I think about Leo Najo Alaniz.
Born in a small ranching town in Nuevo León. Moved to Mission as a kid. Never finished high school. Went on to become the first Mexican-born player drafted by a Major League team — inducted into the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame as one of its first five members.
Nobody handed him that. He built it, swing by swing, on dirt fields along the border, in a region and an era that gave him every reason to believe it couldn't be done.
My own grandfather, Policarpo Alanis, walked those same dirt roads in the same village back in Nuevo León — our family trees may well be branches of the same one.
Walk the streets of Mission today and you'll still see Leo's legacy. A street bears his name. A ballpark bears his name — the same field where Mission High School plays today. Every fall, the city still gathers for Leo Najo Day, keeping that history alive for a new generation.
That's the willingness to succeed I see in the RGV and northern Tamaulipas every single day. It's in our workforce. It's in our manufacturers. It's in our binational partners who show up to build something bigger than any one company or one side of the river.
RioPlex exists because that same drive is still here — and it's still underestimated by people who've never spent time in this region.
We're not waiting for someone to draft us. We're building the team.
RioPlex will succeed just like Leo did — not because it was easy, but because giving up was never an option here.
Editor's Note: The above commentary was penned by Mario Reyna, executive director of RioPlex. The commentary appears in the RGG Business Journal with the permission of the author.
