The State and Border Economy

The 2040 process is the first time a county-wide regional perspective has been applied to future growth and development strategies.

Media Freedom Intl.

(LAS CRUCES, N.M.) - Editors’ Note: Today’s article is a continuation of Frontera NorteSur’s occasional New Mexico Centennial of Statehood series that reflects on the past, present and future of the southern New Mexico borderland since 1912. This piece is the first installment of a three-part mini-series on the economic history of Dona Ana County during the last one hundred years. The article is a broad look at major developments and trends in the county.

How Government Developed a Border County

In the long view of history, one hundred years is a flash in the pan. A mere century ago, the US-Mexico border county of Dona Ana was a different world. Upriver, there was no Elephant Butte Dam to channel and store the Rio Grande that waters the vast pecan forest and many export crops that today cover large parts of the county.

There was no world-famous Hatch chile festival, and in fact the cherished long green New Mexican chile variety had not yet been released by Dr. Fabian Garcia, the son of a Mexican immigrant domestic worker and the inventor of the state’s emblematic pepper variety.

A horse-and-buggy world prevailed for the 12,893 souls residing in the sprawling, rural county. The Internet, satellite phone communications and jet travel were all wild dreams. Fifty six students attended New Mexico A&M College in the small town of Las Cruces.

In 2010, the US Census counted 209,233 residents in Dona Ana County. A large shopping mall, a brand new convention center and whiffs of internal combustion congestion mark the county seat of Las Cruces, while an expanded highway- built with federal stimulus funds heralding from the Great Recession- whisks cars and trucks back and forth along Interstate 10 to El Paso and Ciudad Juarez now only minutes away.

What was once a lengthy day trip to El Paso through country lanes is now a short, daily commute for many. In the regional picture, Dona Ana County can be considered the northern zone of the Paso del Norte borderplex made up of greater El Paso, Ciudad Juarez and Las Cruces, which together represented home to about 2.4 million people in 2010, according to last year’s US and Mexican censuses.

A tad north of the county line, Spaceport America prepares to zip deep-pocketed tourists into the heavens for $200,000 a joy ride, while on the south end of the county, in Santa Teresa, a bustling border port of entry processes the electronic toys of the age produced south of the border for enjoyment north of the border.

Transformed into New Mexico State University (NMSU) in 1960, the small farm school of Aggie yore now hosts a campus bristling with more than 18,500 students who study engineering, business administration and economics, education and much more. On the Las Cruces campus, researchers tinker away to make algae the source of tomorrow’s energy.

Whether in the federal government’s completion of the Elephant Butte Dam in 1915-16 or in the establishment of White Sands Missile Range in the 1940s, the hand of the state has been a guiding and decisive force in the economic development of Dona Ana County. And it continues so today. “Growth in the last half-century has mainly been fueled by government,” says Dr. Jim Peach, professor of economics at New Mexico State University. “(Government employment) is a huge thing on the state, and in Dona Ana County it’s even larger than the state average.”

According to Peach, a quarter of all workers in Dona Ana County are employed by a government agency. A recent report by the City of Las Cruces listed the largest local employers as White Sands Missile Range, Las Cruces Public Schools, NMSU, the City of Las Cruces, Gadsden Schools, Memorial Medical Center, NASA White Sands Test Facility, Wal-Mart, Coordinated Care Company, and Dona Ana Branch Community College.

The distinct historical periods of the last century- Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Green Revolution, World War Two, the Cold War, the Space Age, the Computer Revolution, the NAFTA era and now the Great Recession- have all left their stamps on the county’s economic landscape. Rose Garcia, executive director of the non-profit Tierra del Sol Housing Development Corporation says five major economic clusters currently define Dona Ana County-government, transportation, health care, retail and agriculture.

Despite the “very dramatic growth pattern” that’s visited Dona Ana County, Garcia says major pieces of basic infrastructure and services still lag.

For instance, “We’d like there to be a hospital in Sunland Park,” she says. Although farming and ranching have been overshadowed by other economic forces, the twin sectors still raked more than $405 million in sales receipts in 2009, according to the United States Department of Agriculture and the New Mexico Department of Agriculture (NMDA). Statewide, Dona Ana County ranked first in crop value and fourth in livestock.

As for land use, the 2007 agricultural census counted 589,373 acres on 1,762 county farms. Locally, dairy and pecans have been the big cash earners in recent years. Strategically located in Las Cruces, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture (NMDA) promotes New Mexico-grown and raised products in national and international markets.

“NMDA has committed resources and staff to numerous domestic and international trade activities and projects,” the department’s 2009-2013 Strategic Plan states. “New Mexico products are being marketed throughout the United States, the Pacific Rim, China, Mexico, Canada, and the European community.”

Dona Ana County-raised products promoted at home and abroad include pecans, onions, chile and cattle, among others. Government and private investments have spurred growth and then more growth. “We’ve gotten some growth because we’re growing,” economist Peach says. In 2009, Dona Ana County’s Gross Domestic Product amounted to $5.37 billion, he adds.

The regent’s scholar highlights the rapid expansion of the retail sector, especially in Las Cruces, now New Mexico’s second-largest city, where big-box stores such as Home Depot and Lowe’s have thrust open their doors. “Restaurants are now finding us,” Peach says. We’ve got Olive Garden, Texas Roadhouse.”

In a city where a solo Asian diner was once an adventurous dining experience, exotic and gourmet foods are increasingly available to upscale consumers. Pitched for their health qualities, pecans have become a sort of nutty status symbol.

At De La Vega’s Pecan Grill and Brewery, for instance, the sumptuous pleasures of smoke-grilled fine dining and trendy home-brewed beer tasting await customers. Picking from the menu, diners can sample Shrimp scampi, Mango sea bass, Green Chile Ravioli and other food fusions. The hub of the county, Las Cruces today exudes a new cosmopolitanism that was missing only a couple decades ago.

In 2010, the Las Cruces Convention Center opened its doors for the first time. In the business world, the Green Chamber of Commerce and Hispano the Chamber of Commerce exist alongside the traditional Chamber. The arts and music are popular, with the local public radio station KRWG broadcasting a heavy dose of classical compositions into the Chihuahuan Desert winds.

A newcomer from San Diego, businessman Michael Mason runs a men’s clothing and hat store in the historic village of Mesilla next to Las Cruces. Mason says he’s impressed by the cultural qualities of his new home, finding pleasurable and affordable diversions in the local jazz society, symphony orchestra, Rio Grande Theater and New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum. “I’m very happy with what we do in town,” Mason says.

“The arts in this town are booming.” As New Mexico’s second-largest city with a population of 97,618 residents counted during the 2010 Census, Las Cruces is poised to become an even bigger city. But NMSU’s James Peach says a couple elements are still lacking for the City of Crosses to be a major destination in its own right.

“We need a big luxury hotel, a Hyatt kind of hotel here,” Peach says. Another deficit, he adds, is the lack of commercial airline service, which currently is only locally available in neighboring El Paso. “We’re not going to attract big business here with no easy way to get in and out,” Peach argues.

Yet there is another side to the high culture and affluence of Dona Ana County.

For decades, persistent high poverty rates have put the border county on the list of the poorest in New Mexico and the nation. In the last decade, the number of people living below the federal poverty line hovered around one-fourth of the county’s population.

At the turn of the new century, the annual, median household income for Dona Ana County residents was $29,808 compared with $34,133 for New Mexico as a whole, according to figures compiled by the County of Dona Ana.

After four decades as a low-income community advocate, Rose Garcia doesn’t view economic circumstances as getting better. “Incomes aren’t going up. There is a lot of unemployment,” Garcia says.

“I think the 8 percent unemployment rate is distorted. I think that unemployment is twice that.” Different explanations for Dona Ana County’s persistent poverty rates include the high percentage of low-skilled Mexican immigrants; the presence of a large number of low-income students, low-paying jobs; and now steep unemployment, to name just a few.

Unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s when the federal Works Progress Administration employed the jobless in New Mexico and other states, no similar public employment program- save for the short-lived federal stimulus money that kept some education workers employed and landed a few private contractors construction gigs- was implemented during the Great Recession.

Dr. Guillermina Nunez-Mchiri knows first-hand the frustrations and aspirations of a struggling population. The daughter of a migrant farmworker family, Nunez-Mchiri has one foot in the old Mexico of her parents and one in the New Mexico of her research studies.

A professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Texas at El Paso, Nunez-Mchiri has spent years meeting and interviewing low-income residents of rural Dona Ana County.

The early 21st century is a tough time for a heavily immigrant populace, she says, with high unemployment, high land costs and high commodity prices making day-to-day living a challenge. Most New Mexicans, Nunez-Mchiri says, can’t afford “$10 salads with pecans on them.”

Today’s high fuel prices disproportionately impact rural residents who do not have access to public transportation and must depend on old gas-guzzling vehicles. Soaring fuel expenses have other economic repercussions, Nunez-Mchiri is quick to add, as residents cut back on their shopping trips to town.

Still, Nunez-Mchiri says she finds great resilience, especially among women. “I think in areas where you have high unemployment, people try to figure things out,” the borderland scholar affirms.

Similar to Mexico and other parts of the developing world, a subterranean economy has emerged in which residents make extra income by stringing together chile ristras or preparing salsas during festival time, Nunez-Mchiri says. Nunez recalls a woman who paid off her home by selling burritos, and knows another one who has a steady business baking wheat bread for diabetics. “She has a niche market,” Nunez-Mchiri says.

The economic survival strategies described by Nunez-Mchiri are rarely discussed in the media, academia or in high policy circles.

Tierra del Sol’s Rose Garcia is a member of the Vision 2040 Steering Committee, an amalgamation of community leaders that is putting together a vision statement for Dona Ana County during the next three decades. Garcia says not enough attention has been put on cultivating a pent-up economic creativity she detects among the people she serves. Asked what was as the most pressing economic issue in the coming years, Garcia was emphatic: “Jobs!”

Prior to moving to Las Cruces to attend NMSU in 1967, Garcia grew up in the small town of La Luz, New Mexico, where her father ran a bar/pool hall and her mother operated a small store. The longtime community advocate says pitching in with the family businesses gave her a work ethic at a young age. But nowadays, few young people work in family enterprises that could lead to alternative career paths and help keep them out of trouble, Garcia says.

According to Garcia, too much emphasis is placed on getting New Mexicans to work for franchises and big companies like Wal-Mart and not enough on encouraging local initiatives. She says the state needs to look within.

“There needs to be more attention in the county on internally creating jobs or strengthening existing small businesses.” Garcia maintains. “Everything should not be tied to the franchises. People are very talented here. I really believe it.”

Moving ahead, New Mexicans need to address fundamental questions of economic development, Garcia says. “What are some the untapped resources?” she ponders. What are businesses that are viable?”

The observations of Garcia and other members of the Vision 2040 Advisory Committee will provide an opportunity for further analysis, comment and debate in the coming months. According to Paul Michaud, senior planner for the City of Las Cruces, the proposed Vision 2040 plan will be posted at the document’s website (http://www.las-cruces.org/code/vision_2040/index.htm) later this week. Public comment is invited, he says.

Michaud says the plan will then go to all the relevant commissions and elected bodies of Dona Ana County for consideration and/or adoption between the mid summer and early fall time. The issues of agriculture, economic development, transportation and the environment are all central points of the plan, Michaud says.

While entities such as the City of Las Cruces have previously adopted their own plans, the 2040 process is the first time a county-wide regional perspective has been applied to future growth and development strategies. “From that standpoint, it’s a first,” Michaud says.

Frontera NorteSur’s New Mexico Centennial of Statehood series is made possible in part by grants from the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, New Mexico Humanities Council, National Endowment for the Humanities and the McCune Charitable Foundation. The author is solely responsible for the contents of the articles.

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Las Cruces, New Mexico