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Crime alert expected to hurt border tourism

The Arizona Republic
May 2, 2005

MEXICO CITY - Mexican tourism officials are bracing for a slow summer along the border after the U.S. State Department renewed a warning about drug violence in the region.
The warning took the wind out of tourism in border cities when it first came out Jan. 26. A new version came out last week, with almost identical language.

"A power vacuum within criminal organizations resulting from the imprisonment of several of their leaders along the Mexico-U.S. border continues to contribute to a deterioration of public safety in the region," the statement said.

It singled out Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, saying at least 30 Americans have been kidnapped or murdered there in the past eight months.

It prompted groans from Mexican officials, who said they're still trying to confirm that number and have been trying to assure U.S. tourists they are safe in Mexico.

Most of the violence has been between drug gangs and has not involved tourists, Mexican officials said. There have been no major clashes near the Arizona border.

"We're not convinced that tourists are in any danger," said Jesús Nader Marcos, president of the Mexican Association of Hotels and Motels.

He said hotels in Nuevo Laredo, Juarez and other northeastern border cities saw business drop by as much as 20 percent after the first U.S. warning.

In the northwestern border cities of Nogales, Son.; Mexicali; Tecate; and Tijuana, tourism officials blamed the warning for a 6.08 percent drop in hotel occupancy in January, compared with the previous year.

Occupancy in those cities was down 5.31 percent during February and 5.57 percent during March, according to the Tourism Department's monthly reports. That's despite an overall increase in tourists nationwide.

Puerto Peñasco, also known as Rocky Point, saw occupancy rates drop by 3.64 percent from last year during March, prime spring break season.

"Rentals were down, and I was getting these worried e-mails from clients, as if they were hanging Americans from fence posts or something," said Mike Tobin, residential sales manager for Coldwell Banker Rocky Point.

There have been a few clashes between drug traffickers and police in recent months in Sonora, but they have been in the southern part of the state, far from tourist resorts.

In the latest violence in Sonora, Alfredo Jiménez Mota, a crime reporter for El Imparcial newspaper in Hermosillo, disappeared April 2 and is believed kidnapped by drug traffickers. On April 12, about 40 reporters briefly blocked the highway to BahÃÂ*a de Kino to demand more police action to find him.