Some people are willing to risk it. Others are not. For close to a decade I used to go to TJ at least once a month. Now I go once or twice a year after being shaken down for bribes TWICE by cops in less than 6 months. I haven't seen violence in the Zona firsthand in over 6 years. But, there is tension in the air in TJ. It is not a happy place.
Tijuana Strip Turns Ghostly In Wake of Drug Violence
As Tourists Increasingly Shun Mexico's Border Cities, Many Businesses Can't Survive
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 16, 2008; A15
TIJUANA, Mexico -- A shop on Avenida Revolucion was once considered a surefire gold mine.
Day trippers poured over America's busiest border crossing, just south of San Diego, and bought mountains of jewelry, crafts and leather goods. Mexican families schemed to own -- or lease -- a piece of an eight-block stretch of the avenue, generally thought to be the most lucrative shopping district along the Mexican side of the border.
But when Gloria Flores retires at the end of this month, her art shop on Avenida Revolucion will go dark. None of her children want it, nor does anyone else. Soon it will be another vacancy among the abandoned businesses and for-rent signs on an avenue whose decline illustrates the corrosive and mushrooming effect of drug violence on Mexico's legal economy.
Daylight gun battles, beheadings and kidnappings have scared away tourists, forced layoffs and turned some areas of once-vibrant Mexican border cities into virtual ghost towns. The drug wars, which have killed more than 6,000 people in the past 2 1/2 years, have accelerated a decline that merchants also blame on the U.S. economic slowdown and delays at the border because of increased enforcement.
In Tijuana, where at least 200 people have been killed in drug violence this year, merchants say tourism is down as much as 90 percent compared with 2005, when an estimated 4 million people visited. Half of the downtown businesses -- more than 2,400 -- are shuttered. Farther east along the border, empty markets have become the norm in Ciudad Juarez, where fighting between rival cartels has killed 200 people this year. In Nuevo Laredo, five hotels have shut down.
"We're touching bottom," said Andrés Méndez, an Avenida Revolucion shop owner. "This is the barometer for what can happen in the rest of our city and the rest of our country."
There have been robberies and assaults of tourists, but no reports of tourists being killed, Baja California Tourism Secretary Oscar Escobedo Carignan said in an interview. But the few Americans who come across the border now are often startled by the sight of heavily armed Mexican soldiers, patrolling streets in armored vehicles to confront drug traffickers.
"I wouldn't come down here if it wasn't safe," Richard Brown, a longtime tour bus driver, said while waiting for his small group of passengers on Avenida Revolucion. "But when the passengers see these soldiers coming down the streets pointing machine guns, it kind of leaves a black mark."
Mexico's beach resorts, though not immune from drug violence, seem to be faring well because they are not as closely associated with it in the eyes of most foreigners, tour operators say. Even Acapulco, where five severed heads were rolled onto a nightclub floor two years ago, has managed to maintain a strong flow of vacationers.
But in stores along Avenida Revolucion, entire days can go by without a single sale. Flores, who has run her business for more than 30 years, could once count on taking in at least $6,000 a month. The tiny shop, which sells handicrafts, paid for three of her children to go to college and sustained the family after her husband's sudden death.
But now, she seldom records more than $300 in monthly sales. The sons she had hoped would inherit her lease have moved to the United States to look for work.
"No one thought this would have happened," she said one recent afternoon as the hours passed with no customers.
As Flores spoke, a man in a dirty T-shirt ducked his head into her doorway. Salvador Escareٌo had worked for 30 years as a salesman in a nearby shop. But the shop closed, and he now scrapes by with odd jobs. On this day he was trying to make a few pesos by selling five tiles scavenged from a remodeling job.
"Look, I've got two children, the food prices are going up and up -- I've got to do something," he said.
Méndez has had to close four of his six clothing stores and lay off more than 40 employees. He's down to just two workers, one for each remaining shop.
The downturn has had less obvious consequences, even endangering public health. In Tijuana's now mostly empty strip clubs, prostitutes have grown so desperate that they are increasingly willing to engage in risky behavior such as having unprotected sex.
"I'll do that now -- let the customer go without a condom -- if they pay me an extra $10," Katia, a longtime Tijuana prostitute, said in an interview. "I know I shouldn't, but I need the money."
The ripple effect goes far beyond the border area. Flores has to turn away the indigenous artists who travel from the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca to supply her store with wooden masks and delicate clay figures. Most are subsistence farmers whose art sales kept them out of extreme poverty, she said.
"I don't know who they'll sell to now," Flores said. "No one is buying."
Mexican tourism officials are alarmed and have accused Mexican and U.S. media of exaggerating the violence.
"The problem is that the perception of violence is much greater than the actual situation, especially in the city of Tijuana," said Escobedo, the state tourism secretary. "The city of Tijuana is much safer than Washington, D.C."
Escobedo cited official statistics showing there were 16 killings in Tijuana last year per 100,000 residents, though the rate appears to be higher this year. The homicide rate in Washington was 29 per 100,000 residents in 2006, according to the FBI's most recent annual report.
The state tourism agency has launched a promotional campaign, and Escobedo points out that spring break hot spots, such as San Felipe on the Gulf of California, are still doing well.
Tijuana officials responded to the problem of police demanding bribes from tourists by instituting a "safety zone" near Avenida Revolucion, and the state has deployed roving crews to help stranded motorists. But it's unclear whether the measures are having any lasting effect. Surfers, for instance, have been abandoning beaches near Tijuana after a recent string of attacks and robberies.
On the other side of the border, tour operators who once took busloads of passengers to Tijuana are beset by cancellations. Lenny Papp, a longtime guide, said five to 10 busloads of conventioneers used to travel from San Diego to Mexico each week.
"Now, you're lucky to get one or two a week," he said.
One recent afternoon, Papp found himself at Disneyland on a day he usually reserved to take tourists to Tijuana. Papp, who books tours from the Welk Resort in Escondido, just north of San Diego, said he believes Tijuana's shopping districts and other tourist attractions are safe. But he had to cancel the Tijuana trip because only six people signed up. Not long ago, he was routinely taking down two buses, with 47 passengers each, he said.
"The news they hear scares them to the point they say, 'I don't want to go down there and get shot,' " Papp said.
There is anecdotal evidence that Tijuana's problems may be benefiting attractions in San Diego. Tour operators say clients who used to shop on Avenida Revolucion are now bargain-hunting in San Diego's Old Town or opting for trips to Sea World, the San Diego Zoo and the Hotel del Coronado, where the Marilyn Monroe classic "Some Like It Hot" was filmed.
On a recent sunny morning, crowds strolled along the Embarcadero on San Diego's waterfront. Pete and Trudie Marceaux, who live in San Diego, had mapped out a chockablock touring schedule for Pete's sister, Rose Robideaux, and her husband, Clark. Mexico used to be on the regular route when visitors were in town, but not anymore.
"We feel a whole lot safer here than going down there and being part of a shootout with a drug cartel," Pete Marceaux said.
Papp, the tour operator, has heard the same thing. Ten years ago, he threw a 40th birthday party for his wife in Rosarito Beach, just south of Tijuana. Since then, he has bought a condominium in Rosarito, and he thought it would be the perfect spot for his 60th birthday bash this month.
He sent out invitations, but then the phone calls started. Suspiciously, it seemed, many of his friends -- some of whom had attended his wife's party -- said they were busy that weekend.
Finally, he said, one friend told him, "With all the stuff going on -- as much as we'd love to celebrate your birthday with you -- we'd rather wait. If you have it over here, we'll be there."
A few days before the party, he realized that not one friend would attend.
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