. Wuhan is the site of China’s two most advanced such laboratories and one of the stories is that lab as well as others in Canada and the United States were experimenting with altering viruses (adding functions). The logic offered for performing these experiments is that the work paves the way of a deeper understanding of virus like influenza, AIDS, hepatitis, measles, smallpox, herpes and polio.

So, at this point we are left with two explanations of where the virus came from. One is a species’ jump, happens frequently, in situations where species and their blood come into contact with each other and with humans. Wet markets are common across Asia but also occur in America where live species are kept in cages to be killed and processed when a customer orders one.

The second explanation is that a virus laboratory was experimenting with a corona virus and created the current one and either it escaped from an accident or was released intentionally. This raises the specter of biological/germ warfare.

In either case this is a new virus and reminds that the host of viruses that exist often in animals like bats is a reservoir and the possibility perpetually exists of a virus jumping to another species. Think of that when you are near the Colorado River in downtown Austin in the summer time when the Mexican Free-tail Bats come out from under the Colorado River bridges to hunt misquotes. Sometimes a vaccine is possible as in the case of smallpox that confers immunity. But other viruses like AIDS can only be controlled with medications.

Covid-19 has a host of companies working on a vaccine and treatment protocols have improved since April. Older medications used for treating viruses are showing some efficacy in use with this new virus.

Economic Challenges

Since the 1990’s Texas has built an economy far more diversified than the agriculture and oil foundations of most of the 20th Century. In the 1990’s electronics was the new and third component. Creating, designing and building integrated circuits, computers and software grew in Dallas and more so in Austin. Another component began as well in that decade and that was shared manufacturing along the border with Mexico taking advantage of labor in Mexico that costs only a fraction of rates in the United States. Today average wages in Mexico are under $3 while over $20 for the U.S.

Electronics, autos, machinery, clothing, items that have a substantial manpower factor in creating the item, began to be made in Mexico often with managers living in Texas and commuting daily. This model began in El Paso-Juarez and with trade legislation in Mexico and the United States, products could move back and forth with little or no restrictions or duties. Today the border between the United States and Mexico has the greatest value of economic exchanges of any border and Laredo-Nuevo Laredo is one of the busiest land ports in the world.

Problems Developing

In 2019 issues began to occur that affect Texas business activity. One was growing tensions with China impacting exports to China and complex manufacturing chains especially in electronics where low cost labor much like in Mexico was used by many companies such as Apple to manufacture and assemble components that then were brought back to the United States and other countries to sell. China after Mexico is Texas’ largest customer and these tensions began to affect trade.

It was 2020, though, that brought the greatest challenges to the economy in Texas. One was the COVID-19 virus that brought much activity to a standstill. Two was a historic crash in oil prices in April caused by increased levels of production from Russia and Saudi Arabia. This has resulted in a collapse of exploration and production in areas like West Texas and severe business declines in Houston where many oil companies are headquartered and much of the refining and shipping of oil occurs.

Air travel is a clear measure of economic activity in Texas. It remains down, albeit not as sharply as at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. For example, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport announced July 23 that its May passenger traffic fell 91.5% year-over-year — from a record 1,543,108 passengers in May 2019 to 130,826 passengers in May 2020.

Passenger traffic at Austin-Bergstrom began its dip in March, as companies froze employee travel, large gatherings like South by Southwest were cancelled and international travel restrictions were put in place. March passenger traffic fell 52% compared to last year. But traffic fell off a cliff in April — dropping nearly 97% from 2019 to 2020. The 91.5% drop in May traffic was a slight improvement over that brutal April.

Some air service is returning to Austin after the shutdowns in the spring. In July, Aeromexico resumed international service to Mexico City — the first international route to come back to Austin-Bergstrom. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport officials noted in a recent report that the commercial aviation industry doesn’t expect consumer confidence in air travel to be restored until a Covid-19 vaccine is available.

Impact on Texas’ Greatest Trading Partner: Mexico

Over half of Texas’ international trade is with Mexico. Refined oil products including gasoline, drilling and refining equipment, border manufacturing products, grains, dairy and poultry all are exports to Mexico.

Until the 1980’s Mexico was a largely rural country. Most people lived on the land and raised the food needed. Four changes started the urbanization process. One was border industrialization accelerated with the signing of NAFTA in the mid-1990’s removing many trade and travel restrictions including duties. Cities like Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and even Monterrey, 200 miles south of Laredo, grew explosively as jobs in factories as well as service jobs in restaurants and bars offered a much higher standard of living than farming in rural regions. Two was sharp increases in tourism. Increasing air, train and auto travel to Mexico City and both coasts provided millions of jobs as waiters, waitresses, hotel personnel, cab drivers and tour guides. Like the manufacturing jobs, the wages provided a higher standard of living than working the land. Three was the discovery of oil in the Gulf of Mexico just off the Mexican state of Veracruz. The oil drilling and production was under the control of a state oil monopoly, PEMEX, and provided the highest labor rates in all of Mexico. By 2000 Mexico was more than 80% urbanized with Mexico City and the adjacent areas totaling over 20 million people.

Four is travel by Mexicans to work in the United States. It began decades ago with Mexicans coming into Texas to gather vegetables and then grew to migration to Florida, Michigan and Washington to gather fruits and vegetables. Other Mexicans live in American cities and work in construction as well as maids and housekeepers. The 10 million plus temporary residents then send money back to families in Mexico-remittances and they are the fourth major component in the Mexican economy.

Mexico like Texas has built its economy on trade. Its population of 130 million is highly urbanized with 70% of the population residing in the State of Mexico and adjoining states. Immigration flows from the south including Central America of persons with little capital and education come first to Mexico City and then some head north particularly along the Gulf coastal states.

The economic decline that was visible in Texas in the 2019’s and grew pronounced this year has affected Mexico even worse. Plunging oil prices have dried up jobs and tax revenues from PEMEX. A declining world economy has lessened manufacturing and international trade. Lastly and most profoundly COVID-19 has deeply reduced vacation travel to Mexico as well as overwhelming an already weak health system. Mexico’s hospitals are overcome and Mexicans and Americans living in Mexico near the border are flooding into border hospitals in Texas and California where health systems are also now at capacity.

A less well-understood problem in Mexico affecting the economy is the Mexican political system. The current system that in many ways has its roots in the 1910 Revolution has most of the control centered in the national government. That pattern of a powerful centralized government dates back at least to the Aztecs in the 15th Century and even today most travel and communication patterns go first to Mexico City and then radiate out to other areas. States and municipalities, compared to the federal government, have less authority and fewer resources. But citizens in Mexico have less trust in the government. Moreover today the Mexican political system is being stressed by Mexicans that do not feel that the current Mexican president is delivering on his promises to achieve prosperity and safety. The most evident indicator is the rate of homicides rising sharply in 2018 then 2019 and now in the first half of 2020, Mexico has record high rates of homicides. These are the data since 1997 through 2019

There are areas of Mexico were organized crime controls the territory not the government. This includes several Mexican states including the borders of Sinaloa and Chihuahua, much of the Pacific states of Guerrero and Colima, and the Gulf states of Tamaulipas and Veracruz. Deteriorating conditions in Mexico lessen trade with Texas and increases stress on Mexico and then on Texas with persons from Central America and increasingly other parts of the world coming to Mexico to enter the United States at the southern border.

Summary

Wealth in a community is a function of three forms of capital. The most visible is physical capital. This consists of natural resources like forests, grasslands, available water, productive fisheries, mineral deposits, and clean air as well as capital additions like buildings, transportation, streets, electricity, water, and telecommunication resources. The second capital is human capital. This is the level of education and skills in the population and the mechanisms to renew and improve human capital. The third form is social capital. That is the level of trust and reciprocity in the community. Texas is more advanced than Mexico in human capital and probably even in physical capital. It is social capital where Mexico is most lacking and its high and rising homicide rate is a brutal measure of this collapse of what is required to build safety and prosperity!

Both Texas and Mexico will need the catalyst of social capital to build the new economies in the coming years.

[i] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Papers Relating to Mexico's Challenges from Cartel Violence