Security Slows Traffic, Keeps Tourists Away

By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Cesar Castaneda misses dancing with the bulls, crowds cheering his elegant dips and dodges. The big red bullring in the center of this storied
border town has been empty since Sept. 11, silenced by the fallout from terrorism in New York and Washington.

"Half the people in the stands come from the United States, and it takes too long to cross the border now," said Castaneda, walking the familiar dirt of the open-air
ring where he performs as a matador. "It looks like the season is over."

The attacks took place thousands of miles from Tijuana, which sits across the border from San Diego. But they are still causing economic aftershocks that have cut
sales at almost every business by 50 to 80 percent. Even the prostitutes in the downtown red-light district say business is way down.

The general decline in U.S. consumer spending was felt here before the attacks. But now things are much worse.

American day-trippers coming south to shop are an important part of the economy here. It used to take just a few minutes to walk over the border at San Ysidro and
a little longer to drive. But now it can take hours to go over and back because of tougher border checks. Mexican stores normally full of gringos buying wrought iron
furniture or cheap Valium and cholesterol medication barely ring up a sale these days.

Jorge Escobar, spokesman for the Gran Hotel in Tijuana, said that business from U.S. customers is down by 50 percent. He said overall in Tijuana, tourism-related
business is down probably 60 to 70 percent.

"It's starting to recover, but very slowly," Escobar said. "It's very, very bad here."

The problem resonates all along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border; business on the U.S. side has also been profoundly affected. Border-town stores such as
Office Depot and Wal-Mart draw perhaps 75 percent of their customers come from Mexico -- and lately they are not coming.

President Vicente Fox visited Washington yesterday to show solidarity with the United States but also to push his agenda of improving the lot of Mexican immigrants
in the United States -- in effect promoting crossings such as those that take place here every day. Because of the attacks, Mexican officials said, Fox's conversations
also focused on ways to improve border security.

Mexicans have become a powerful shopping force in every U.S. border city. Several academic studies in San Diego estimate that Mexican citizens pump between
$2.5 billion and $3 billion a year into the economy in and around San Diego. The city of Nogales, Ariz., estimates that 60 to 65 percent of its $5 million in annual
sales tax revenue comes from Mexicans. In McAllen, Tex., about 40 percent of sales tax revenue comes from Mexicans, many of whom fly from as far away as
Mexico City to visit the city's fast-growing shopping malls.

Border commerce flourishes when conditions are right. But as hassles increase, crossings and sales decrease. The San Ysidro crossing that links Tijuana to San
Diego has long been the United States' busiest. But now instead of the usual 43,000 cars a day, there are 24,000. And instead of 127,000 people daily, about
80,000 cross, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Victor Clark Alfaro, a Tijuana resident and university professor, said he used to cross the border twice a week for a chocolate croissant at Starbucks and a tankful
of gasoline, which costs $13 less than it would in Tijuana because of steep Mexican taxes. Now the long wait makes the savings seem worthless.

"People are only going if they really have to," Clark said, noting that radio and television stations and even special phone lines report how long the crossing takes
these days.

One morning this week, pedestrians waited more than two hours to pass through two metal detectors to reach an inspector checking identification. William Gonzalez,
a gas station attendant in San Diego who lives in Tijuana, said he was going to be late for work again.

"I feel like my life has been taken away," he said. "And I wonder if I'm going to get my old life back, where you could shoot across a few times a day if you needed
to. Are things ever going to be the same?"

James Gerber, an economist at San Diego State University, said about 7 percent of San Diego's labor force -- nearly 40,000 people -- are Mexicans who live in
Tijuana and commute. Gerber said Tijuana and San Diego both suffer if those people cannot get to work.

Further complicating the situation is the expiration, as of last Sunday, of 5.5 million identification cards issued to Mexicans by the U.S. government. The cards had
allowed holders to stay within 25 miles of the border for up to 72 hours. New so-called "laser visas" that can be scanned by machine are now replacing the old paper
documents, which were relatively easy to counterfeit. But an estimated 1.5 million people have not yet replaced their expired cards.

An Immigration and Naturalization Service official said about 3,000 people were turned back at the border within 24 hours after the old border crossing cards
expired. Because of the demand, getting a new laser visa can take weeks or months.

U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) last week wrote to President Bush urging him to extend the deadline for getting new documents and prevent a "potentially chaotic
situation."

"If this deadline is not extended, trade and commerce along the border will be severely disrupted and waiting times at the ports-of-entry, which already approach four
hours, will become unbearable," Reyes wrote.

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