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TIJUANA-SAN DIEGO: THE TIGERS' TIGERNowhere along the U.S.-Mexico border are two cities so different. San Diego's manicured gardens and swimming pools are just a 15-minute drive from Tijuana's miserable shantytowns. Per capita income in San Diego is $25,000; in Tijuana, $3,200. On Interstate 5 linking the two cities, signs warn motorists to watch out for illegal immigrants dashing across the highway. Until recently, most San Diegans viewed the world next door mainly as a honky-tonk weekend haven for sailors and underage drinkers. Asian money is changing all that. Right now the two cities are in the midst of the biggest boom anywhere along la frontera, as Mexicans call the border. Asian heavyweights are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into electronics plants in Tijuana and eastward in Mexicali. Spurring the influx are NAFTA's local content rules. To meet those requirements, TV-powerhouses are putting up state-of-the-art plants. Among them: Matsushita Electric Industrial, Sony, Sanyo Electric, Hitachi, and LG. The bustling maquiladoras employed 118,000 in Tijuana last year, up 28% from 1995. The city's population, swelled by migration, grew 5.9% a year from 1990 to 1995, and it is expected to double in the next 14 years. Shoring up the maquiladoras are the engineering talent, distribution networks, and transport based in San Diego, where many of the multinationals' executives live. The growing links between the two cities are visible at the crossing, where commuting factory managers swell the traffic jams in 23 lanes each way. Separate truck lanes are clogged too, with loads of goods, from computers to coffeemakers, bound for distribution across North America. ''San Tijuana'' is the name applied to the twin cities by Tijuana developer Enrique Mier y Teran. Known as ''Mr. Maquiladora,'' he was one of the first Mexican entrepreneurs to open an assembly plant, back in the 1960s. ''We're trying to create one big urban area straddling two nations,'' he declares. The growth is generating big profits for developers such as Mier y Teran. Recently, on a 27-acre hilltop site, 170 feet from the border, he opened an industrial park overlooking the Pacific. Next, he plans a retirement community for Americans who want to make their pensions go further in Mexico. To bring some order to this cross-border ferment, San Diego and Tijuana are starting to cooperate on issues from crossing delays to a $400 million sewage treatment plant that will serve both cities. Quarterly powwows by the two mayors help soothe some of these concerns. Of course, there are deeper problems. San Diego is where most of the cocaine entering the U.S. slips through. And last year, a Japanese executive of Sanyo Electric was kidnapped in Tijuana and released only after $2 million ransom was paid, sending shock waves through the maquiladora community. Now, the San Diego and Tijuana police departments keep in close touch by radio--mostly in Spanish.
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Updated June 15, 1997 by bwwebmaster
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