In an effort to promote growth and international relations, the city of Mission has signed an agreement with their 27th sister city.
On Wed. Aug. 12, Mission city officials met with leadership from Monterrey, the capital and largest city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León, Mexico. The sister city signing took place in the Mission City Council chambers.
Mission Mayor Armando O’caña and Presidente Municipal de Monterrey, Adrián Emilio de la Garza Santos, following the signing between the two sister cities this week. Progress Times photo by Jamie Treviño.
Mayor Armando O’caña and Adrián Emilio de la Garza Santos, the Presidente Municipal for Monterrey, signed an agreement forging ties between the city of Mission and Monterrey in a socially-distant ceremony. There, they exchanged gifts, including the key to the city of Mission.
“For me, it is an honor and privilege to receive the mayor of one of the most important cities in Mexico,” O’caña said. “Know that today, we’ll be closer than ever through this sister city agreement.”
O’caña stressed that this agreement was more than a signature.
“It is a bond, a friendship that will unite us for years to come,” O’caña said to de la Garza Santos. “Welcome to your new home.”
O’caña said there were plans to offer training for law enforcement officers in Monterrey in Mission through South Texas College and the Police Department.
“We will offer our police department for the training of their police officers,” O’caña said, adding Mission will also be offering medical care training for first responders in Emergency Medical Service. “We’re all ready to go. It’s called international training.”
The city of Monterrey is also training in Dallas, but O’caña said they would be able to gain more experience in border safety and law enforcement.
“We can offer that to them,” O’caña said. “I think I can speak for all the mayors in the Rio Grande Valley – we are a regionalized concept. They will join in to assist the city of Mission, to provide that massive training that is very productive for them as well as for us.”
O’caña also noted that the future Madero-Reynosa International Bridge project, currently in preliminary stages, will be the ultimate connection not just culturally, but economically.
“For Mission, it’s very obvious that the need is expansion,” O’caña said, noting Monterrey has thousands of employees and a massive reach that Mission can learn from and grow with. “The express train that’s happening from Dallas to Houston, we’d like it to go from Houston to Mission and Mission to Monterrey to connect the whole state of Texas. I want Mission to be the gateway to the world.”
