Related articles
Chihuahua-New Mexico binational development commission
Developing the border by Eileen Welsome
Verde Group denies any connections to binational development projects
Verde Corporate Realty official website- "Our target market" (click on Juárez)
Verde Group needs to straighten out its collaborators
|
|
Eloy Vallina Lagüera-
A major partner for the Verde Group's binational plan
Eloy
Vallina, one of the richest men in Chihuahua, is the owner of the
Mexican portion of the “master planned binational cities”
known as San Jerónimo-Santa Teresa. Vallina was a board of
director of the Verde Group between 2003 to 2007 and is perhaps the
major Mexican partner for William Sander’s real estate
corporation in the Juárez-El Paso-Sunland Park-Santa Teresa
area. Although the Verde Group refuses to make a public comment,
according to a statement by Doña Ana County Commissioner Bill
McCamley, Vallina left the board of directors recently around the time
of the binational protests of human rights violations in Lomas del
Poleo, a plot of land crucial to the development of the Santa
Teresa-San Jeronimo project. However, in those four years that Vallina
was a board member for Verde, he worked fervently to create the
binational infrastructure to make the Verde Group project
feasible. In 2003, Eloy Vallina sat, together with the Pedro
Zaragoza Fuentes, on New Mexico -Chihuahua commission for binational
development co-chaired by governor Bill Richardson. Verde has denied
any binational component to their Santa Teresa development project.
Eloy Vallina's son, Eloy Vallina Garza, is a member of the Paso Del
Norte Group. Vallina’s family business has been criticized by
environmental activists for its role in the deforestation of the Sierra
Tarahumara through illegal logging activity.
(Excerpts from the U.S. and Mexico press)
“Developing the Border” by Eileen Welsome
Eloy Vallina Lagüera, who sits on the Verde board, owns about
49,000 acres directly across the line in San Jerónimo, Mexico,
and is planning to create a community that will mirror Santa Teresa.
The two communities will be linked by roads, a rail crossing, and a
contiguous foreign trade zone, which, among other things, will allow
firms to import components duty-free into territory that’s
neither the United States nor Mexico, warehouse or assemble the items,
and then re-export the finished products to foreign countries without
having to pay tariffs.
San Jerónimo sits atop the Conejos Médanos aquifer. With
water quality and quantity declining in the Hueco Bolson, an aquifer
used by both Juárez and El Paso, Juárez officials are
hoping one day to tap the Conejos Médanos (which means rabbit
dunes in Spanish). Mexican activists and urban planners
vehemently oppose plans to develop San Jerónimo because they say
the development would rob Juárez of valuable resources, which is
growing so rapidly that it cannot meet the needs of its current
residents.
Eloy Vallina has shrugged off the criticism, alleging his opponents are
suffering from “envidia enfermiza” – a sickly envy. A
confidant of Mexican presidents and governors, Vallina is a member of
another of Mexico’s super-rich families with businesses on both
sides of the border. He was formerly a banker and once headed a firm
that specialized in establishing and overseeing maquiladoras for
foreign companies. After his bank was nationalized in 1982, Vallina
famously said, “Me quitaron el banco. Pues yo les quitaré
Chihuahua. They took my bank from me, so I shall take Chihuahua from
them.
One of Verde Group’s first large purchases was more than 20,000
acres in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, a huge chunk of land located 13
miles west of downtown El Paso and considered by many to be one of
city’s outermost suburbs. The property, which measures
eight miles in width at the border, actually surrounds the Santa Teresa
International Port of Entry.
The purchase proved to be a fortuitous event for Eloy Vallina Laguera,
another Verde board member, who initially owned a little more than
49,000 acres on the other side of the border and is planning a mirror
development there. Reported to be one of the richest men in Mexico,
Vallina has morphed from banker to maquiladora operator and now a
developer. After his bank was nationalized in 1982, Proceso, a Mexican
publication, quoted Vallina as saying, “Me quitaron el banco.
Pues yo les quitaré Chihuahua. They took my bank from me, so I
shall take Chihuahua from them.”
Vallina, who declined to be interviewed, is currently chairman of
Accel, a Mexican holding company traded on the Mexican stock exchange.
In 1990, Accel acquired Elamex, a pioneer in the maquiladora concept.
Eventually, Elamex became what’s known as a shelter operator,
which meant that it did all the work associated with the maquiladoras,
including the hiring of workers, doing the payroll, obtaining permits,
paying fees, importing the raw materials and machinery and exporting
the finished products.
When Elamex went public on the NASDAQ in 1995, it was ranked the fifth
largest maquiladora operator in Mexico. It had 17 manufacturing
facilities, eight of which were located in Juárez, according to
Hoover’s, a research company that compiles information on
businesses. When companies started moving to Asia, Elamex’s
profits began to decline. So Elamex sold its shelter operations and
purchased other companies, including a candy manufacturer. In
2006, Elamax decided to delist from the NASDAQ, noting the
filing requirements had become expensive and burdensome. At that time,
it had less than 300 holders of common stock, a document on file
with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows.
A confident of Mexican presidents and governors, Vallina purchased the
huge parcel of land of San Jerónimo land in 1998 for roughly $5
million, according to Proceso, a respected Mexican publication. In
2004, twelve days before Chihuahua Gov. Patricio Martinez left office,
Martinez (whose campaign Vallina helped finance)
“expropriated” 212 hectares of Vallina’s land and
paid him $4.6 million, the magazine reported. The net result? Vallina
only wound up paying about $500,000 for nearly 50,000 acres, or about
$10 an acre.
Norte, June 8, 2003
Who Does Juarez Belong To?
by José Pérez Espino
During the era of Porfirio Diaz the empresario Luis Terrazas possessed
greater wealth than the Queen of England. When someone asked him once
if he was from Chihuahua [literally “Do you belong to Chihuahua?]
he responded: “No, Chihuahua belongs to me.”
History does not seem to have changed much thanks to influence
trafficking and the use of privileged information. One fact illustrates
the serious situation regarding land ownership in Juárez: three
influential families own plots of land whose total area is greater than
the of the city’s currently populated urban zone.
The Manuel Quevedo and the Jaime Bermudez families own a total of 5,700
hectares located in the southeast part of the city, according to the
city’s official maps and land ownership data. Both families
have laid claim to ownership of 3,500 hectares that are currently under
litigation with the federal government. Eloy S. Vallina, on the
other hand, is the owner of 19,400 hectares in the northwest part of
the city.
The current urban zone of Juárez is 22,700 hectares is less than
the 28,600 owned by these three families. By the way, Vallina
purchased most of this land in early 1998, just a few months after
Patricio Martinez began his administration. Vallina, according to
Norte, was a “sponsor of the campaign” of the current
governor. The other newspaper, El Diario, has documented the use
of privileged information that led to his purchasing the lots from
several families: “Sources reveal that at this time the state
governor Francisco Barrio carried out studies of the territorial
reserves and the areas targeted for development, among them were the
two large plots of land purchased by Vallina just across the lands
where Texan entrepreneurs were not looking to develop.”
The article continued: “Adviced by the former PANista general
secretary of the State Goverment, Eduardo Romero Ramos, who was in
charge of al these studies, Vallina Lagüera was able to find out
the official details of the study regarding that region and began to
buy land from those who owned that land.”
Manuel Quevedo Reyes and Jaime Bermúdez Cuaron also took
advantage of their positions as mayor to buy lands and to direct
the city’s growth to areas that they owned. La “Historia
del Lote Bravo” by Maria Soccorro Velazquez and Rosalba Vega in
1993 outlines the following: “Between 1977 when Manuel
Quevedo became mayor and 1992, when Jesús Macias Delgado ended
his term as mayor, both Quevedo and Delgado used privileged information
to acquire lands that were targeted by the City Development Plans that
they themselves designed as areas of growth for the next 30
years. Manuel Quevedo (mayor from 1977-80 bought 10,000 hectares
that were strategically located in the south part of the city.
That was 50% of the total urban area at the time. He oriented the
urban growth toward that area through the Director of Development. His
treasurer and business partner in the acquisition of those lands was
Jaime Bermudez Cuaron. On his part, Jaime Bermudez Cuaron (mayor
between 1986-1989) continued hoarding up lands. Under the slogan
“A New Juarez,” public works and investments that backed up
that plan were given priority.
Likewize, Jesus Macias Delgado (mayor between 1989 to 1993) made a pact
with the Quevedo Group, now that he was a candiate for governor, and
named him his “coordinador politico,” (policy
coordinator). He approved the Plan Parcial de la Zona Sur that
opened up vast areas owned by Quevedo and Bermudez to urban development
using public funds. This is when the highways to the kilometro 20 and
the Carretera Panamericana to Zaragoza, that went through their lands,
was also enhanced.
Here lies the historical struggle for Juárez: a continual dispute for possession and monopolization of the land.
Diario- January 22, 2006
Through a paid newspaper advertisement, businessman Eloy Vallina
accused those who “attack” the Plan Parcial San Jeronimo of
suffering from “envidia enfermiza” (sickly envy) and
charges that all of the Juárez community has been co-opted by
these kinds of persons.
The ad reads:
“Thus, while some draw water into their political wells, others
defend their miserly economic interests...motivated by a sickly envy,
they question and obliterate any development initiative. They
don’t care that they’re dragging behind them the large
majority of the Juárez people who do need development and who
are interested in progress.”
“There’s only one way of calling this attitude of a small
minority: it is the attitude of mental midgets. Unfortunately this
great community has been co-opted by a few of these individuals of
limited intellect, of small spirit and who lack any kind of social
commitment. They are pseudo-leaders who believe they own the city
and don’t allow others to have dreams, nor carry out large
projects (unless they’re done by foreigners) that will bring
development and wealth to Juárez.”
“The publication of lies and falsehoods by those who call
themselves the defenders of Juarez continues despite our clarifications
that no funds will be drawn from the City for the exclusive benefit of
San Jeronimo. This is a self-sustaining project that will find its own
means to pay for infrastructure and development.”
The ad makes allusions to “a private club” behind the
attacks [referring to the Frente Ciudadano por Juarez that carried out
referendum with 54,000 signatures against the plan]. Vallina was not
available for comment.
“It has never been my habit to litigate through the media,”
the ad continued. “I have dedicated myself to work and the
creation of employment opportunities. My trajectory speaks for itself
and I will not change course.” The Vallina ad ends with the
sentence: “I wish luck to the Juarenses and may God and the
government protect Ciudad Juárez.”
El Diario, January 25, 2006
Contrary to the assurances given by the empresario Eloy Vallina in a
paid advertisement, the San Jeronimo Partial Plan was approved by the
City Council without fulfilling the necessary requirements that the
Instituto Municipal de Investigación y Planeación
(The Municipal Institute for Research and Planning) called for.
According to Rosario Díaz, the director at the time, the City
Council voted for and accepted the project not only without conducting
studies about the zone’s capacity to provide drinking water, but
also without economic feasibility studies and without any studies
on the regulation of the lands in between San Jerónimo and
Juárez urban area.
Also, in contrast to the official version, Vallina’s land will require public funding, Díaz said.
Elloy Vallina stated in his public ad: “We’ve repeated over
and over that we have fulfilled all the requirements brought forth by
the IMIP.”
Norte de Ciudad Juárez, May 1, 2007
Chihuahuan Businessmen are Recognized
Five are in the top 100
Five Chihuahenses have made the list of the 100 most important
empresarios in Mexico in the year 2007 according to the national
magazine Expansion.
Miguel Fernandez Iturriza (Juarez Coca-Cocal owner), Eugenio Terrazas
Torrres with the Ruba Group; and Eloy Vallina Lagüera of
Accel. Eloy Vallina of the Grupo Accel had sales of 1.546 billion
pesos.
Proceso
November 1, 1998
The opposition had to wait 12 years to get back at Eloy Vallina for his role in Chihuahua’s electoral fraud
Chihuahua.-Eloy S. Vallina Lagüera, one of the richest men in the
state, suffered a setback when the parliamentary delegations of the Pan
and PRD in the Camara de Diputados opposed his being named honorary
consul of France. These legilsators argued that Vallina participated in
the electoral fraud of 1986 that usurped the PANista administration of
Francisco Barrio Terrazas. This decision surprised the ambassador of
France in Mexico, Bruno Delaye. None of his nominations for an honorary
consul had ever been rejected before. Eloy Vallina is the head of
Accel that does business in Mexico, the U.S., the Domican
Republican and Asia.
In 1977 Eloy Vallina’s company had a “capital
contable” of 1.177 billion pesos and sales for 2.554
billion pesos.
In 1971, President Luis Echeverria expropriated 257 hectares from his
lumber business “Bosques de Chihuahua” to create the ejido
Largo Maderal, the largest one in Latin America. The litigation
there is still ongoing.
During Miguel de la Madrid’s presidency, Vallina lost his Aceros
corporation due to a long and complicated labor-related lawsuit.
After the nationalization of his bank in 1982, Vallina threw out his
warning: “You’ve taken my bank from me, I’ll take
Chihuahua from you.”
The current PRD leaders of the PRD, Porfirio Munoz Ledo, declared:
“Fernando Baeza is an employee of governor Eloy Vallina.”
Vallina was also one of the 25 empresarios who participated in the
famous dinner of February 23, 1993, in the home of Antonio Ortiz Mena,
when president Carlos Salinas passed around “the tray” with
25 million dollars from each empresario to support the PRI.
During Salinas’ presidency Vallina spoke off the “20
Mexican super-millionaires who in only six years have acquired a level
wealth that even the best empresarios of the past couldn’t
attain. It is hard to understand how in this country there is a group
of 20 supermillionaires while the middle class is completely
obliterated and the majority of the population is living in
poverty.”
Proceso, June 21, 1988
Business, perks, favors and public funds in campaigns
The electoral process in Chihuahua is serving to air out the corruption of both the PAN and the PRI.
The candidates for governor [Francisco Barrio & Patricio Martinez]
have accused each other of “alleged acts of corruption, influence
trafficking, misuse of public funds, links to narcotraffickers,
inpetitud and neglicence.”
Federico Barrio, the elder brother of the governor, is an empresario
involved in the exportation and maquiladora industry who up until 1995
was one of the 9 Chihuahuan businessmen headed by Eloy Vallina who
owned the State National Bank in El Paso, Texas.
Norte de Ciudad Juarez, January 24, 2006
Vallina: An Empire in the Shadow of the PRI
by Enrique Rodriguez
The empresario from Chihuahua made his fortune at the expense of of the
wood forests of the Sierra Tarahumara, the people of Anáhuac,
Cuauhtémoc, and with the help of local and federal PRI
governments. Valina Leguera inherited his fortune and businesses from
his father—Eloy S. Vallina García—as well as the
formula that mixes investments with political involvement with the
state. He was the Mexican ambassador to France, a job he got as a
repayment for his financial support of Ernesto Zedillo’s
campaign.
The first business affair between Vallina and the current mayor of
Juárez, Héctor Murguía Lardizábal, began
during Zedillo’s campaign, in which the Juarense was the
vice-president of the Comité Municipal de Finanzas—the
City Finance Committee. Vallina was the vice-president of the Camara
Nacional de la Industria de la Transformación at the
national level.
In 1998, Eloy Santiago Vallina Lagüera, was named by
Expansión magazine as one of the 100 richest businessmen in the
country with his Grupo Chihuahua. He ranked 63rd with a “capital
contable” (stockholder equity) of 1.17 billion pesos and
sales at 2.55 billion pesos.
The empresario Eloy Santiago Vallina Lagüera is the son of a
Spanish father who became a naturalized citizen of Mexico and a Mexican
mother from Monterrey. He was born in Chihuahua and completed his
studies in Mexico and the U.S. He studied business administration in
New York and worked for the Chemical Bank and the Bank of America
before joining the Banco Comercial Mexicano.
He is currently the president of the board of the First National Bank
in San Diego; the Grupo Ponderosa Industrial; Accel, Sa., Elamex,
Tropical Sportswear, International; Silver Eagle Refining, Inland
Refining, Mount Franklin Holdings and Grupo Promotor San Jeronimo.
In political circles in the state, it is a well known secret that
Vallina Lagüera, like many other important empresarios make large
contributions to the state governor and the President of the
Republic—investments that usually reap great benefits for their
personal fortunes.
During the campaign of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, it was said that
Vallina Lagüera had “invested” 25 million dollars,
although he publicly denied it.
His first public incursion into the political field was in 1994 when he
became the director of the PRI’s State Finance
Committee(Comité Estatal de Finanzas) to back the presidential
candidate Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León.
He came to Juárez in April 27, 1994, and gathered together
the major Chihuahuan empresarios to back Zedillo. Vallina stated
publicly that he was not looking for any “cuota de poder”
any kind of position or seeking any kind of “power quota”.
He said the businessmen who supported the candidate did not expect any
special concessions from the PRI. They were in it for “the
good of the entire country of Mexico.”
Few knew at the time that the empresario already had Project San
Jeronimo in the the stove. A few years later he formed the San Jeronimo
Real Estate Corporation and bought more than 20,000 hectares with
insider information of what was soon to come for this zone.
The San Jeronimo deal was closed during the campaign of Patricio
Martínez García whom he organized several benefit dinners
for with select groups of businessmen beginning in 1994.
Perhaps this—and the possible guilty feelings he might have felt
after he witnessed the intense opposition to his “Ciudad
Vallina” project—explains why he made that famous statement
on November 17, 2005: “La corrupción somos todos, nadie se
salva.” (“Corruption is all of us—without
exception.”)
This declaration surprised everyone, veterans and newcomers alike, who
were part of the Seventh Congress of Chihuahuan Entrepreneurs.
THE HISTORY OF THE VALLINA GROUP
The history of the Grupo Vallina goes back to the 30s, when in 1934, a
group of empresarios lead by Eloy Santiago Vallina Garcia, created the
Banco Comercial Mexicano, with a capital of 300 thousand pesos.
The “mother” business of the group was Celulosa de
Chihuahua, formed in Anahuac, in the municipality of Cuauhtemoc. It was
founded in 1952.
The Vallina family became known as the most prominent business family
in Chihuahua—a position that had previously belonged to the
Terrazas family.
In 1941 they started Cementos de Chihuaha and Papelera de Chihuahua. By
1945, Eloy Vallina and a group of Chihuahuan capitalist bought the
Northeast Railroad and the concession to the surrounding forests.
For decades, environmental groups, and indigenous rights groups,
denounced the super-exploitation of the forest by the Celulosa as well
as the contamination of the Laguna de Bustillos, while the authorities
completely ignored them.
Slowly, the Chihuahuan forest stopped being “one of the richest in the world.”
In 1955, to consolidate their business based on extracting wood from
the forest, they began the Plywood Ponderosa of Mexico lumber mill.
In 1956, the Grupo Chihuahua cquires from Ericsson and ITT, the telephone company, the Sistema Telefonico Nacional.
In 1960, Eloy S. Vallina died and left his son Eloy Vallina Lagüera in charge of the business.
In the early 80s, the Grupo Chihuahua was hit from two side: on one
side the nationalization of the banks and on the other, the extreme
opening of the economy. Multibanco Comermex was nationalized and their
lumber business was damaged by foreign competitors provoking the fall
of the Ponderosa Industrial and the closing down of the Celulosa de
Chihuahua.
To rebound from these setbacks, the Vallina family began its incursion
into the maquiladora industry and in businesses along the southwestern
part of the U.S.
Relationship between Politics and Business
The heir of the Vallina fortune always takes heavy risks: Recently he
sponsored a fundraiser dinner for the current presidential candidate
Roberto Madrazo in the home of Federico de la Vega in Juárez.
Before that, he sponsored a dinner for president Vicente Fox in his
ranch in the state’s capital.
The former governor of Veracruz, Miguel Alemen, who ran for the
presidency in the 90s, owns stock in Accel. He is a member of the board
of directors of Accel.
Vallina and Aleman have been good friends and business partners for
many years. They were both part of the celebrated fundraising dinner in
1993 where the “charola” (tray) was passed around among the
most powerful businessmen of the country to finance the PRI with an
individual contribution of 25 million U.S. dollars.
His partner in the New York Stockmarket in the Elamex maquiladora
consortium is Federico Barrio Terrazaas, brother of the ex-governor
Francisco Barrio. They make products for the telecommunication,
automobile, aeronautical, computer and medical supplies industries for
clients such as General Motors, Polaroid and General Electric.
The political relations of Eloy S. Vallina Laguera extend toward the
United States where the former governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson,
encouraged developers such as Santa Teresa founder Charles Crowder to
support the Cihuahuan potentate. Also the New Mexican developers,
Chrisopher O. Lyons, of Fairfax Proerties of Santa Fe and Michael S.
Mattioli, an agent of the Santa Teresa Real Estate Development
corporation, publicly supporty the decision by governor Patricio
Martinez to open the Samalayca-San Jeronimo highway as well as the
investments promoted by Vallina for the industrial city of the future.
In December 2004, Eloy Vallina joined the Board of directors of the
Verde Group, a corporation that was created to bring about,
economically and politically, the creation of the binational city:
Jeronimo-Santa Teresa.
The purchase of the territorial reserves of San Jeronimo of 20,000
hectares was always under the suspicion of illegality. Eloy Vallina
could always count on the full support of the former delegate to the
Secretaria of la Reforma Agraria in Chihuahua, Jaime Mariscal Orozco,
who left the state under the accusation of involvement in various
corruption schemes.
|
|
