Ayuntamiento de Soledad de Graciano Sánchez Official Soledad city website.
HISTORY
SISTER CITIES INTERNATIONAL
On Sept. 11, 1956, then President Dwight Eisenhower founded the Sister Cities movement in response to the atrocities that he had seen during World War II. His dream was to encourage friendships on a level of people-to-people, so as to prevent global warfare from ever happening again. His emphasis even during the early days of this movement was to encourage direct interaction between private individuals, and not government employees, as the best means of founding true personal friendships.
BURLINGTON-ALAMANCE SISTER CITIES
Our local committee was formed in 1999 with the objective of founding a sister city. Various possible candidates were investigated, including ones in Moldova, Switzerland and in various parts of Mexico. On April 15, 2004, we signed an agreement of “sistering” between our mayor Steve Ross, and the mayor of Soledad, in the State of San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
THE SELECTION PROCESS
A special sub-committee of our Sister Cities board was charged with the duty of identifying criteria and developing a selection process for deciding on a Sister City. We had decided that, given current demographics, that it was important to select a sister city within Mexico. The selection criteria, as presented by Bob Byrd, were (in order):
