Living the Mexican dream

Tourist dollars help locals achieve new standards of living at home

By Alfredo Corchado u
Sunday, September 9, 2007


CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico — This seaside jewel is the stuff of immigrant dreams.

Maribel Uribe, 38, still can't get over her first glimpse of beauty: a paycheck "three times what I made in my hometown," says the single mother of two. "Opportunities are everywhere."

Humberto Lozada Balderas, a waiter, is just as effusive: "The demand is insatiable."

While this may sound like Mexicans waxing poetic about the American dream, this dreamscape is actually hundreds of miles south of the U.S. border with Mexico — in the state of Baja California Sur.

Construction here is booming. U.S. tourists and residents arrive in droves — buying million-dollar homes or paying hundreds for luxurious overnight hotels. The economy is growing at an average rate of 15 percent, compared with 3 percent for the rest of the country.

The result: fierce competition for Mexican workers by both U.S. and Mexican employers in Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo — a resort community commonly known as Los Cabos.

In many ways, this area represents the kind of prosperity that Mexico wants to duplicate in other parts of the country to keep its workers at home. And much of that investment — in the billions of dollars — comes from Americans seeking a second home and a different lifestyle.

Juan Mucino, a developer at La Vista, a posh residential project with a stunning view of the Gulf of California, recalls greeting workers from the interior of Mexico as the ships landed in nearby La Paz.

"I'd tell them, Welcome to Baja California,' " he recalls. "And the workers would totally ignore the word Baja' and think they were actually in California.

"Overnight, they'd hightail it out looking for Los Angeles," he said. "It took a while for them to realize that we are hours away from the border, and that we would pay them good money, sometimes as much as a U.S. employer."

A living wage

Mucino and other employers often pay up to $200 a week — three to four times the going rate in the rest of Mexico — for workers to build half million- and million-dollar homes.

The result is rare opulence in a largely impoverished country.

Tourism is Mexico's new oil — "a powerful engine to create jobs" — President Felipe Calderon has said and others have echoed.

"For every worker who finds a job in Los Cabos, that's one less worker heading to the United States," said Arturo Trevino, state tourism minister for Baja California Sur. "You never know. With more Cabos, the United States may actually miss our countrymen someday."

Chris Snell, owner of Snell Real Estate in Los Cabos, sees the influx of dollars as "an immigration stopgap" and jobs engine.

"Not only are workers employed, but we're talking about good-paying jobs," said Snell, who was born in San Antonio. He pays bonuses and other perks to his employees after every sale. "We're talking about jobs that offer Mexicans the kind of quality of life that they seek across the border."

Los Cabos is far from typical.

Mexico is at least decades away from repeating the Ireland experience, immigration experts say. The booming economy in that once-impoverished European nation continues to draw thousands of Irishmen back home — so many that some employers in New York City and Boston are beginning to feel their loss.

Similarly, if Mexico manages to attract more immigrants back, their loss would be felt north of the border, experts say.

"Mexican laborers have been a part of our economy and society for over 100 years," said Hilary Dick, a specialist on Mexican migration at Pennsylvania's Bryn Mawr College. "It would be a tremendous loss to the U.S. if we were to drive out this dedicated labor force."

For the most part, Mexicans today still scrape for a living, as the exodus of their countrymen, including some of the brightest and most ambitious, continues.

But Los Cabos represents a bright spot for Mexico — a peek at what could be ahead as the country's birthrate falls and the economy gradually improves.

Increasing investment

Private investment has increased from $9 billion in 2000 to $12.85 billion in 2006. Much of that investment was earmarked for communities along the Pacific Coast and Gulf of California, particularly the Baja California Sur region, said Bertha Villalobos, spokeswoman for the Secretary of Tourism department.

Los Cabos, in particular, continues to be "a very strong market for foreign investment," Villalobos said, "and a magnet for job creation."

About 90 percent of the initial investment in Los Cabos came from Americans, Snell said, although Mexican investors are now catching up.

Personal stories underscore the hope that Los Cabos has come to represent for many Mexicans.

Jose Antonio Mendoza Sarabia was a college graduate going nowhere. He thought of heading to the United States to work, make some money, return to Mexico, buy a home and get married. And he thought Los Cabos would be an ideal place to make enough money to pay a smuggler.

A brighter future

Instead, Sarabia met Mucino, the developer, who hired him as his personal driver.

After a few months of work and witnessing the economic explosion around him, Sarabia saw his own future. And it was bright.

He quit his job, started his own coconut business and found the woman of his dreams, Gilda.

He now owns Cocorchata, one of two fresh coconut shops here in Los Cabos. He and his wife have a 4-month-old son, Amado Rodrigo, and own their first home. Thoughts of heading to the United States have evaporated. Instead, he plans to expand into a shopping mall crawling with Americans.

"I have everything I need here, job security, a home, a family and plans to expand," Sarabia said. "I know it sounds strange, but this is the Mexican dream made right here in Mexico."

Rigoberto Rodriguez Ruelas, 32, from a small town in Sinaloa, moved here after working in California for five years. He began working at a golf course, manicuring the greens and caddying.

He has since learned to play.

"Everything I have, I owe to American investment," he said. "Why would I think of going back to the U.S. and risking my life? I'm doing things I never thought of, like playing golf. How many Mexican immigrants to the U.S. can say that?"

With the growth in the economy have come the growing pains. Los Cabos is experiencing a dilemma reminiscent of several U.S. cities, particularly Farmers Branch, Texas, where an immigration debate is raging. Of the estimated 200,000 residents, about 12,000 are Americans — some legal, some not.

The region has English language newspapers, including The Gringo Gazette, and daily hourlong English-language radio programming. Prices are usually in dollars.

Most Americans came here legally to work in the hospitality industry. But others overstayed tourism visas and now work illegally, just like their Mexican counterparts in the United States.

At a surf shop just outside San Jose del Cabo, a tall, wiry American from San Diego is getting a massage after surfing in the Gulf of California.

Asked for his name, the 25-year-old with a deep tan and long blond hair says, "Are you crazy? I'll get booted out of here. Just say I'm Dick Cheney in an undisclosed location."

He hops into his Toyota 4Runner with California plates, surfboard on top and music blaring, and disappears.

© 2007 Ventura County Star

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