Tourist traffic in Tijuana is down but touch-conscious commuters get on with life
- The Guardian, Thursday 30 April 2009
- Article history
Miranda Carnewro, 18, and Jorge Juarez, 18, wear masks as they wait to clear US Customs crossing from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, into El Paso, Texas, Monday, April 27, 2009. Photograph: LM Otero/AP
Francisco Serrano is very proud of his face mask. It is not just the standard-issue surgical type worn by most food vendors and street hawkers milling around the border in Tijuana.
It is bigger, firmer, covers more of his face, and has a special filter in front of his mouth to give it a Star Wars stormtrooper look. Hundreds of his countrymen may be coming down with swine flu, but he is determined not to be one of them. "I got it from my brother-in-law in the United States. He works for the government - national security," he said with a look mixing pride and just a hint of dark conspiracy. He put the mask on yesterday, pushing his old one, a standard blue-paper number, down around his neck.
"You've got people coming in here by taxi or by plane from all over, including Mexico City where all the sick people are. So it does no harm to be careful."
Serrano calls himself a tour organiser; he hooks up American tourists with guides, and also sells bus tickets to Mexicans to cities all over the US.
Usually, he has all kinds of hand contact; now he is exceedingly careful. As we met, he instinctively reached out his arm - but then pulled back at the last minute, opting for an improvised elbow bump instead. Six days after the panic broke, Mexicans and Americans alike take no chances as they cross the single busiest point along their 2000-mile frontier. There may be little they can do, other than wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough (as bilingual health notices remind them at every turn), but many make the effort anyway.
The difference is that, while face masks remain plentiful on the US side (whole families had them yesterday as they climbed the pedestrian footbridge into Mexico), they are almost impossible to find on the Mexican side. Pharmacies have run out. Souvenir stalls never had them. And anyone else who comes across a batch, or goes across the border to pick some up, sells out in minutes.
People are improvising. One of Serrano's fellow bus ticket sellers held the top of his plastic jacket across his mouth. Others wrapped scarves or handkerchiefs across faces. The usually animated line of pedestrian border crossers, assailed at every turn by newspaper vendors and cooks offering fresh gorditas and tamales, were unusually quiet - in large part because masks made it difficult to talk.
The volume of border crossers, for the moment, remains unaffected. Shopkeepers say tourist traffic is down by half following the advisory to Americans to avoid non-essential travel to Mexico. Some events needing crossings, one an international under-17 soccer tournament, are cancelled.
But the much larger flow of commuting workers continues unabated, both at Tijuana and at every other entry from California to the Gulf of Mexico. "We are seeing no increases or decreases in border traffic," said Jackie Dizdul of the US customs and border protection service.
Immigration and customs officials on both sides did not appear to take special precautions, although under instructions to pull aside anyone who looks ill and call a doctor for a further examination. No more than a handful of people have been isolated along the entire length of the border, Ms Dizdul said, and none to her knowledge diagnosed with swine flu.
Uniformed officers, like everyone else, are encouraged to pay special attention to personal hygiene. On the US side, they have access to gloves, masks and hand sanitiser - none of which were in evidence yesterday morning.
The public was altogether more circumspect. One old man plunking on a guitar had his blue surgical mask over his lower lip on the chance it might make a difference, but kept the mouth and upper lip exposed so he could still sing. Little more than a symbolic gesture, of course. Many masked border crossers had newspapers to ease the waiting time. One Mexican title, La Frontera, stated in its banner headline: "Face masks and vitamins don't work!"
They kept their masks on, regardless.
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