Brownsville representatives welcome Mexican visitors to city

It was chilly and damp at the foot of the Gateway International Bridge Wednesday morning, and Brownsville Chamber of Commerce chief Angela Burton was fighting a cold.

But it was for a good cause: Burton and Irma Hernandez, the chamber’s vice president, along with Brownsville Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr., had assembled at the north side of the bridge shortly before 11 a.m. to greet pedestrians crossing over from Mexico and welcome them to the city. The trio soon exhausted its stock of "Brownsville con Mexico" pins, city maps and directories.

"I think it’s just a gesture that we do appreciate their business," Burton says. "We want to encourage them to return. We gave out over 300 pins in 20 minutes. That ought to give you an idea of the number of people crossing. It was kind of funny: At the end one lady grabbed me and hugged me and told me, ‘Thank you.’ She seemed pretty grateful."

Underlying the symbolic welcome gesture — the first of its kind in Brownsville as far as Burton knows — is the fact that crossing into the United States from Mexico is more of an ordeal than it used to be thanks to tighter U.S. Department of Homeland Security restrictions post-9/11. This is bad news for Brownsville, a city whose economic well-being depends largely on shoppers from Mexico.

"I think that we should be grateful to them all year long, not only during the holidays," Hernandez says. "This community strongly relies on Mexican citizens when they come and shop here. We should be grateful to them every day."

Ahumada said the treatment endured at the border by many Mexican nationals on shopping expeditions or other business is crimping northbound traffic. Many visitors have had their visas yanked arbitrarily, he says.

"I’m getting complaints of legitimate commerce coming to Brownsville being harassed or being unnecessarily detained," he says. "Something needs to be done. We want to show Brownsville in a positive light — that we’re here to receive all our visitors from the south with open arms."

Ahumada says he was recently at a meeting in El Paso that included high-ranking Mexican officials. Representatives from the country’s environmental protection agency were detained for so long despite their credentials that they nearly didn’t make the meeting, he says.

The idea of greeting pedestrians from Mexico came from a meeting between the mayor and Mexican chamber of commerce officials. It’s a start, but Ahumada wants to do more — such as establishing a way for people on the Mexican side whose visas have been taken away to register complaints, which would then be conveyed to officials in Washington, D.C.

"When you take a visa from one individual nobody knows about it," he said. "But when you’ve got an army of people it’s a different story. It hinders good relations. Something needs to be done."

Ahumada doesn’t fault local customs officials, who he says are just doing their jobs in accordance with federal policies established by the Department of Homeland Security in Washington. Rather, he blames the policies themselves for creating a hostile climate at the border for Mexican visitors. It’s a situation at odds with the historical symbiosis and relatively free flow — economically, culturally and socially — between Brownsville and Matamoros.

Whatever happens on the federal level, Burton says local officials will do what they can to make Mexican visitors aware that Brownsville loves them — including staging more "Welcome to Brownsville" events like the one Wednesday.

"It’s kind of a simple thing," Burton says. "Sometimes simple things are the best."