SPRING-BREAKERS BRAVE MEXICO DESPITE DRUG-WAR THREAT

U.S. Students Give Brief Boost to Tourism Imperiled by Bloodshed

ACAPULCO, Mexico - Fearless students from the University of Texas in
Austin, Texas State and colleges across the country are injecting
badly needed cash into fading resorts like Acapulco this spring break
season. But analysts warn that even they cannot save a stagnant
tourism industry as long as Mexico is awash in drug violence, police
corruption and drugs openly sold on the streets.

Unless President Felipe Calderon's 15-month frontal attack on the
cartels begins to reduce violence, his drug war may kill off parts of
the very tourism industry he promoted as an engine of economic
development and part of a strategy to keep would-be immigrants home,
some analysts said. "In the United States, there are stories almost
every day about police being killed by narcos in Mexico and other
violence," said Veronica Baz, director of Development Research
Center, a Mexico City think tank. "Americans don't know if it's just
on the border or in Cancun."

The violence is not obvious on the beaches here - where American
spring-breakers jump with abandon from Acapulco's popular bungee
free-fall. But police and soldiers patrol the streets carrying
assault rifles, and not a day goes by in Mexico without new victims
of the drug cartels' turf war and the government's response to it.

An estimated 3,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence
since Mr. Calderon took office on Dec. 1, 2006, police and media reports show.

Blocks behind the flashing lights of open-air discos, members of the
Gulf cartel based on the Mexico-Texas border and the Sinaloa cartel
from northern Mexico fight for Acapulco drug routes and local cocaine
and marijuana sales, police and media reports show.

Cancun, sold for decades as an Americanized paradise on the blue
waters of the Caribbean, is no longer immune from narco-violence.
This month, a cache of military-style assault rifles and grenades was
seized at a drug cartel safe house in the heart of the hotel zone.

In January, a shootout between rival drug gangs in downtown Cancun,
where few U.S. tourists wander, left two people dead.

And it's not just the beach. A botched bombing whose target was a
Mexico City police commander occurred near the Zona Rosa tourist area
last month. Local drug distributors and a national drug cartel have
been blamed for the attack. The U.S.-Mexico border was the first
casualty. Daily narco-violence sharply reduced the number of American
border-crossers, including spring-breakers who stayed on Padre Island
on the U.S. side but avoided the two-nation vacation by not crossing
into Matamoros. Just as spring break began for some Texas
universities last week, local Mexican officials held a press
conference to urge Americans to visit Mexico.

The mayor of Nuevo Progreso, between McAllen and Brownsville, said
tourism is down by 30 percent and blamed the decline, in part, on the
presence of the military, which is posted throughout the region. As
tourists cross into Mexico, the first sights they see are soldiers in
military vehicles.

Debra Fassold, who manages a cross-border shuttle service on South
Padre Island, said she used to ferry several hundred spring breakers
daily and now gets only a few dozen. She has canceled night trips.
"I've had no reason to schedule them this year," she said, adding
that no one has even asked for the once-popular excursion.

Partying on U.S. side In cities like Nuevo Laredo, bars are empty,
while across the border in Laredo, popular clubs like Canana's are
packed with teens from both sides of the border.

El Paso is seeing the same phenomenon along a section called "Union
Depot," popular with the UT-El Paso crowd, which once partied in
Juarez and now, along with fellow students from the state of
Chihuahua, parties on the U.S. side. Acapulco became a drug
battlefield three years ago, and now less than 10 percent of visitors
here are Americans.

Although booming Cancun is still tops among U.S. tourists, an uptick
in drug violence there breaks its image as clean and safe, analysts
warn. Ms. Baz said the danger is not only a matter of image - nobody
vacations in Colombia, even though many areas are untouched by the
drug war there. "Although a spring-breaker has never been killed,"
Ms. Baz said, "I don't think it's far-fetched that there could be an
incident in Cancun serious enough to scare Americans away."

Tourism flat in '07 Recent figures show that foreign tourism was
essentially flat in 2007 when compared with 2006 - a red flag, given
that Mexico has invested in golf tourism, gay tourism, eco-tourism,
wedding tourism and new beach areas like Punta Mita in Nayarit state
in an attempt to keep the critical industry growing. In 2007, Mexico
received 21.5 million international tourists, overwhelmingly
Americans. The figure for 2006 was 21.3 million.

Tourism Minister Rodolfo Elizondo and industry officials have pointed
out that expenditures by foreigners were up 6 percent in 2007,
hitting $12.9 billion. Mr. Elizondo, who was unavailable for comment,
has said that narco-violence has only hurt tourism along the
U.S.-Mexico border, and the overall increase in foreign visitors was
a sign of industry health.

But the Mexico City newspaper Reforma has suggested that Mr. Elizondo
might soon lose his job as a result of the lackluster tourism
numbers. He is a holdover from the last administration.

And yet, students now visiting Acapulco - from places like North
Texas, Chicago and New Jersey - said they felt safe as long as they
didn't go looking for drugs or trouble.

"I knew that during spring break we would be exposed to drugs, but
I'm not concerned for myself because I'm not into that thing - I
don't do drugs," said a 20-year-old student from Plano, who asked to
be identified by her first name, Lisa.

Several other students, few of whom wanted to give their full names
for fear of scaring their parents, agreed that staying away from drug
pushers and dodgy cabdrivers was among the sternest warnings they
were given by tour companies. Mexicans officials point out that all
nations suffer from crime and violence, and say that Americans are no
more likely to be victims here than Mexicans shopping in New York.

A March report by the World Economic Forum ranked Mexico a dismal 122
out of 130 nations in terms of "safety and security" for tourists.
But the United States did not fare much better, at 119.

"Violence is not a problem exclusive to Mexico; it occurs in all
nations," said Manuel Torroco, president of the National Tourism
Federation, an industry group. "There have been no incidents
involving foreign tourists besides isolated ones that happen
everywhere in the world. We welcome this year's spring-breakers with
open arms."

Still, he said, tourism is likely to remain flat in 2008, at about 22
million foreign visitors, with California, Texas and Illinois the top
three states for tourists to Mexico.