Businesses are teetering all along the U.S.-Mexico frontier. Employees and customers used to cross the border as easily as crossing the street. Now every port of entry in both directions is on maximum alert. Cops and Customs officials from Tijuana to Matamoros have tightened security. At some checkpoints the new procedures are forcing drivers to wait three hours or more to cross–if they choose to make the trip at all. In Nuevo Laredo, the gateway for 40 percent of Mexico’s exports to the United States, officials say the volume of traffic has shrunk 35 percent. The disruption only worsens the pain already inflicted on the region by the U.S. economic slowdown. Businesses in Tijuana say their sales have dropped by half. Trucking firms in Ciudad Juarez say they are losing $100,000 a day. Many local residents are wondering if things will ever be the same.
The U.S. economic pinch and tightened borders have been particularly tough on Mexico’s maquiladoras. The border factories’ very existence depends on strong demand for Mexican-made goods and a bright green light for shippers. In the past year Tijuana’s maquiladoras alone have lost 28,000 jobs. For the industry as a whole the toll has been some 150,000 positions, according to Rolando Gonzalez, presi-dent of the National Council of Maquiladoras. That’s an overall loss of more than 10 percent.
Retailers on both sides of the fence are hurting, too. Homemakers in Nuevo Laredo used to shop for bargains north of the border, where chickens, beans and other groceries were often cheaper than in Mexico. Now the endless wait at Customs wastes too much gasoline to be worth the trip. “Our situation turns worse every day,” says Alfonso Velasco, general manager of a downtown Tijuana clothing chain. He says business has fallen 50 percent since September 11 at his three shops on bustling Revolution Avenue. “We used to cross the border to do our shopping,” says Alfonso Ruiz, director of Tijuana’s Chamber of Industry. “But today there are lines of 1,500 people, 300 cars, 450 bikes. We prefer to stay home, and the same is happening with Americans. We are all losing.”
Back at La Mina, the owner is doing his best to have a normal life. He lives 10 miles north of the border, in Nuevo Laredo’s sister city of Laredo, Texas, and he likes to join his family at home for lunch. That means negotiating the border four times a day. The crossing used to take 10 minutes. These days it’s half an hour. “This situation cannot continue,” Anzaldua insists. What really bothers him is he doesn’t think the tougher border checks will do any good. “I don’t know how effective the new security measures are,” he says. “But if tons of drugs can cross the border, it’s obvious that terrorists can do it, too.” It’s hard to disagree.
