Socorro Mayor Rudy Cruz on Trading Salty Farmland for a Foreign Trade Zone

In the latest episode of The Building Texas Show, titled "This Texas Border City Is Trading Farmland for Factories," host Justin McKenzie sits down with Socorro Mayor Rudy Cruz to discuss the dramatic transformation of this small border city east of El Paso. Generations of irrigated farmland are being sold off to developers as families abandon agriculture due to increasingly salty irrigation water, reduced water allocations, and triple-digit summer temperatures. Cruz explains that the water "isn't what it used to be" and that "a lot of salt" is killing crops, pushing younger generations to seek commercial and industrial opportunities instead.

To capitalize on this shift, Socorro is establishing a foreign trade zone to attract manufacturing and logistics tenants that feed cross-border trade with Mexico. The city is also partnering with Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, one of only three federally recognized tribes in Texas, to build incubators on the former Braceros Farm site. These incubators aim to help local entrepreneurs overcome rent, payroll, and insurance costs before entering the wider market. Additionally, the tribe secured federal highway dollars to rehabilitate an irrigation bridge that the city could not have funded alone.

Education and workforce development are also central to Socorro's strategy. Socorro ISD's 6A programs allow high school students to earn associate's degrees and barber licenses, while Fort Bliss has expressed interest in busing students into the district. These initiatives are designed to prepare residents for the jobs brought by new industrial tenants.

Despite the economic shift, Cruz emphasizes that the community is not erasing its history. On the Mission Trail, a nine-mile corridor linking three missions, homes have been converted into restaurants, bistros, and breweries that serve pecan and pomegranate beer, keeping 300 to 400 years of foodways alive. Cruz invites visitors to see a 400-year-old adobe mission, describing it as "a building that was built by people with their own hands" that "tells a story of the people that still reside here."

The episode delves into how Socorro's civic and tribal economies reinforce each other, with Cruz noting the tradeoffs involved. "It's sad to see the farmland going away," he says, but the city is rebuilding its economy without losing its cultural identity. The full episode is available on The Building Texas Show.