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BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez has outlined a way in which the Rio Grande Valley can benefit from the bottleneck faced by dozens of containers ships waiting to unload their cargo at Long Beach, California. Cortez has suggested the ships dock at Mexico’s west coast ports and transport shipments destined for the east coast of the United States via truck through the Valley.Cortez explained his idea during a recent roundtable discussion hosted by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and the Rio Grande Valley Partnership and held at the Port of Brownsville.“Right now I learn that one third of all the imports coming in from the west side, from Asia, are coming in through Los Angeles and the Long Beach corridor,” Cortez said.“Today, if you read the news there are going to be 57 container ships out in the ocean that have been there for five days because they can’t come in - either because of lack of personnel or other problems that they have.”Cortez said the Port of Brownsville cannot compete for container ships headed to California for the Far East. But, he said, the Valley can, via land crossings.“We are not going to compete with those ports on the Pacific Ocean because we are on the wrong side. How can we do it? Well, we have a neighbor called Mexico that does have a Pacific side port. If we were able to work with them and be able to bring product from them to us, now we are in the middle of the United States. We can now distribute everything, I think more efficiently and effectively through our area. Especially when you know and these demographers are telling me, that the majority of the people are going to be east of the middle of the United States.”Editor's Note: To read the full story go to the Rio Grande Guardian International News Service website.