Raul Grijalva was in his district’s #1 enclosed city, Nogales AZ (pop. 23K, metro 309K), the other day to drop off a $750,000 federal chickenfeed payment to the beleaguered locals. Optics were running high, even KOLD’s portly Bud Foster was forced to decamp 79 miles south to make a report.
Nogales, the new district 7’s largest urban area outside of Tucson, has long suffered neglect, and being TOTALLY taken for granted by the Grijalva machine. Yet, it continues to percolate along and has now become quite the Mexican food export center for the Southwestern U.S.
Back downtown, after all the out-of-town attention & speechifying, there was the ceremonial wringing of hands, and the exasperated professions of “what are we gonna do?” (when this $ pittance runs out). Most of the angst centers on downtown-borderside Nogales, its loss of businesses, employment, and investment. Latinos being proud people, didn’t want to dwell on this too long.
Squeezed into a hilltop pass (elevation ~4000 ft.) by geographic and historic forces, both sides’ downtowns are forced to share the same ancient railroad, albeit with different owners.
But now there’s a whole new cast of players in Hermosillo, Nogales Sonora’s state capital. They have fully grasped the [truly gigantic] possibilities of business with the Pacific Basin, and its numero uno key to success: transportation links. Items I covered in 2 previous pieces, listed below.
Raul Grijalva might be some kind of “big dog” locally in Southern Arizona and in some DC quarters, with all the fawning and naïve enviro-nut-jobs he surrounds himself with (aside from family, of course), ….but he clearly does not understand the one thing required of a SENIOR Congressman: “bringing home the bacon”.
If he did, he’d be doing some old-fashioned wheelin’ & dealin’ from his sanctimonious perch atop the powerful House Natural Resources Committee chairmanship, and seriously help the poor people of his district.
Number 1 in my mind would be support & Federal funding for, a reroute of that railroad around downtown Nogales, off to the east where it could reconnect with the Mexicans’ intentions of the same for their rail line, FerroMex.
I suspect Grijalva has somekind of bur under his saddle environmentally for German Larrea Mota-Velasco, billionaire owner of Grupo Mexico & FerroMex. Grupo Mexico & Larrea Velasco have often been cast by the Arizona Daily [Red] Star’s enfant terrible, Timmie-B-Steller, as the corporate bin Laden of Mexican environmental terrorism. But Steller is a sock-puppet for Tucson’s neo-druid lawsuit cult, the Center for Bio-Diversity. CBD is simply mad they can’t shakedown ($$$) Larrea Velasco.
See how all this stupidity works? The Hard-Left thinks “speaking truth to power” is somehow effective. Plus, it’s cheap…they don’t risk zippo personally, makes ‘em feel sooooo good about themselves, and they get such great party-invites. But on a karmic scale it’s a consequential black mark, little Wokies. Real people here are really suffering, not in your fantasy ‘woke universe’ somewhere else.
If he hasn’t completely alienated his House colleagues, Grijalva needs to get off his culo gordo, and put some deals together. Reroute that rail line on the US side, and watch good family wage jobs blossom in Nogales and Southern Arizona.
That would be a fitting & lasting memorial to Raul Manuel Grijalva, long after German Larrea Velasco has faded into oblivion.
Related articles: Sonora Awakens; Discovers Pacific Rim and Downtown Tucson’s Achilles Heel; the Railroad?
Sellers is a Southpark Republican living in incorporated Oro Valley; his background is federal technology commercialization
