From Seedy to Chic : Tijuana Taking the High Road

Can this be Tijuana, the once-seedy home of naughty pleasures?

One night not long ago, the state theater here was offering “A Night of German Music” and “Dance From India.”

The members of the audience could have stopped for a pre-concert snack at a place called Le Drug Store or window-shopped at chi-chi boutiques such as Ellesse or Guess.

Perhaps on the way home, they stopped to pick up some French bread at Venecia bakery or ended the night dancing at the Oh! Laser Disco.

But what about the strip joints and exotic shows that were once the city’s stock in trade? They still exist but no longer dominate. Tijuana, formerly known on both sides of the border as the brothel of North America, is changing fast.

City Sheds ‘Gray Past’

Bustling and--by Mexican standards, booming--Tijuana is shedding what Mexican citizens call its “gray past.” In their grander daydreams, Tijuana’s residents foresee a new trade and financial center growing up among the city’s dusty hills, a resort area to put Miami Beach to shame along its coast and perhaps casinos--classy, of course, like those in Monte Carlo.

“Why not? Tijuana is in fashion,” said city booster Octavio Corona, who heads the Chamber of Commerce. “We have everything.”

Not quite. Viewed from well-manicured San Diego, Tijuana still looks somewhat untidy. The unpaved streets and flimsy shacks of its many poor neighborhoods bespeak the poverty of much of Mexico.

The city continues to be a waiting area for migrants at the doorstep of the United States. The floating and largely destitute migrant population puts a strain on services and housing. Water is scarce, and delivery by an underdeveloped system is spotty. The main business is still tourism, and much of that depends on the whims of the foreign exchange market.

An Uncut Jewel

On the other hand, viewed from inside Mexico, where dirt streets are common but economic vitality is rare, Tijuana seems something of an uncut jewel. For many Mexicans, it is an attractive place to work, invest or visit.

“Even we Mexicans once saw Tijuana as a whorehouse,” said William Yu, who owns a cash register business here. “Now, we have come to realize that we’re in the vanguard of Mexico’s economic growth.”

While the national economy has been stagnant for the last five years, Tijuana’s has been growing. Unemployment is said to be less than 1%. The scarcity of workers irritates businessmen who can find few people willing to work for the minimum wage. Although underemployment, reflected in makeshift taco stands and the legion of boys offering street-corner car washes, is high, even that has a rosy side in the eyes of local citizens.

“It is difficult to gauge the poverty of a street salesman who, after all, may be making more money than a schoolteacher,” said Bernardo Gonzalez, an economist at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a research institute here.

Xicotencatl Leyva, the governor of Baja California, boasted recently that Tijuana will soak up a large number of Mexican workers who may return from the United States as new immigration laws reduce employment possibilities across the border.

“We are prepared to aid in every way the Mexicans that could be fired from jobs on the other side of the border,” Leyva said. “New sources of employment are created every day that will occupy them immediately.”

Along with tourism and trade, a boom in frontier assembly plants has helped alter the city’s economic prospects. The plants, using imported parts, assemble finished products for re-export. There are 250 in all, the largest number of such plants in any border city in Mexico. They employ 35,000 workers, ranking them second only to those in Ciudad Juarez.

Assembly plants, called maquiladoras in Spanish, are Mexico’s third-largest earner of foreign exchange, after oil and tourism. Revenue from the plants is expected to total $1.3 billion this year.

To some extent, Tijuana is the beneficiary of successful economies elsewhere in the Pacific. As places such as Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan turn to producing more sophisticated goods--television sets and computers, for example--Tijuana is seen more and more as a place to put up plants that produce toys, clothing and simpler electronics.

The success of the assembly plants has helped fuel dreams that Tijuana might someday become an economic power on the Pacific rim. Every once in a while, rumors surface of programs that would expand Tijuana’s role in trade. A few years ago, Mexico’s finance minister hinted that Tijuana might be permitted to house foreign banks able to take offshore deposits and finance commerce.

Hong Kong Delegation

Last year, a business delegation from Hong Kong quietly sounded out local leaders on the chances of converting part of Tijuana into a free-trade zone to which some Hong Kong businesses could relocate by 1997, when the British colony falls under rule by China.

Nothing has come of either project, but that hardly dents local optimism.

“This is an important city for Mexico; investors are coming from all over to bet on its future,” said Jorge Bustamante, director of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

In the meantime, the facade that Tijuana shows to visitors is rapidly changing.

The new era is immediately evident on Tijuana’s traditional main thoroughfare, Revolucion Avenue. The cityscape along the street is sort of old Mexico filtered through trendy California. Open-air Mexican restaurants feature hanging plants and pastel patio umbrellas, while some colonial-style buildings are being refurbished. Sportswear boutiques vie for space with the more typical craft shops filled with serapes and onyx kitsch.

The seamy bars of old have been pushed toward the northern end of the street. In 1980, there were 20 of them along Revolucion; the number is now half that and falling. Gone are the days when thousands of U.S. sailors and Marines would storm Tijuana for a last fling before going to sea. The rowdiest groups in town these days consist of teen-agers from California taking advantage of Mexico’s lower drinking age--here the minimum is 18--and its greater tolerance for tipsy, underaged gringos.

“We’ve no longer got wall-to-wall prostitutes,” the Chamber of Commerce’s Corona said.

Family Tourism Up

Business sense is one reason for the decline of the bump-and-grind trade. Family groups, not the usual clientele for places like the defunct Shanghai or Blue Fox, stroll up and down the boulevard in increasing numbers. California tourists are finding Tijuana an inexpensive alternative to more distant places. They spend more than $40 per person every day, according to government tourism statistics.

Further, Tijuana’s more settled population is tired of the town’s salacious reputation.

“We want a place that is good for our kids to grow up,” businessman Yu said.

Urban renewal has remade the city’s image. The Tijuana River, which runs through part of the city, is being channeled, and modern shopping centers, condominiums, government buildings and a cultural complex have replaced shacks and warehouses along its banks. The cultural center, known as La Bola for its ball-shaped central amphitheater, is the most striking architectural landmark on the river.

Hotels are counted among the city’s leading investments. Tourists can now stay in about 1,500 top-class rooms that have been built in recent years; another 500 are to be completed soon.

The city’s continued economic buoyancy depends on a variety of factors. One is California’s prosperity: California is Tijuana’s biggest source of tourism, as well as of spinoff assembly plants.

Another factor is policy laid down in Mexico City. For the moment, promotion of exports and encouragement of maquiladora investment favor the city. In addition, the falling value of the Mexican peso makes Tijuana a bargain for U.S. visitors.

The city’s population growth may also create problems. The population is estimated at between 700,000 and more than 1 million. Installation of public services is lagging behind the influx of new residents.

In any event, boosters insist that the new direction is irreversible. They hope some day to remove the last vestiges of the town’s gray past to some outlying “tolerance zone,” where Tijuana’s fading promiscuity would be harder to find.