Pubdate: Sun, 30 Aug 1998
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Contact:  http://www.sjmercury.com/
Author: Alfredo Corchado and Laurence Iliff

BORDERLANDS

Pressure from U.S., Mexican leaders to grapple with globalization, drugs and
immigration is transforming forever a 150-year-old way of life

CIUDAD JUC1REZ, Mexico -- Once a dusty no-man's land caught in the past,
today's U.S.-Mexico border is undergoing its biggest transformation, leaping
into the global economy and leaving behind a centuries-old ``anything goes''
way of life.

46rom the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, the powerful forces of
economic globalization, the explosion of lawlessness spawned by brutal drug
lords and the constant meddling by Washington and Mexico City are tearing at
the fabric of the 2,000-mile border.

While the European Union works to erase the boundaries on its continent and
introduce a common currency, the United States and Mexico seek to control
their common border by laying down the law. Families who have lived near the
border for generations are surrounded by more federal agents and new
regulations -- caught in the cross-fire of change, swinging between chaos
and hope, gloom and boom.

``We're at a crossroads, living under a microscope of sorts from both sides
of the border,'' said Gordon Cook, a political scientist and district
director of the Rio Grande Council of Governments in El Paso, where he
manages development projects for seven border counties. ``We're living under
much more stress: emotional stress, social stress and environmental
stress.''

The pressure comes from two federal governments that see this vast region --
11 million people and $150 billion in economic output -- as a strategic tool
for battling drug trafficking, controlling immigration and building an
economic engine for the next century.

Government institutions are chipping away -- for better or worse -- at a way
of life that has existed since 1848, when the current borderlines were drawn
through deserts, canyons and the meandering Rio Grande.

SMUGGLER'S BLUES

Take the experience of Rosalio, a crafty smuggler from Ciudad JuE1rez. For
more than 25 years, he would sneak across the Rio Grande into El Paso with
cheap cigarettes and medicine for retirees, booze for soldiers, and mangoes
for families.  His versatility earned him the nickname ``Mil Usos,'' or
Jack-of-all-Trades.

These days, even the cagey ``Mil Usos'' is scratching his weathered face,
forced to end his legendary cat-and-mouse game with U.S. Border Patrol
agents, who now have more staff and use sophisticated technology, such as
satellites, sensors and infrared cameras, to control the border.

``Mil Usos'' has taken on two part-time jobs in the United States. With a
phony crossing card, he commutes every other day in an old Chevrolet from
Ciudad JuE1rez to El Paso, where he works as a gardener.

On his way to work, he stops regularly at a local bank, where he makes cash
deposits on behalf of his second employer, a Mexican drug lord. ``Mil Usos''
earns about $50 each time he launders $1,000. Even though the pay is better,
``Mil Usos'' says he misses his old job.

``I used to love the smell of mangoes,'' he said. ``But on the border, if
you don't adapt to change, you starve.''

The porous border has 38 official crossings and dozens of tightly knit
communities linked by history, language and a predominantly Latino culture.

46or all the blurring of the border economically, neither the United States
nor Mexico has ``the political will to tear down the borders like European
nations have,'' said Z. Anthony Kruszewski, a political-science professor at
the University of Texas at El Paso and a European expert. ``There still is
much mistrust on both sides.''

To build trust, cross-border cooperation has gradually gone from informal
help during emergencies to institutional joint economic planning. Local,
state and federal officials from both sides of the border regularly sit down
to hammer out solutions to the most prickly issues -- water shortages,
pollution that knows no borders, drug trafficking, tourism and crime.

``This is truly unprecedented cooperation, and it's just beginning,'' said
George McNenney, special agent in charge of the U.S. Customs district office
in El Paso.

Meanwhile, rapid growth from trade has resulted in inner-city turmoil and
other challenges for border communities.

California border woes

Tijuana, across the border from the San Diego suburb of San Ysidro, is a
planning nightmare of rough terrain, where shanties built along hillsides
crumble in the rain. The crime rate is comparable to that of Mexico City.

Mexicali, across from Calexico, is a relative newcomer to economic
development but already is strapped with too many jobs and not enough
workers.

In the southernmost stretch of the U.S. border lies the Rio Grande Valley of
South Texas, regarded as one of the country's poorest areas.

To help combat impoverished conditions, border neighbors like McAllen,
Texas, and Reynosa, Mexico, have embarked on an unusual relationship. In it,
officials from two countries jointly recruit manufacturing plants so both
sides of the border can reap the economic benefits.

The two local governments regularly sit down and virtually operate as one
city. The result in the last 10 years: 37,216 jobs created in Reynosa and
7,155 in McAllen.

At the middle of the border are El Paso and Ciudad JuE1rez, which may serve
as the best example of the daunting economic, social and political
challenges that lie ahead.

On the Mexican side, the workers are younger and, as one U.S. executive put
it, ``more vibrant, with hope spelled in their eyes.''

While Ciudad JuE1rez is booming, El Paso is painfully coping.

More than 15,000 El Paso residents commute daily to Ciudad JuE1rez, many of
them to work at the large General Motors plant.

``This is probably the most strategic point to join the southern and
northern continent,'' said Lucinda Vargas, an economist at the Federal
Reserve Bank in El Paso. ``Ciudad JuE1rez is where the hope for the rest of
Latin America begins.

``Mexicans have been part of the world market far longer than workers on the
U.S. side,'' said Vargas, a native of Ciudad JuE1rez. ``I think they're
more prepared for the future than El Pasoans.''

The two sides are still years apart in overall living standards, but Mexico
is getting the lion's share of investments.

Other than China, Mexico has received more foreign investment than any other
nation in the developing world, and much of it is border-related, experts
say.

NAFTA'S IMPACT

Meanwhile, El Paso made national headlines last year when it was announced
that the city had lost 5,623 jobs because of the North American Free Trade
Agreement, plus thousands more jobs overall. The average family income is
woefully low at $13,100, about $10,000 below the national average.

``NAFTA simply broke our hearts, tore families apart and killed our
spirits,'' said Maria Flores, a veteran garment worker who now heads an
organization in El Paso known as Mujer Obrera, a workers' advocacy group.

Ciudad JuE1rez gained as many as 50,000 new jobs, most of them in the
maquiladora industry, according to executives of the factories owned by
foreign investors.

``Maquiladoras are coming of age,'' said one young worker. ``They're now
real manufacturing plants.''

In Ciudad JuE1rez, unemployment is virtually non-existent, although low
salaries remain a big problem, forcing many to work overtime just to make
ends meet.

The challenge is to turn cheap labor into real paying jobs, turn chaos into
prosperity, harness the boom and nurture maturing civil societies made up of
workers from Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Veracruz, Durango -- just about any Mexican
state undergoing tough economic times.

An average of 250 people arrive each day in the sprawling city of Ciudad
JuE1rez, which already has a soaring population of nearly 2 million.

Still, the convergence of a more democratic Mexico, an improving labor
force, new types of manufacturing investment and higher-skilled jobs gives
them a reason to set roots and build their futures.

Along the border, a political culture that has grown up next to the United
States has flourished in part because border residents don't have to worry
about putting food on the table as much as do their relatives in Mexico's
interior.

As a new political culture emerges, the old ``anything goes'' way of life is
disappearing. And to many, that's painfully sad.

Consider Puerto Palomas and Columbus, two fast-growing communities tucked
along the northeastern pocket of Mexico's Chihuahua state and southern New
Mexico, respectively.

DEEP KINSHIP CHANGING

Puerto Palomas' population has ballooned to 9,000, thanks in part to a
healthy maquiladora industry. The growth in Columbus, population 900, is
slower, but satellite dishes, U.S. Border Patrol helicopters buzzing
overhead and more immigration agents are everywhere.

The two communities have shared a deep kinship, linked by economic and blood
lines and notoriety: Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa invaded Columbus
briefly in 1916.

Before this border spot became a 24-hour crossing point, locals would
nonchalantly walk across on their own, especially for weddings or to take
care of their shopping, banking and postal needs in Columbus. Such services
aren't readily available in Puerto Palomas.

In fact, many of Puerto Palomas' residents were born about 35 miles
northwest of Columbus in Deming, N.M., at the area's only hospital.

In Puerto Palomas, the chatter of English is common among locals. For
decades, many of the children, with or without legal papers, attended high
school in Deming.

And why not? Having educated people would help the region and keep kids out
of trouble, locals argue. Some students went on to become engineers,
lawyers, doctors, nurses and school deans.

But these once-integrated towns are now increasingly segregated by a border
that was once regarded as a tolerable nuisance rather than a legal reality.

CHANGE IN FEDERAL LAW

The new culprit: A 1997 federal law aimed at wealthy, non-resident Asians
who enrolled their children in schools in California, especially in Silicon
Valley.

Puerto Palomas and Columbus were caught in the issue, especially 42 children
born in Puerto Palomas. This past school year, they were barred from
attending U.S. schools.

Teachers, parents and students are up in arms, demanding a solution from
Congress and a return to their old way of life.

``We're shooting ourselves in the foot,'' warned a feisty Phoebe Watson, 86,
a former local school principal who began enrolling Mexican students in her
school 40 years ago. ``All because Congress got a wild hair in their lip.
I'm absolutely devastated.''

Every morning last school year, many of the 350 children who live in Mexico
but hold U.S. nationality boarded big, yellow school buses and headed for
Deming, leaving behind a trail of dust and tears.

Dora Luz Nieto's dreams of becoming a chemist were dashed. She is one of the
students barred from U.S. schools, and the upstart Puerto Palomas high
school she attends has no chemistry courses.

``They say it's progress,'' the 17-year-old said of the changes. ``But here
on the border, we're losing part of our identity, part of who we were.''

1997 - 1998 Mercury Center.

- ---
Checked-by: Rolf Ernst