Belize is the biggest city in this country and McAllen may be one of the smallest in Texas but they say opposites attract and these two distant municipalities are now sister cities. The signing to make it so was done at City Hall this morning between Belize City's Mayor Zenaida Moya and McAllen's Mayor Richard Cortez. Though the two cities are 1400 miles apart and McAllen's population is close to double that of Belize City's population - both mayors say it is a mutually beneficial relationship, especially in the areas of business and tourism.
Zenaida Moya, Mayor of Belize City
"Texas is so close, its only 2 hours away using a plane and if we can work with them in terms of business relationships. What we want to establish is business relationships in Belize. I had a meeting with the mayor Richard Cortez in my office earlier and what he explained is that he wants to help Belize City."
Richard Cortez, Mayor of McAllen Texas
"We want to help. We feel that helping people helps us. We've created a tremendous team for emergency crisis, we do get hit by hurricanes in our area and we've developed a very very good team and we would want to share some of that knowledge and skills."
Zenaida Moya,
"He has made it abundantly clear that they want to help Belize City because they see the genuineness of both myself, my councilors and I must say the entire staff that they have come in contact with and they want to offer, they want to extend that support to us and of course we will appreciate that."
Richard Cortez,
"We're looking for business opportunities and we think we've found a good partner in the city of Belize."
Zenaida Moya,
"It's a lot of different areas that we are looking at, business, tourism, they have relationships throughout the world - they are a very wealthy city and they have these links throughout the world and they would like to ensure that our Belize City, not only through our website, but they will promote Belize City through exchanges - they will promote Belize City to the rest of the world."
Richard Cortez,
"Belize has all the potential in the world. We want to build partnerships with other organizations that are going to cater to the same type of tourists. What we're seeing is that they go visit us and they say this is great and ask where to go from here, well we're going to send them to your place."
Kevin Herrera from Belize's Chamber of Commerce and Steve Ahlenius from McAllen's Chamber of Commerce also spoke at the signing.
