BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Rio Grande Valley business leader Joaquin Spamer has encouraged the local news media to watch out for one his counterparts in Reynosa - Juan José Villarreal Rosales.
Villarreal and his Regional Business Council (CNR) organized the hugely successful Reynosa Business Summit 2025, held at the Holiday Inn Del Prado in Reynosa on Sept. 18.
Spamer, president of the CIL Group and chairman of RioPlex, said the summit was outstanding.
“The guy that put it all together, his name is Juan José Villarreal. You need to watch out for this guy. He's a great leader. He's already an ambassador for RioPlex. He's leading the business sector into a lot of prosperity on the Reynosa side,” Spamer told the Rio Grande Guardian International News Service.
“It was a great event, in my opinion, and CNR is the best business organization. They had 250 business people registered, and you had 70 others, reporters, etc., in attendance. It was unique is to have so many business leaders in attendance.”
Spamer said the late Mike Allen would have been so proud. Allen, who passed away in 2010, worked hard to bring manufacturing to the McAllen-Reynosa area as president and founder of McAllen Economic Development Corporation.
“The guys that were there were the guys that were able to accomplish what Mike Allen was trying to develop 30 years ago - bringing companies to McAllen and Reynosa and to use the region as a manufacturing hub,” Spamer said. “Mike Allen was like the salesperson. He was bringing companies over. And those 250 people that were there were the guys that accomplished (what Allen envisaged). All the industrial parks, all the infrastructure, all the commercial buildings, all the residential developments, everything that happened in Reynosa in the past ten years was built by the people that were at the meeting last Thursday. So you have to recognize the talent, the entrepreneurship of all the people that were there last there.”
Asked what he learned from Reynosa Business Summit 2025, Spamer said: “That there is a lot of talent in Reynosa. I was very glad to find out that the entrepreneurs in Reynosa are working together to bring more prosperity to the region. It's just great, so very important.”
And RioPlex has a great role in assisting those entrepreneurs, Spamer said.
“RioPlex is a binational organization. It's a binational entrepreneur organization. It's based on business people, and we have board members on both sides of the border. We have board members in Reynosa, board members in Matamoros. We have ambassadors in Rio Bravo, Matamoros, and Reynosa. We have ambassadors and board members in Hidalgo County and Cameron County. So it's a joint effort. You have a business community working together to bring prosperity to the whole region - the region that we call RioPlex.”
According to a press release from CNR, nearly 300 business, government, and academic representatives gathered for Reynosa Business Summit 2025.
The strong attendance “underscores the city’s role as a hub for cross-border investment,” the press release stated. “The event brought together entrepreneurs, investors, and officials from Reynosa and South Texas to promote opportunities in logistics, energy, manufacturing, and services.”
Villarreal, the president of CNR, said: “The strong response from the business community proves we share one goal: to open a constructive conversation about regional opportunities and build a strategy to generate prosperity.”
The summit featured two business panels and two keynote addresses.
The Border Synergy: Binational Opportunities panel featured Spamer and Eduardo Montes García, vice president of Prologis in Latin America. It was moderated by CNR member Sandra Valentina López Hernández.
The second panel, From National Plan to Regional Groundwork, featured Héctor Ochoa Moreno, general coordinator of the Economic Corridor of Wellbeing; Oscar Pérez Contreras, Tamaulipas undersecretary of investment and strategic projects; and Mauricio Treviño, Reynosa’s secretary of economic development and employment. The moderator was CNR member Constantino Castillo Hinojosa.
Keynote speakers included José Medina Mora, vice president of the Business Coordinating Council, who spoke on Companies With Purpose and Leadership That Transform Regions, and Salvador Alva, former president of Tecnológico de Monterrey, who addressed How Do You Transform Yourself to Transform Your Environment?
Founded in 2022, the CNR is composed of 20 entrepreneurs representing some of the most significant labor and production forces in Tamaulipas.
