Mayor: Making Tijuana Safe 'Impossible'
Was this foretelling of this weeks news from Rosarito/Tijuana?:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-me...
By WILL WEISSERT
June 17, 2006
TIJUANA, Mexico -- Few places in Mexico are more notorious than Tijuana, with its reputation for easy sex, hard drugs and tequila-fueled debauchery --
all a stone's throw from the U.S. Making the city as safe, clean and free of police corruption as its cross-border neighbor, San Diego, would be no
small feat -- and 18 months after taking office, the mayor who said he could do so now says it will never happen.
"I realized when I came in that it was almost impossible," Jorge Hank Rhon told The Associated Press in near-flawless English during an interview in
his city hall office. "With the budget we have and with the size of Tijuana and the infrastructure that Tijuana has, it's basically impossible in
three years."
Limited to a single three-year term, Hank Rhon said he has managed to boost the economy, install 120-plus anti-crime cameras throughout the city and
jail dozens of drug pushers. But unemployment remains too high and killings by smugglers moving cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines
through Tijuana to the United States have not subsided.
"I never thought bureaucracy was so difficult," he said. "I regret not getting ready for that. It took me a while to get used to that and for things
to start getting done."
A major stumbling block, according to Hank Rhon, is that more than 40 percent of Tijuana's roads are unpaved and projects to improve them have stalled
because the surrounding slums don't have access to basic services. Laying sewage and water pipes is the state's responsibility, he said.
"So we have to wait for them to put the infrastructure and then we pave on top of it."
Among his beautification projects, Hank Rhon painted red much of a metal anti-immigration wall erected by U.S. authorities and that runs the length of
Tijuana and plunges into the Pacific Ocean. He hopes to add lights and showy billboards to the wall so it will remind people of the strip in Las
Vegas.
A dog-track owner and business magnate worth an estimated $500 million, Hank Rhon won in Tijuana despite accusations of drug and exotic animal
smuggling, vote-buying, money laundering and even murder-for-hire. In 1988, two of his employees were convicted of killing a Tijuana journalist who
reported on corruption for the crusading weekly Zeta.
During his first weeks in office, the father of 19 children by three different wives vanished after New Year's Eve and didn't reappear in public for
days. His birthday bashes are so extravagant that they make headlines 1,440 miles away in Mexico City. Four hundred pet dogs roam his private estate
and he has a personal zoo of 20,000 animals -- five times as many as the famous San Diego Zoo just across the border.
Hank's victory in Tijuana was viewed as especially important for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico from 1929 until
2000, but hadn't won in Tijuana since 1989.
Elected by fewer than 5,000 votes in a city of at least 1.5 million, Hank Rhon's approval ratings remain high, but have started to slip.
"A lot of people got very excited. They said, 'With Hank, there will be change,'" said Jose Negrete, director of public administration studies at the
Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a Tijuana think tank. "But he hasn't delivered, and many are disappointed."
Despite his acknowledged struggles, Hank Rhon could be a rising star for the PRI, which was thrown into disarray when it lost Mexico's presidency to
Vicente Fox in 2000. The PRI's candidate is trailing in third place ahead of the July 2 presidential election. Although Hank Rhon said he has not made
a decision, some speculate he will run for governor of Baja California state in 2007, then set his sights on a national post.
"His campaign for mayor was already a lot like one for governor," Negrete said. "He had a traditional style that awoke a lot of enthusiasm for the PRI
among those who had lost it."
A program that has made the Tijuana mayor popular with the poor is his "open-door Tuesdays," when he spends much of the day in his office, listening
one-by-one to the problems of 133 residents.
It's a hands-on style perfected by Hank Rhon's father, former Mexico City Mayor Carlos Hank Gonzalez, who was a powerful PRI kingmaker before his
death in 2001 and who coined the saying, "A politician who is poor is a poor politician."
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