June 4, 2015
The continuing challenges of crime and poverty along the border should not obscure the outlines of a historic transformation in North America. The centers of economic dynamism in both the U.S. and Mexico—nations predicted to have the second and fifth largest economies in the world by 2050—are converging at la frontera. A new transnational core in the global economy, like the Benelux nations of Europe and the concentration of wealth in East Asia, is emerging on both sides of the area between the Rio Grande and Nueces rivers once known as the Wild Horse Desert. In an age obsessed with bad news, this is very good news indeed.