Thread: Running On Empty

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/11919135.htm
Posted on Fri, Jun. 17, 2005

Running on empty

On the border, merchants are on edge: Violent drug gangs are taking lives and scaring off business

By Jay Root
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - A year ago, Sombrero's Tequila Bar and Grill was brimming with America's youth, lured across the border by reasonably priced beverages and permissive drinking laws.

But, bar manager Ramon Fajardo said, he opened Monday at 6 p.m. and closed at 2 a.m. without pulling in a single customer. And the next several days didn't promise much more. Business is down at least 70 percent from last year, he said.

"Now even the kids from Laredo don't come anymore," Fajardo said.

It's a common refrain in the streets of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, rocked by a violent turf war between competing drug cartels. Some of the most popular clubs and restaurants have shut down, including Señor Frog's, the adjacent Harry's nightclub and Restaurant Victoria. Others might not be far behind.

Both Laredo, population 215,000, and its sister city of 500,000 across the border depend heavily on international trade and tourism. Laredo is the second-fastest-growing city in the United States, behind Las Vegas, and the busiest land port in the country.

But since the Pacific Coast-based Sinaloa alliance and the Gulf Cartel of Matamoros began fighting over South Texas drug-smuggling routes in recent months, tourism has dropped on the Mexican side of the border, and business has gone with it, merchants say.

This week, buggy driver Alfredo Ferreira, 43, said he hadn't carried a customer around the old town square in three days. And he said he hasn't bought meat for his family in months -- just "beans and tortillas."

"There is no tourism in Nuevo Laredo. It's dead," he said. "There are no people. There is no money."

Many merchants on the U.S. side also say that business is way down, though others say healthy numbers of Mexicans are still coming to Laredo to shop.

"Of course it affects us. Look! There's no people," said Lolita Dolores Villarreal, a saleswoman at Moda Más, a women's clothing store about 100 feet from the pedestrian bridge that leads into Mexico. "It's because of Mexico. There's no police. They're killing people."

Villarreal said business has dropped 40 percent over the past several months, forcing her to start working half time.

The economic disruption comes amid a longer wave of drug-fueled violence. More than 500 people have been killed this year in Mexico, most of them in states that border Texas, according to published reports. Laredo officials say some of the violence has spilled over into the U.S.

Though smugglers have long used the Interstate 35 corridor in Texas to take drugs north, Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores said the wave of ruthless killings is unprecedented.

"You're never going to stop the flow of drugs. Never," he said. "The only thing we're trying to do is stop the killings. It's sending a panic throughout the border."

Last week, residents were hopeful that their troubles would ease after Nuevo Laredo finally filled a job hardly anybody wanted -- police chief. Hours later, their hope turned to horror when the new chief, Alejandro Dominguez Coello, was gunned down, shot at least 35 times by unknown assailants who then escaped.

The ensuing chaos and uproar prompted the administration of President Vicente Fox to dispatch federal police to Nuevo Laredo. They detained and investigated hundreds of municipal police officers suspected of ties to drug traffickers.

Rene Salinas, an FBI spokesman in San Antonio, said Mexican authorities had to take drastic measures because the violence has had a devastating economic impact.

"The local officials were more than likely bought off by the huge amounts of money that were involved," he said, "and they were just running with impunity, and it finally got to the point where it started affecting tourism. That hit Mexico right between the eyes."

According to Les Norton, whose family has owned clothing outlets in downtown Laredo for 60 years, faltering business on the Mexican side eventually affects commerce across the border.

"Anytime you prick Nuevo Laredo's finger, we feel it over here," said Norton, who relies on Mexican shoppers for about 90 percent of his business. He fears that tourism layoffs will lead to sales declines in his stores, where many in that industry buy brand-name clothes.

But he said Mexicans are still coming to Laredo, because it's safer.

In fact, many merchants and residents cite anecdotal evidence suggesting that a booming real estate market in Laredo can be attributed to a wave of Mexicans looking for a way out of Nuevo Laredo.

The heavy cargo traffic between the two countries also appears to be untouched by the cartel wars, according to Rick Pauza, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman based in Laredo.

"From what I've been hearing, there hasn't been a change in the commercial traffic," Pauza said. About 6,000 trucks a day head north from Laredo, he said, making the bustling city the most important portal for U.S.-Mexico trade -- which surpassed $260 billion last year.

Along the main strip in Nuevo Laredo, where bars and souvenir shops depend on American tourists for survival, merchants are desperate for a piece of that cross-border commerce. Their most common complaint: The international news media has been hyping the violence. The merchants say drug traffickers are knocking off themselves, not American tourists.

At the popular bar La Mina, all but deserted this week, the cashier declined to be interviewed for fear that any additional publicity would cause even fewer people to visit.

Souvenir-shop owner Ana Maria Blanco, who sells trinkets in a store just 50 yards from International Bridge No. 1, exhibited no such shyness. She and a handful of other workers -- a taxi driver, a shoeshine boy and a carriage driver -- begged a reporter to invite the tourists back.

"You can put it in your newspaper. On the main street, nothing happens," she said. "If it keeps declining, declining, declining, nothing will survive."

Still, some Americans have been victimized. In an offshoot of the drug crimes, some 37 U.S. citizens have been kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo since August. Thirteen are still missing and two are dead, according to the San Antonio office of the FBI.

The kidnappings helped prompt the U.S. State Department to issue a travel alert a few weeks ago that warns of a "deterioration of public safety" along the border. And U.S. officials, who have long promoted the two cities as one, aren't denying the danger there.

Laredo Mayor Betty Flores was asked last week whether she would recommend that U.S. citizens go have dinner across the border. Not if it's dark, she said. "I wouldn't have dinner," she said. "I would have lunch. Or breakfast."

IN THE KNOW
On the border

Laredo and its sister city of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, are major portals of commerce:

• Laredo is the fastest-growing city in Texas and the second-fastest-growing in the United States, behind Las Vegas.

• Laredo's job market had the highest percentage of growth in the United States last year, adding 2,400 jobs.

• Four international bridges span the Rio Grande at Laredo.

• The Port of Laredo handled about 2 million loaded trucks last year -- more than 5,400 per day, compared with 3,500 per day in 1996.

• Last year, 16,589,594 vehicles crossed the border in both directions at Laredo.

• Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison helps advance a $322.9 million proposal for more agents. 23A

Jay Root, (512) 476-4294 jroot@star-telegram.com

Kay Bailey Hutchinson has floated a request for $330,000,000 for "some more agents?"

One-third of a billion dollars for some "more agents"????

HOW MUCH DO AGENTS MAKE????

Pleeeeeeease, give me a break!!

GET TROOPS TO THE BORDERS NOW!!

They are already trained, paid and HAVE their equipment and chain of command.

Good God!!

Things are getin pert near serious down thar.