Business View Civil and Municipal | January 2021

38 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL JANUARY 2021 Other Banks Have Branches, We Have Roots. WWW.FCBTX.COM (956) 399-3331 SERVING THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY FROM 9 DIFFERENT BANKING CENTERS IN HIDALGO, CAMERON AND WILLACY COUNTIES. although, geographically speaking, San Benito happens to sit at the heart of the County, the two hubs of industry currently lie outside its boundaries in Harlingen and Brownsville. “We have a history that goes beyond these two communities,” De La Rosa says. “We began as an agricultural economy and that’s starting to make a comeback. We have access to the international bridges both to the west and south of us. You can’t get to South Padre island without going through San Benito. And a lot of well-to-do Mexican nationals that are on tours in the U.S., in Texas, come up through the Matamoros-Brownsville area northward. They go through San Benito to continue onto larger cities north of us. Elon Musk has the SpaceX site out at Boca Chica beach, which is 20 miles east of Brownsville. You could throw a rock is how close Mexico is to that site. All that future space technology will bring a different caliber of professionals here, and many of them aren’t looking to live along a border council. They’ll