Mexican President Pena Nieto Pushes Border Trade Lorne Matalon - Fronteras Desk
go to original December 6, 2013

At the “Manuel Ojinaga” International Bridge in Chihuahua, the government launched the Border Zone Support Program. (Presidency of the Republic)

While the United States celebrated Thanksgiving, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto spent the day in a border town so small no Mexican president had ever gone there.

Peña Nieto has already made history by distancing himself from previous Mexican presidents.

He wants foreign investment in the state-owned oil industry, an unthinkable act in the eyes of Mexican nationalists.

He arrested the corrupt but politically powerful head of the teachers’ union, he is attacking monopolies in telecommunications and now he becomes first president to come to Ojinaga, Chihuahua, a dusty brown-hued slice of the border that sits across from Presidio, Texas.

Together in relative isolation, yet strategically located for trade, each town considers itself an extension of the other.

Peña Nieto announced an economic stimulus program that includes controversial higher taxes for border businesses. Revenue from those taxes would be deployed to bolster social assistance programs, including a plan to ease hunger in border states.

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