Consulate Has Full Share of Work, Critics

There’s no foreign service job quite like it.

At the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, death and disorder are daily fare, and diplomacy is conducted more often at the jailhouse than at fancy official soirees.

So it is not surprising that this consulate comes in for its share of criticism. In recent years, a spate of serious incidents involving U.S. citizens in Baja have redoubled complaints of bureaucratic indifference and inaction.

“The fact that the San Ysidro border has the heaviest use in the world really dictates that the U.S. Consul office be more proactive,” said Hugh Kramer, who runs the 6,700-member Discover Baja Travel Club.

Consul General Richard Gonzalez maintains that much of the agency’s work on behalf of U.S. citizens goes unseen. “A lot of Americans expect us to openly challenge and defend, but that can be counterproductive,” he said.

The heavily guarded building surrounded by a white iron fence near the Tijuana racetrack is one of nine consulates in Mexico. Known as one of the busiest consulates in the world, it is responsible for about 200,000 Americans in its service area at any time. They suffer accidents and illness, die, give birth, commit crimes, go to jail.

Sometimes their conflicts with Mexican authorities balloon into full-scale international incidents.

Two years ago, an American died after being injured in a car accident. Family members protested that medical treatment was needlessly delayed. Last year, a group of American retirees living in Punta Banda were evicted in a land dispute. More recently, a U.S. family protested the release of several Mexican suspects in the slaying of a loved one in a Tijuana bar fight.

Critics say that such incidents call for a more aggressive approach to citizen advocacy. Visitors to Baja “feel the consulate could be more helpful,” Kramer said. “People feel kind of let down, abandoned.”

On the Mexican side, Baja tourism secretary Juan Tintos Funcke said criticism is misplaced. Gonzalez “has been very influential,” he said. “He’s tough. He’s good.”

Gonzalez, 57, is a 19-year veteran of the State Department, and a Los Angeles native who went to Cathedral High School and Cal State Los Angeles. In a recent interview, he chose his words carefully, deferring most questions to associates.

But he displayed a flash of frustration when asked about the extent of his efforts. Diplomats must work invisibly to be effective, he said--then are criticized for it.

For example, consular officers recently helped secure the release of an 81-year-old American man with cancer, he said. Mexican officials agreed to commute his sentence after finding him guilty of purchasing and transporting 600 tablets of diazepam, a generic version of Valium. He was released June 13.

“That never comes out,” said Gonzalez. “They just say that we couldn’t just wave a wand and let him go. But these things take time.”

Even critics allow that the consulate’s workload is heavy. Last year, it dealt with nearly 20% of all arrests of Americans worldwide reported to the State Department--500 out of 2,600 total. That number doesn’t count hundreds of brief detentions.

Officers here swap round-the-clock duty, and make daily calls to morgues, jails and hospitals. Junior officers are put to work almost as soon as they arrive.

There is a death a day. There are voting services for American residents of Baja, and hundreds of thousands of non-immigrant visa applications from Mexicans to process.

There are unexpected diplomatic crises, such as the Tijuana newspaper headline that screamed, “Hunted Down by the Border Patrol,” next to a photo of a body against the border fence. Consular officials hustled to refute it.

Most of all, the agency is swamped with alcohol-related mishaps that come with the Tijuana nightclub scene.

The thousands of American revelers who hit the bars here on weekends are enough to give even seasoned diplomats pause.

“It almost scares you,” said Philip Egger, chief of consular services, recalling an encounter with some underage Americans at a fast-food restaurant one weekend night.

“They were counting quarters to see if they had enough to get drunk,” he said. “I wanted to turn around and say, ‘Do your parents know you’re here?’ ”

Still, critics say the consulate too often throws up its hands. “Their attitude is far too cavalier for my liking,” said Irvine attorney William Bollard, who represented David Cathcart, an American exonerated and released May 28 after serving 6 1/2 years in a Mexican jail.

“They are very quick to remind you . . . that their authority is limited,” Bollard said.

Among the sharpest critics of the agency is Tijuana attorney Dennis John Peyton, who represented some of the Punta Banda retirees.

Peyton said he was disappointed that consular officials didn’t appear to take a strong public stand against the evictions. “Do they do their jobs or hide? What is up with that?” he said.

“It’s easier to say what we can’t do than what we can do,” Egger acknowledged. “We can’t spring a person from jail. . . . We can’t change Mexican law. . . . We can’t defend people or pay their fines.”

What they can do is see that Americans get the same treatment as do Mexicans under Mexican law, and visit them in jail to ensure that they aren’t mistreated, he said.

Gonzalez added that Punta Banda was “one of the most difficult experiences I have ever gone through.” He said he met with state officials numerous times to stop the evictions. In the end, the only option was to work to diffuse a potentially violent situation, he said.

Asked if the agency could take a more preemptive role in helping citizens and promoting cross-border cooperation, Gonzalez quickly said that is not the consulate’s job.

Therein lies the real problem, said Chuck Nathanson, executive director of San Diego Dialogue, a regional public policy group. The agency’s efforts are simply outstripped by the complex social needs of a booming border metropolis.

And in this, he said, the consulate is not alone. “Nobody is as helpful as they ought to be given the emerging facts of a binational city,” he said.

Kramer, of the tourism group, said that many Baja travelers simply learn to rely on personal diplomacy. “A lot wouldn’t even think of contacting the consulate,” he said. “They find the Mexican people are more helpful.”