b'How different our lives are, was the haunting comment of the right-hand man of a Mexican oligarch, on the plight of the poor who live on the wrong side of Acapulco Bay. After the 1994 devaluation of the peso, he and his ilk doubled their wealth, as average Mexicans paid the price.There I wassnacking on smoked lobster and caviar in a setting that could only be described as paradise on earth, hearing about how a rich guys assistant doubled his $3 million as a perk of his employment and connections to a corrupt oligarchywhile the rest of the country suffered. If you were a Mexican business owner who imported products from the U.S., your debt had just doubledovernightwhile those who caused your pain doubled their wealth in the process. Thats how the world really works, at least in Mexico, or so I used to think.In producing this edition, I learned that in World War I, the greatest number of mil-itary pilots in the warof any and all countrieswere trained in San Antonio, at Kelly and Brooks Fields. In World War II, the greatest number of military pilots in the warof any and all countrieswere trained at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi and its auxiliary bases throughout the Coastal Bend. These are the roots of great families who brought great leadership and immense improvements to the lives of millions of South Texans, but the big opportunities are often limited to a privileged few.In 1970, San Antonio was basking in the glory of HemisFair, the 1968 Worlds Fair that had brought millions in improvements to downtown along with favorable in-ternational press. This was the jump start to the growth spurt that the city would steadily experience until 1981, when Henry Cisneros was elected as one of the countrys youngest big-city mayors who united voters behind a bigger vision. He represented an agenda of economic growth that would raise wages by attracting investment, including the Toyota plant that happened 15 years after he left office.This editions feature, The Rewards of Leadership (see page 36), is centered on my interview with the 76-year-old former mayor, which he graciously allowed me to do in person, in San Antonio. Mayor Cisneros was energetic, engaging, and brutally honest about how he achieved there what we have failed to achieve herea full buy-in by City Hall staff and elected leaders of an agenda to attract new investment to the city, and to think big about quality-of-life improvements. And it worked.In doing so, it became clear to all involved that payoffs, kickbacks, and favors were not acceptable features of the peoples agenda. That could be a major problem in Corpus Christi, and it will require nothing less than Cisneros-esque leadership to take our city to levels of growth that should have been achieved decades ago, by first ending self-dealing at our taxing entities. If Corpus Christi had kept up with the rest of Texas over the last half-century, our population would today be 540,000if we had just kept up with San Antonio, it would be 450,000. If you have followed the news that started with FBI raids that took place a week after the November 2020 election, we could soon be entering a new era when some minor level of apprehen-sion might come to those who take great liberty with public funds.The closer that Corpus Christi, or any municipality, operates like the model I learned about in Mexicowhere the wealthy and connected operate a system designed to continually transfer funds from the masses to themselvesthe wider the gap between rich and poor grows, and the more coarse society be-comes. The wealth of the wisdom conveyed by Henry Cisneros in this edition is the path to creating prosperity in a city by allowing access to it to everyone willing to work, and not just a privileged few.The Editor22THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE TheCoastalBend.com'