Mexican Boom Towns Pose Woes for U.S. Cities Across Border

Cars bob and weave down what pass for paved roads in this border city, trying to dodge crater-sized potholes. City garbage trucks sit idle in municipal yards as trash piles up in the makeshift neighborhoods on the outskirts of town.

It’s a startling transition for a visitor who just left Yuma, Ariz., with a population of 64,000, and passed through the border town of San Luis, Ariz., where 8,500 people live.

Just 25 miles south of Yuma, largely unnoticed by U.S. residents, is a booming city with a population estimated at 200,000.

San Luis Rio Colorado is hardly an isolated case. All along the border, Mexican cities are growing by leaps and bounds, bringing economic gains and big headaches to city officials on both sides of the border.

It’s more than just the large cities like Tijuana and Mexicali experiencing rapid growth, said Jim Peach, an economics professor at New Mexico State University.

The smaller cities also are expanding, and they are likely to pick up speed.

“You can expect over time as it becomes more and more apparent that the largest cities have the largest problems, the smaller cities will become more attractive to both industry and migrants,” he said.

For most border cities--both in the United States and Mexico--the population boom, partly spurred by the growth of factories, brings an economic boost but also strains city services.

“It’s good in the sense that it creates more industries that want to come to San Luis [Rio Colorado]. But it’s been hard for the government to provide all the services needed,” City Atty. Mario Guevara said through an interpreter.

The city’s population has swelled from 135,000 to 200,000 in just five years because of the expansion of factories under the North American Free Trade Agreement, he said.

The growth comes at a time when city services are already swamped and out of money, because previous administrations squandered funding from the Mexican government, Guevara said.

The population boom has affected the city just north of the metal border fence too.

San Luis, Ariz., is dwarfed in population by its southern neighbor, but it has also felt the effects of the burgeoning population.

“It puts the city officials in a Catch-22. We want to allow economic growth but must find a way to provide more services,” said San Luis City Manager Alex U. Ruiz.

The extra traffic across the border means cars back up on the roads--damaging streets, causing collisions and spewing exhaust into the air.

The problems are typical of any city that has a large number of visitors without significant increases in its tax base, Peach said.

Everything from congested roads to pollution to crime rates are influenced by the growth in Mexican border towns, he said.

In the case of Douglas, Ariz., the city is suffering most of the downsides and not seeing much economic gain from fast-growing Agua Prieta across the border. Douglas has about 16,000 residents, while Agua Prieta has more than 100,000.

“I really don’t know what NAFTA has done for the city of Douglas. If anything, it has provided a conduit for traffic to go through here, but economically, I don’t see what NAFTA has done,” said Mayor Ray Borane.

Meanwhile, police resources are stretched by added traffic and burglaries, most of which are committed by people who live across the border, he said.

Crime has been a dramatic problem in the Mexican border towns too.

For example, San Luis Rio Colorado’s police chief fired a third of his police force when they tested positive for drug use. And last year, newspaper publisher Benjamin Flores Gonzalez, known for his reports on drug lords, was gunned down in the street.

The concerns, however, do not appear to deter people from moving to Mexican border cities.

Guevara said workers are flooding into San Luis Rio Colorado because workers always know they have jobs at the factories, starting at $5 a day.

The maquiladoras--factories that assemble products for sale abroad--have expanded at 15% a year for the last three years in Mexico.

The expansion seems to initially be spurred by NAFTA, which helped drop trade barriers between the United States and Mexico, but Jose Mendez, an economics professor at Arizona State University, said he does not expect the growth in border towns to continue long-term.

The high wages in Mexican border cities and the ability of maquiladoras now to sell products inside Mexico--a change brought about by NAFTA--will provide incentives for industry to move into the nation’s interior, he said.