11/17/24

I am sitting in the hotel lobby in Monterrey, Mexico, and my brain is buzzing after a quick two-day scouting visit to this Northern Mexican city, just 300 miles south of San Antonio – about equidistant from Dallas in the other direction. At our first meeting, Roberto Alejo, of Mexican IT company Softtek, proudly recounted how company founder Blanca Treviño coined the term “nearshoring,” which makes the case for outsourcing roles in close proximity to the U.S. market.

The purpose of my trip, along with three other leaders from CAST, was to scout a planned January visit for CAST student leaders. We met with business leaders from Softtek, Prodensa, CEMEX and H-E-B,  in preparation for thoughtful conversations, and visited the locations in preparation for our students to experience them. 

This will be our third year chaperoning a group of student leaders from across our CAST Schools on a global leadership trip to Mexico, but the two prior visits have been to the capital, Mexico City. Like on previous trips, I am reminded that leaders in other countries speak our English language and closely watch trends in the U.S. The entire business model of Prodensa is based on an understanding of the needs of international manufacturers operating in Mexico, and a promise to shepherd that experience so that the companies can maintain their focus on their core competencies.

It is not the first time I have told myself to pay closer attention to events in Mexico, to be more aware of opportunities to leverage San Antonio’s proximity and cultural ties with our closest neighbor. I am embarrassed to acknowledge that while I have a master’s degree in Caribbean and Latin American studies, my knowledge falls more into the historical than contemporary context, and I am filled with respect for those who pay close attention to international news. 

Why Mexico, you might ask?

One of the reasons we love to take students to Mexico is because of the way it absolutely disrupts impressions formed mostly through the news media, or in some cases, visits to the U.S.-Mexico border. Monterrey is an industrial city, surrounded by mountains, but it is also very modern, and we visited some skyscrapers with smart features that I have not yet seen in San Antonio.

At Tec de Monterrey, one of the country’s most renowned universities, especially for engineering, entrepreneurship and technology, we met with leaders from the Center for the Future of Cities, who are working closely with the neighborhoods around the private university to build more affordable housing, establish safer streets and parks, and create stronger community connections between residents, businesses and the university. They’ve taken a page from the successful revitalization of Medellín, Colombia, and two professors from that city teach at the Center. Oscar Garcia Roman, a CAST Med math teacher who teaches in both English and Spanish, spent the first part of his career at Tec de Monterrey’s adjacent high school, and has led virtual collaborative projects such as building a solar oven between Tec’s students and CAST Med. The University of Texas at San Antonio and Tec de Monterrey recently developed a dual master’s program in cybersecurity.

Monterrey is one of San Antonio’s 11 sister cities, the city’s first and the first between a U.S. and Mexican city, established in 1953. Both cities are home to families who have gone back and forth, as well as critical trade partnerships, with Monterrey the industrial and manufacturing epicenter of Northern Mexico, and San Antonio emerging more recently as a manufacturing hub. Nearshoring became a household word in Mexico during the global pandemic, when Asian companies in particular saw their supply chains scrambled and struggled to find more direct ways to deliver goods to the U.S. market. Like San Antonio is considered a gateway to Texas and the U.S., Monterrey is considered a gateway to Mexico and Latin America. 

During our short time there, we were struck by the similarities – and the differences – between our two cities. Most readers of this newsletter know that the origin of CAST Schools is closely tied to support from H-E-B and its chairman, Charles Butt, and Monterrey is the location of H-E-B’s first Mexican grocery store. Across Monterrey we saw Christmas decorations, including massive billboards and banners with H-E-B’s distinctive red branding featuring none other than Santa himself. H-E-B now has more than 400 stores in Texas and Mexico, only recently entering the Dallas and Northern Texas market to long lines and great fanfare. The first store, H-E-B Chipinque, opened 27 years ago, and there are now 50 H-E-B stores across Northern Mexico. Elke Gonzalez Forstner, from H-E-B Mexico’s public relations team and a 17-year employee of the company explained how they centered around the values from the U.S. company while giving it a “Mexican flavor.”

We’re planning to visit with H-E-B leaders at the store itself, which I am hoping will drive home many of the interesting similarities – and the differences – that we saw throughout our visit.

Jeanne Russell

Executive Director

CAST Schools