Crackdown Deters Mexican Shoppers, Crippling Texas Stores

By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer

LAREDO, Tex.

In ordinary times, Les Norton would have analyzed his September sales figures by now, and he probably would have been pleased. Like hundreds of other
merchants in this bustling border city, Norton, a clothing retailer, has thrived for years by catering to shoppers from Mexico who want a wider selection of goods at
lower prices than they can find at home.

But on the nation's southern border, as in the rest of the United States, ordinary times ended Sept. 11. Since the terrorist attacks, according to Norton and other
business owners along the Rio Grande, Mexican consumers have been staying away in droves, reluctant to enter the United States for several reasons related to the
dramatic increase in security at border checkpoints.

As a result, stores, hotels and restaurants that depend on visiting shoppers are feeling a pinch.

"To be honest, I guess out of fear, I haven't looked at my [sales] numbers yet," said Norton, standing by the cash register in La Fama, one of his family's three stores
in Laredo. "All I have to do is look around me," he said. In the 13,000-square-foot La Fama -- which Norton translates roughly as "the legend" -- on a recent
afternoon, no more than half a dozen shoppers browsed among the sweaters, jeans, blouses and leather coats.

Norton, 52, shook his head. "It used to be crowded in here."

For the same reason Americans flock to outlet malls, residents of Mexican border communities regularly cross the Rio Grande, on foot and by car, to buy clothes,
athletic shoes, stereos, home furnishings and other goods. In Laredo, where the local Chamber of Commerce estimates that 40 percent of retail purchases last year
were made by visiting Mexicans, the hotel industry relies heavily on families who travel for hours to get here from Mexico's interior and stay overnight to shop.

The explosions of Sept. 11 ripped into that economy, merchants said. And while sales have picked up since the worst of the slump shortly after the attacks, they said,
business remains slow, and it could nose-dive again if there is a terrorist response to the U.S. military action in Afghanistan that began Sunday.

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, authorities tightened security at entry points along the border, including the four bridges between Laredo and Mexico, causing
long delays for vehicles and pedestrians entering this city of 176,000. Although more inspectors have since been assigned to the bridges, easing delays, the number of
people entering Laredo has gone down. Last month, officials counted 2.9 million northbound crossings, compared with 3.5 million in September 2000.

Other cities reported similar decreases.

"There's misinformation going around in the [Mexican] interior about the bridges being closed and some of our stores being closed," said Nick Marks Reyna,
president of the Laredo Hotel/Motel Association. Trying to dispel those rumors, Reyna and other Laredo business leaders hosted a luncheon recently for Mexican
journalists in Monterrey, 150 miles south of here. While there, Reyna said, he heard false tales on talk radio about body searches, heavily armed guards and day-long
delays at the border.

Before the attacks, during peak crossing periods, it usually took about five minutes for a pedestrian to get through a bridge checkpoint and half an hour for a motorist,
said Ramon Juarez, the top Immigration and Naturalization Service official in Laredo. Immediately after Sept. 11, with inspectors examining documents more closely
and conducting far more vehicle searches, Juarez said, that wait extended up to five hours.

Although security has not eased since Sept. 11, Juarez said, the U.S. Customs Service and INS have put more inspectors on the bridges, cutting waiting times to only
slightly longer than normal. But the increased security has had a psychological impact on many Mexican shoppers, he said.

"They've seen what's happening on the bridge, and they're staying home out of a fear of the unknown," Juarez said. "They're afraid that there's going to be another
[terrorist] incident while they're over here and the border is going to be closed and they're going to be stranded in Laredo."

Reyna and other business leaders here said remarks by U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft have aggravated those fears. In urging Congress to pass bills that
would give federal authorities more leeway to conduct electronic surveillance, punish terrorists and detain non-U.S. citizens, Ashcroft has warned of additional
terrorist attacks in the immediate future.

"Rhetoric like that is totally contrary to a good business environment," said Reyna. "I know he wants to get those bills passed, but he's scaring the hell out of our
markets."

The slump has been felt by merchants small and large -- from Norton's modest department store in the heart of downtown to the Wal-Mart in Laredo, which has 10
times the floor space of La Fama. Among the nearly 2,000 Wal-Marts in the country that sell only dry goods, not groceries, the store here is regularly the leader in
annual sales, thanks to Mexican shoppers, said co-manager Robert Carrillo.

"Business is coming back, but very slowly," he said. "The day after the attack, we had a 33 percent decrease from what we projected [before Sept. 11]. Then it was
24 percent the day after that, then 18 percent. And since then it's been about a 7 percent decrease, and that's been pretty consistent."

At the Red Roof Inn in Laredo, manager Daniel Rodriguez said that before Sept. 11, all or nearly all of the motel's 150 rooms were usually booked on weekends,
many by families from Mexico's interior who arrived with empty suitcases, planning to fill them with new clothes. But on the weekends after the attacks, Rodriguez
said last week, the motel has been at least one-third vacant. As a result, he said, he has been forced to cut the number of hours that his 20 employees are allowed to
work.

He said the decline in business has been "devastating" for some workers. For example, he said, the motel's eight housekeepers average $5.75 per hour, or $230 in
gross pay per week. A reduction in hours from 40 to 28 means a pay cut of $69, money they can ill afford to lose.

Normally in the fall, retailers begin looking forward to the Christmas season and a bigger influx of Mexican shoppers than at any other time of the year. This fall,
however, business owners, Norton included, are thinking about something else: the U.S. military response to the terrorist strikes and what it could bring.

"Obviously, as an American, you have to be concerned about your country," Norton said. "But as a merchant, you also have to be concerned about how it's going to
affect your business.

"And it won't be good," he said. "It won't be good at all."

                                               © 2001