Texas governor, Mexico agree to extend Trans-Texas Corridor
By Jerome R. Corsi
Official Mexican government reports reveal Mexico has entered discussions with the state of Texas and top officials in the Bush administration to extend the Trans-Texas Corridor into Mexico, with a plan to connect through Monterrey to the deep-water Mexican ports on the Pacific, including Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas.
The official website of the Mexican northeastern state of Nuevo León contain multiple reports that José Natividad Gonzáles Parás, governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo León, has actively discussed with numerous U.S. government officials, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the extension of the Trans-Texas Corridor into Mexico to create what's called a "Trans North America Corridor."
Gov. Gonzales Paras and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters at Transportes Olympic in February 2007.
In an August trip to Mexico, Perry made news in U.S. media by calling the idea of building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border "idiocy."
Largely unreported in the American press were meetings Perry held in Mexico with Gonzáles Parás in which the two discussed extending the corridor into Mexico.
In their private meetings, the pair thoroughly discussed extending TTC-35 into Mexico, according to a report on the government's site.
In an interview prior to Perry's visit, Gonzáles Parás made it clear the extension of TTC-35 into Mexico would be a discussed during Perry's time there.
"We have had interaction with the governor of Texas," Gonzáles Parás said. "We have had a very productive relationship with Rick Perry, who is also interested in what we can do to continue that which is known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, that in reality is the corridor of North America, the Trans North America Corridor, that includes railroads, bridges, passenger automobile highways, and truck highway lanes."
Gonzáles Parás further explained the extension of TTC-35 into Mexico would connect through Monterrey, a city which he suggested would function as a hub for truck-freight traffic. Monterrey is the capital of Nuevo León.
"One of the themes that merited the most attention on the part of the two governors was the development of the infrastructure needed for the competitive development of the region as it relates to developing the Trans-Texas Corridor in connection with the project we call the Corridor of Northeastern Mexico," the Nuevo León government website reported Gonzáles Parás saying Sept. 1, at the conclusion of Perry's visit.
Gonzáles Parás is reportedly pursuing plans to establish Monterrey as an "inland port" where international container freight cargo, largely delivered into Mexico via the Mexican ports on the Pacific, could be transported via a Trans North America Corridor into the United States via Laredo, Texas.
Once on I-35, the Mexican trucks transporting the Chinese containers could travel north, heading toward U.S. inland ports, such as WND has previously reported are being established by the Free Trade Alliance San Antonio in San Antonio and in Kansas City by the Kansas City SmartPort.
NASCO's original homepage in June 2006 opened with a map highlighting the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada.
On May 24, Gonzáles Parás announced during his recent meetings in Austin, Perry had agreed the envisioned Trans North America Corridor would pass through Laredo and connect with San Antonio, just as Mexico ultimately planned to extend the superhighway south into Colombia.
"We have also worked in Monterrey to create an inland port, a metropolitan center for moving rapidly the commercial traffic from Monterrey to the inland port at San Antonio," Gonzáles Parás said in the state-published interview."For this strategic project to be accomplished, we have been working with the federal government in Mexico and well as holding discussions with the secretary of transportation and the secretary of state in the United States."
WND has previously reported similar comments made by Gonzáles Parás at a Feb. 22 press conference in Mexico that first announced Transportes Olympic had been selected as the first trucking firm to cross the border in the Mexican truck-demonstration project.
In speaking to the group assembled at the company's headquarters, Gonzáles Parás announced the Trans-Texas Corridor was not just the NAFTA Superhighway, but "the Logistical Trans-Corridor of North America," uniting Mexico, the United States and Canada.
He next announced the time had arrived to declare a North American Economic Community.
Gonzáles Parás explained the Trans-Texas Corridor was more accurately known in Mexico as the "Logistical Trans-Corridor of North America."
"I want to let you know how much we in this border state of Nuevo León have been working with our neighbor state of Texas," he said, "making agreements which permit us to enrich what in Texas is called the 'Trans-Texas Corridor,' but what we in Mexico know as the 'Logistical Corridor of North America.'"
"We – Canada, the United States and Mexico – have to perfect this Logistical Trans-Corridor of North America for our mutual benefit," Gonzáles Parás continued.
He expanded his vision of a Logistical Corridor of North America to include the construction of a train and truck corridor that would cut through the heart of North America.
WND has previously described as a new NAFTA Superhighway, the first segment of which is the planned four-football-fields-wide Trans-Texas Corridor which the Texas Department of Transportation plans to build parallel to Interstate 35.
WND has also reported that at the recent Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) third summit held in Montebello, Quebec, President Bush and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper ridiculed the idea that SPP might result in the creation of a North American Union or NAFTA Superhighways.
These reports in Spanish published on the Nuevo León government website suggest that discussions about extending TTC-35 into Mexico are much further advanced that have been admitted by the Bush administration or reported upon in the U.S. mainstream media.
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