The year was 1849: Louis Cowen, newly arrived from Poland to New York, was heading for California in the midst of the gold rush. He took the southern route to avoid the Indians. But the son of a rabbi was attacked on the way and, unable to go any further, stopped at Brownsville, a military fort recently created to fight the Mexicans, at the mouth of the Rio Grande. One hundred and seventy-four years later, in 2023, his great-great-grandson, John Cowen, was elected mayor of the city, which has strangely become the El Dorado dreamed of by his ancestor.
After having vegetated for decades, Brownsville has in any case been transformed into a small hub of the world: Joe Biden has praised its policy of managing asylum seekers who have crossed the Rio Grande. Elon Musk set up his SpaceX base there, on the Boca Chica site, creating at least 2,100 jobs. From there he launches his giant launchers in front of spectators from all over the world, which are supposed to reach the Moon and, who knows, Mars. “Gateway to Mars”we read at the entrance to the launching station.
Finally, the oil company NextDecade, of which the French company TotalEnergies is one of the main partners, wants to invest 18.4 billion dollars (16.8 billion euros) in an LNG terminal supplied by a gas pipeline from fields further north in Texas. After the gigantic ports of Houston, Port Arthur and Corpus Christi, Brownsville is finally benefiting from the windfall of hydrocarbons thanks to the war in Ukraine, which is forcing Europeans to supply themselves with American gas.
“We were the poorest community in the United States. We no longer appear in the top ten most disadvantaged urban areas,” “We’re in a city of 200,000 people,” Mayor John Cowen says in a trendy cafe that also serves as a bike shop. Of course, there has been resistance, criticism on environmental grounds, against the gentrification of this city of 200,000 people, more than 90% Hispanic, but the mayor is determined to move forward. “Some people don’t want any change. But I don’t agree with the status quo and with continuing to be a poor city.”
A border town
The fate of the city of Brownsville offers a refutation of the reading that prevailed about the United States after the great financial crisis of 2008 and before the election of Donald Trump in 2016, that of a country in the process of impoverishment and deindustrialization. In the last ten years, the United States has changed, becoming covered in factories and benefiting from abundant energy (gas and renewables), while low wages are declining. Unnoticed, Americans have rediscovered the pioneer spirit.
You have 82.06% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
