José Villalobos has worked a large corner curio shop in Nogales, Sonora, for 25 years. For the past two, the number of American tourists coming in to buy trinkets like baskets and bright, colorful flowers has dropped. The store was largely empty on a recent Saturday afternoon.
“This is the worst year,” Villalobos said in Spanish. “People are staying in the U.S.”
Villalobos is not the only merchant in Nogales seeing a marked decreased in traffic from U.S. customers.
Zaira Acuña, who works at Dental Casablanca in Nogales, has seen a drastic drop in the number of clients coming to Nogales for dental work. On the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 29, the dentist office was empty except for Acuña.
The bilingual dentist office, which caters mainly to American clients, had as many as eight or 10 appointments each day just a few months ago. Now there are only two or three per day, Acuña shrugged.
“There’s no work,” Acuña said in Spanish. “They aren’t coming anymore.”
For those who cater to United States visitors, such as merchants, dentists and pharmacy workers, there has been a drastic reduction in business in recent months.
Many in Nogales blame the twin forces of a slow U.S. economy and the recent reports of a surge in drug violence in Mexico for the drastic drop in commerce in the city.
Drug violence in Mexico, particularly in the border-states, has made headlines in the U.S. as brazen murders and executions have surged in recent years.
There were 6,285 drug-related deaths in Mexico from Jan. 1, 2007 to Oct. 31, 2008, according to data compiled by the Los Angeles Times. In Sonora, there were 244 drug-related deaths during the same time period.
Violence has increased as the Mexican government’s efforts to crack down on cartels, has caused fragmentation and power struggles between the cartels, said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. While violence used to be largely between and within the cartels, now government officials and ordinary Mexicans are being targeted.
“It’s not just amongst the cartels, it’s also increasingly spilled over to affect ordinary Mexican citizens, either as bystanders or as targets of other kinds of criminal activities, such as kidnappings,” Shirk said. “As the cartels have been broken down into smaller, more fractionalized, less predictable organizations, they’ve become more of a danger to ordinary people.”
The U.S. Department of State issued a travel alert on Oct. 14 for U.S. citizens traveling to Mexico, warning of shootouts in public places such as shopping centers and specifically cautioned against Route 15 between Nogales and Hermosillo.
But news reports of shootouts in the center of Nogales and the Nov. 2 death of Juan Manuel Pavón Félix, the chief of the Sonora state police, is making headlines on both sides of the border.
Drug violence in Mexico has risen in recent years as the Mexican government began arresting and extraditing cartel leaders, according to a Feb. 2008 report issued by the Trans-Border Institute. The destabilization and shift in power in drug cartels led to a surge of violence in early 2007.
Much of the violence is focused in Pacific Coast states as well as in border states.
The violence in Nogales, Villalobos and other Nogales merchants maintain, is outside the tourist area of Nogales, Son., a cluster of shops and restaurants just past the international border office.
But tourists are still not coming.
Alvaro Hernández stands just inside the door of the souvenir shop he has worked at for the past six years. Business has declined significantly since June, he said.
Before June the store, which accepts both dollars and pesos but is mostly frequented by U.S. citizens, did anywhere from $800 to as much as $1,500 in business per day. Now, on an average day they make just $200.
Hernández credits the slowdown in the U.S. economy for the loss of business. Fewer U.S. citizens are passing by his store.
Down the street, Jaime Olvera stands on the sidewalk outside the Deco curio shop, encouraging passersby to stop in and take a look at the trinkets the store offers.
Before, the store would bring in anywhere from $800 to $1,000 per day. Now, the average daily take is around $200, Olvera said.
Villalobos leans on the glass counter of his shop as a few U.S. tourists poke about the store.
“Come back soon,” Villalobos said. “And bring your friends.”
