Tijuana Vendors Suffer Steep Downturn in Wake of Attacks

On a plaza near the U.S. border, Tijuana merchant Humberto Barriga Herrera gamely tends his booth of tourist trinkets: plaster surfing monkeys, sunglasses, door ornaments, maracas.

Barriga knows that the odds of selling much today are poor--he’s yet to see a customer. A day earlier, he sold just two items, a leather purse and a pair of sunglasses, for a total of $45. A list of sales for the entire week fills less than a page of the small notebook that is his ledger.

“This month it’s been very slow,” said Barriga, 27, surveying an expanse nearly bereft of tourists. “We have to be here, even if it’s slow.”

Throughout Tijuana’s normally festive tourist zone, the vendors and shopkeepers who rely on U.S. visitors are similarly downcast.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the dependable flow of American day-trippers has become a dribble--the result of travelers’ skittishness and more rigorous searches at the border that have aggravated delays for those returning to the United States.

On Tijuana’s signature tourist drag, Avenida Revolucion, a short stroll from the plaza where Barriga awaits customers, veteran merchants say the slowdown is the worst they’ve seen in more than two decades: Sales in September fell 72%. And south along Baja California’s beaches, hotels report higher-than-normal vacancies, making for a markedly lean off-season.

The attacks have disrupted economies all over. But the downturn along the U.S.-Mexico border illustrates the degree to which many merchants on each side depend on customers from the other. North of the border in San Ysidro, businesses that cater to Mexican shoppers are seeking federal emergency status because of the drastic fall in commerce due to fewer people crossing.

In Tijuana, vendors say some colleagues have called it quits, having been hurt already by a cooling U.S. economy and slackening trade. The rest spend the days dusting counters and tidying stacks of Mexican blankets, selling few.

In the El Sombrero Arcade, a shaded passage swathed in a bank-like hush, Gilbert Aldana has watched sales of guitars, Elvis wall hangings and Mexican sombreros dry up. Only three customers happened by the store the previous day.

Aldana said business is the slowest in 20 years he has sold goods on Avenida Revolucion. His commission earnings have fallen to $40 to $50 a week. “People used to come. But ever since this happened, there is a big change,” he said.

The only recourse, Aldana said, is to await better times and “spend your savings.”

Across the street, the uncertainty was on the mind of Enrique Navarro, who makes a living taking pictures--at $4 apiece--of tourists posing with Paco, a donkey painted in zebra stripes. Navarro’s camera hasn’t clicked much lately.

“Even Saturdays have completely dropped off,” said Navarro, 64, who has photographed tourists for 30 years. “It’s not just here in Tijuana. It is the same all over Baja California.”

Tourism officials in the state of Baja California, where foreign guests spent $700 million last year, are keenly aware of the impact of fewer visits. In September, the toll highway between Tijuana and Ensenada, the main artery for coastal Baja, carried 114,000 fewer cars than during the same period last year.

“We’re very much dependent on the U.S. market and especially the California market,” said Juan Tintos Funcke, the state’s tourism secretary. “We’re monitoring the situation on a day-to-day basis.”

Tintos said there were early signs of recovery. Cruise ships arriving in Ensenada have regained some passengers. A 2,600-passenger ship that carried only 1,600 travelers during the weekend after the hijackings was up to 2,200 passengers last weekend, he said. Hotel cancellations are falling off.

But occupancy rates in the beach cities of Rosarito and Ensenada, on the Pacific Ocean, and in San Felipe, on the Gulf of California, remain down by 3% to 10% compared with last year.

Baja’s promoters say the U.S. nervousness over air travel may help them. As a driving destination--and one familiar to many in the Southwest--Baja California can win visitors who might have flown to resorts elsewhere in Mexico or other countries, they say.

Tourism officials are intensifying a program offering hotel discounts to residents of California, Arizona and Nevada and insisting to all who will listen that border delays during non-peak times are not usually an hours-long ordeal.

“We have to get the word out that the border crossing is not as bad as people think,” said Ives Lelevier, who heads Tijuana’s convention bureau.

And, seeking a silver lining in the blackest of clouds, some boosters say that amid terrorism anxieties in the United States, Mexico may now, suddenly, seem a safe haven.

“We have normal crime, but we have not had terrorism or a single instance of [anthrax] contamination,” said Olegario Miller Gastelum, who manages two bus services shuttling between the border crossing and Avenida Revolucion.

The shuttle buses, which once ferried mainly tourists, have lost many of those riders during the recent lull. But they carry a new clientele: Tijuana residents seeking a faster way across the border to shop and work. The buses can use a special lane that allows them to bypass long lines of cars being searched by U.S. inspectors.

And there are other emerging markets. Tijuana pharmacies, clustered by the dozen along the border to take advantage of bargain-hunting U.S. customers, have begun advertising Cipro, the anthrax remedy. Though sales of the antibiotic have provided a modest boost, pharmacists say, it doesn’t make up for the wider decline.

They remain hopeful, though.

“Once we get Osama,” said pharmacist Antonio Morado, “it’s going to get better.”