County, city officials welcome Mexico Consul General

(ROCKWALL, TX – Nov. 4, 2016) Rockwall officials received a special visit from the Consul General of Mexico in Dallas, Francisco de la Torre Galindo, at the historic Rockwall courthouse (101 E Rusk St) yesterday.

Consulate General de la Torre Galindo presented the group of city and county officials gathered inside the third-floor courtroom with an overview of his work as the Mexico Consul General and his quest to visit each of the 121 counties in the state covered by the Mexican Consulate based in Dallas.

De la Torre Galindo said the Mexican Consulate in Dallas is the third largest in the network, behind Los Angeles and Chicago, and serves at least 700 people per day.

“We have three kinds of services for the community. The first one – the most basic one – is protection. We have an army of around 100 lawyers at the Consulate who help people with human rights, domestic violence and these kinds of things, as well as a trade office made up of about 10 people. The second branch is documentation. Many Mexicans come here and they don’t have any form of I.D. We issue them a Consulate I.D. that says as the Consul, we assure you this individual is from Mexico. This is a basic thing needed to be able to open a bank account or obtain a driver’s license here,” de la Torre Galindo said.

“And the third branch – social services. We do believe that if we can’t provide certain tools for the Mexican community to understand the culture in which they’re living they can’t integrate. If they can’t integrate, they will never make a life in the United States. We have a health station at the Consulate, which provided referral health services to over 100,000 people last year.”

Enid Reyes and Francisco de la Torre Galindo

Rockwall resident and Life Compass Business Services Coach Enid Reyes helped arrange the Mexico Consul General’s meeting with Rockwall officials after meeting him at a Jewish Latino Alliance event. “I heard him speak and one thing that stood out was his desire to meet city officials within as many counties as possible, because he said, ‘how can we work together if he doesn’t know them and build those relationships?’ He sat by me and I told him, ‘I can make it happen in Rockwall, and it would be an honor to have you here.’”

Rockwall Mayor Jim Pruitt presented Consulate General de la Torre Galindo with a key to the city and in return, de la Torre Galindo offered his own gift to Mayor Pruitt and Rockwall County Judge David Sweet – Amate, a type of bark paper hand-painted by children of Mexico.