Prisma Mulegino

Sister City, A Community Development Opportunity (6/27/02)

By Felipe Zuniga Meza, translated by Mariano Velazquez

Far from establishing a purely philanthropic snobbish relation, the young men and women members of the Manhattan Beach Sister City Committee became interested in finding ways to help the 11th administration of the Mulege Municipality to overcome its economic crisis.

A difficult enterprise to say the least. Nonetheless, these young people, all successful business people and administrators from this Los Angeles suburb, pretend to change the kind of relation between these two very different cities.

Michael Rossi, of only 38 years of age and highly successful in his personal businesses, besides being in charge of the Santa Rosalia-Manhattan Beach relation, wants to find new schemes with which they can help the local administration get started in profitable businesses.

These young visitors became interested in endeavours such as agriculture and tourism. They emphasized Baja California Sur's wealth and heritage, and they were surprised to know that tax collections from these activities end up in the Federation.

Nevertheless, something good resulted of this interesting dialog between the members of the Sister City Committee, that recently visited this port, and Mulege Mayor Marco Antonio Nunez-Rosas.

It is great that the relation is not only based on donations to the fire department, that are most welcome, and other merely philanthropic activities that were practiced in the near past; now the idea of these north American young people is to maintain a relation whereby real benefits are achieved in the fields of education, business and culture.

Mayor Nunez received with great interest our distinguished visitors' proposition.

Personally, I think the opportunity to foster this relation must be taken. Like one of our visitors said, this relation can only give benefits to the young men and women, and for the whole community.