MAKING TIJUANA SAFE "IMPOSSIBLE"

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."