U.S. Mail Delivers--for Tijuana Residents

Martin Rodriguez and thousands of other Tijuana residents cross the international border for the most mundane of reasons: to check their mail.

Twice a week or more, Rodriguez, a 43-year-old construction worker, checks his rented box at a private mail center a short walk north of the border crossing at San Ysidro. He and other border denizens, many of whom work legally on the U.S. side and have families and lifestyles that straddle the divide, prefer the U.S. Postal Service to the Mexican postal system, which they complain is slow and unreliable.

“It takes a long time between the two [countries],” he said after checking for mail in San Ysidro on a recent afternoon. (He got none.) “It can take 15 days, and then things are missing.”

Instead, these customers receive mail that originates in the United States at rented boxes throughout San Ysidro, where a niche market has flourished over the years.

The working-class community of 30,000 is home to more than two dozen private mailbox services, boasting 26,000 postal boxes, that cater almost exclusively to Mexican customers. And at the U.S. post office in San Ysidro, at least half of all the arriving letters bear the U.S. addresses of recipients who live outside the country.

The mail market is one sign of how border residents thread lives between the two countries. Some box holders are elderly parents awaiting checks from grown children living elsewhere in the United States. Others are Baja California businesses, from hotels to medical clinics, with U.S. customers. Still others are American retirees living in Mexico.

“Their contact to the United States is through the mailbox,” said Miguel Aguirre, co-owner of Pro-Pack USA, a mail store just steps from the border crossing.

Unlike other places, where big chains rule, most of the mail depots here are humble mom-and-pop services, offered along with storefront tax preparation and currency exchange.

Little is remarkable about the mail received, though. There are the same insurance forms, medical bills, magazines, letters and, yes, junk mail, that pack mailboxes everywhere.

“It’s just average mail,” said Kathy Dolan, a clerk at the San Ysidro post office who oversees the private centers.

The keen demand for more reliable services can be seen in the unusually high number of boxes for rent at the post office: 5,980, a large figure for a community where mail is delivered to just 8,000 homes and businesses. That’s in addition to the 26 private centers, where many of the rented boxes are shared by three or more families each.

That concentration of privately owned outlets is far higher than seen in communities away from the border, said Sharmaine Fennie, president of Associated Mail and Parcel Centers Inc., a Napa, Calif.-based grouping of 2,700 mail stores. She said similar clusters are seen in U.S. communities along the Canadian border.

The growth of the mail industry has mirrored the fast spread of Tijuana. Besides the San Ysidro services, five Mexican-based firms collect mail north of the border for delivery in Baja California. Residents and postal officials expect demand to persist, fed by newcomers to the border and lingering unease about the Mexican mail system.

Rodriguez, who has permanent U.S. resident status and works north of the border, receives account statements from his U.S. bank, tax documents and personal mail at the San Ysidro center, rather than take a chance on the Mexican post office.

There is nothing untoward in the fact that recipients don’t live in the United States, say U.S. postal officials, since the mail bears U.S. postage and addresses, no matter where it ends up after collection.

“They’re buying U.S. postage, so it’s helping us. It’s helping both of us,” said Gladys Anderson, who runs the bustling San Ysidro post office.

The unusual market has placed special demands on her workers, who have had to master the double surnames customarily used by Mexicans and to tailor rules on how long mail is held to a setting where customers can go weeks without checking their boxes. The San Ysidro station retains uncollected mail for 30 days, while the normal rule is 10.

Longer waits to cross the border since Sept. 11--and, to a lesser degree, anthrax concerns--have had their own effects. Postal workers say there’s been a surge recently in the amount of uncollected mail they have had to return to senders. Some private mail businesses report that many customers have simply stopped coming.

At a mail center called Correo Fronterizo, with 4,700 postal boxes, owner Thomas Currie said one in five of his customers has failed to renew a box, which go for $27 for six months. Currie attributed the drop mainly to the inconvenience of crossing the border in recent weeks as security has tightened.

But most expect the business to bounce back, if only because the mail service has become so ingrained in the lives of many Tijuana residents.

For Elizabeth Estrada, a 23-year-old nurse who moved to Tijuana 10 months ago, the mail stop on her way to work in San Diego is a lifeline to her mother and an 8-year-old daughter in San Francisco.

Ricardo Diaz, 75, a retired railroad worker from Bakersfield, said all his mail comes from the United States. On a recent day, he rode the bus 10 miles to the border, then stood in line for two hours to cross into San Ysidro. At the Pro-Pack USA outlet, Diaz inserted a key and pulled a single envelope from his box--a statement from a San Ysidro bank where he recently opened an account.

“I don’t want to take Mexican mail, because I don’t trust it--to lose checks or something,” Diaz said.

In the back corner of Correo Fronterizo, Magdalena Bravo, a 40-year-old housekeeper, and two young daughters tore open boxes shipped by a grown daughter in New York. There were shoes and slippers, child-sized skirts, a tiny Sesame Street knapsack and other clothing.

Bravo said crossing the border is easier than awaiting delivery in Mexico. A separate package from New York was sent to her Tijuana address three months earlier. “I’m still waiting,” she said.