City delegation mixes trade trip, football Page C1
Texans’ game takes center stage for Houston officials on mission to Mexico City
Mayor Sylvester Turner and a large delegation of city officials are in Mexico City this week on a trade mission focused on “growing Houston’s investment and trade relationship” with our southern neighbors.
Before getting down to serious business, however, they took in a little football at Azteca Stadium.
No, not that kind of football, the one they play down there with that silly round ball. This was real football, American football, Monday Night Football, no less, and it just happened that one of the teams on the field was the hometown Texans.
Pure coincidence, the mayor suggested last week.
“It just so happens that the Texans are playing Oakland there as well,” he told City Council. In fact, the Houston Super Bowl Host Committee, Houston Texans and Greater Houston Partnership, the region’s main business group, arranged the three-day mission around the game, partnership president Bob Harvey said.
Judging by the draft itinerary, football took center stage for the city’s delegation, which was slated to include the mayor, his daughter, six City Council members, five mayor’s office employees, the director of the Houston Airport System and three members of the mayor’s security detail.
The first two days of the mission featured just four required activities spanning nine hours, all football-related, and an optional three-hour cultural tour, not counting time allocated for meals or transportation. All events related to
medicine and energy were scheduled for Tuesday.
Turner said he hopes the trip would showcase Houston as a welcoming, international city, foster relationships and help Houston gain support for its bid to host the 2020 World Petroleum Congress. He added that his tour of Mexico City gave him ideas about how to design public space.
“It comes at an excellent time, when there’s a lot of uneasiness amongst immigrants, and specifically people who come from Mexico in the city of Houston, and a lot of uneasiness in Mexico as relates to the direction that the United States is going,” Turner said by phone from Mexico City. “With Mexico being our second-largest trading partner, with the city of Houston, I think the time is excellent to kind of reinforce and re-emphasize the relationship between Mexico and the city of Houston.”
The city estimated the value of Houston’s trade with Mexico last year to be about $17.7 billion.
Turner said he views all city representatives as necessary members of the delegation and thinks football can help facilitate international connections.
“Quite frankly, sports can sometimes be an excellent conduit in establishing those cultural relationships and those business relationships and those trading relationships,” he said.
Mayoral spokeswoman Janice Evans said the Greater Houston Partnership had yet to invoice the city for expenses.
Council members were told it would cost $3,200 apiece to attend.
The trip is Turner’s third international trade mission this year, following travels to Cuba and South Africa.
Former Mayor Annise Parker led 12 international trade missions during her six years in office, one in her first term.
Harvey said the business group wanted to travel to Mexico City this year, as it did in 2014 and 2015, and thought it made sense to do so around the Texans game.
“These trips create interest in relationships that ultimately bear fruit in business arrangements, combinations, deals, investments in Houston, trade with Houston, that ultimately bring jobs to Houston,” Harvey said. “Our arrival with political leadership alongside business leadership — it’s critical that we maintain a balance — but that’s what creates the interest on the other side.”
The city’s representatives were among roughly 130 delegates who flew to Mexico on a plane chartered by the Houston Super Bowl Host Committee.