Héctor Eduardo Velasco Monroy, Mexico’s new top diplomat in San Antonio, is settling into his role knowing he’s got some big expectations to meet.

To start with, he’s now head of one of the oldest Mexican consulates in the United States, in a city that’s known south of the border as the most Mexican city outside Mexico. His duty as counsel general is to help meet the needs of Mexican nationals who want to live and do business in the United States, which includes not just processing passports, visas, and birth certificates but also helping promote cross-border relations and commerce.

Hundreds attended a welcoming event for him last week at the Plaza Club, eager to see someone in the post after a nearly two-year vacancy. Former Consul General Armando Ortiz Rocha was reassigned to Portland, Oregon, in August 2014.

While relations between San Antonio and Mexico are both friendly and lucrative, Velasco Monroy thinks they could use some new energy. On a binational level, he’s already a local voice of confidence that U.S.-Mexico relations and trade will thrive no matter who’s in office in Washington, D.C. or Los Pinos.

Oh, and he’s got a party to plan.

After San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor traveled to Mexico and personally invited Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to San Antonio’s tricentennial celebration in May 2018, Velasco Monroy learned he’d be in charge of making sure Mexico did more than just show up.

San Antonio was more or less a “Spain-Mexico place” for at least 100 of those 300 years, he said.

“With the number of Mexicans living here, the amount of investments that are here, the shared history that we have, Mexico will be part of the tricentennial,” he said. “It’s one of the instructions Peña Nieto gave me.”

Velasco Monroy, 46, was born in Atlacomulco, in the state of Mexico. His father was a corn farmer, and much of Velasco Monroy’s career was spent in rural development and food security. His positions included undersecretary of rural development of the ministry of agriculture and general director of Diconsa, a federally funded program that provides food to the poor in tiny rural towns throughout Mexico.

From 2009 to 2012, he was a federal representative and head of the legislative studies center for sustainable rural development and food sovereignty. Prior to that, he was a representative for the state of Mexico, president of the national rural confederation in the state of Mexico and head of the special commission for the rural reform program.

He is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which regained control of Mexico with the election of Peña Nieto. He had a high-profile role helping coordinate Peña Nieto’s campaign.

The agricultural background gives Velasco Monroy insight into how the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has been under fire during the current U.S. presidential campaign, has affected Mexico.

While the flood of subsidized U.S. corn and other products initially wiped out a lot of small Mexican farmers, he said the net effect of two decades of NAFTA has been positive.

“When I was young, I started to fight against the NAFTA,” he said. “But today, the commerce between Mexico and the United States shows us that it was good. For the first time, we have a surplus (in its trade balance for food and agricultural goods). We sold $27 billion in agricultural products to the United States. This is more income for Mexico than petroleum or tourism.”

He walked to a map on the wall of his office to point to the state of Michoacán, where small growers are producing most of the nation’s avocados, and Oaxaca, where family farms are able to grow and export Mexican corn. He also pointed to the central states that have become hubs of automotive production.

“Ford is here. Toyota is here. Kia is here,” he said. “It’s in the center because they have ports here, ports here and ports here.”

While many Mexicans have reacted with alarm at likely Republican nominee Donald Trump’s talk of building a border wall and pulling out of the NAFTA, Velasco Monroy shrugged it away as politics.

“Well I think that any president, even Trump, can’t cancel an agreement like that,” he said. “It’s not so easy. ... You know, the people in the United States need the products from Mexico, and the people in Mexico need the products from the United States. Every minute we exchange $1 million dollars in commerce. It’s huge.”