TIJUANA'S A TOUGH SELL FOR MEXICAN TOURISM CHIEF

Border Town's Image Linked To Drugs, Drunks, Crime And Prostitution

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Juan Tintos Funcke has, on paper, one of the toughest
jobs in
Mexico: changing the image of Tijuana and its state of Baja California del
Norte.

As state chief of tourism promotion, he winces every time bad news
about Tijuana makes world headlines.

There was the recent series of drug-related murders, highlighted by
the brazen killing of the police chief in this city across the border
from San Diego, one of at least 80 murders this year.

And there was the American tourist who died in custody after a car
wreck last year while his family and doctors pleaded with Mexican
authorities to get him to a hospital.

"All this does make the job tougher," Tintos said after the murder of
Police Chief Alfredo de la Torre, in what local officials say looks
like a classic organized-crime hit.

Tintos fights every day against Tijuana's long history as a playpen
for drunken American sailors and teen-agers, prostitutes and drug
lords. His message, that Tijuana is a nice place for a family to
visit, seems at odds with reality. But reality has never been simple
in Tijuana.

Despite drug gang shootouts, business travelers are drawn by a booming
manufacturing industry. Modern hotels carve a new skyline alongside
rent-by-the-hour, no-tell motels. It's a city of 1.2 million people
and a 1 percent official unemployment rate, which skeptics dismiss as
they point to homeless young women with their babies wrapped in dirty
shawls sitting on the sidewalk as they hit up tourists for small change.

Tijuana is the world's leading maker of Japanese television sets,
including Sony and Panasonic. The assembly plants often are in
neighborhoods where the only paved roads lead to the factories, and
legions of workers share cramped cinder-block apartments with several
families.

Tijuana has a world-class performing arts center not far from Avenida
Revolucion, a world-class tacky strip of discos, rowdy bars, overpriced
curio
shops and stores selling cheap leather jackets. Tintos' problem isn't getting
people to come to Tijuana: They've been drawn for decades by its dark
allure --
its prostitutes, gamblers, drug dealers and bartenders who were more than
willing to feed tequila to 15-year-olds from Southern California.

But Tintos, 41, wants a Las Vegas-style renaissance.

"It's interesting that a place like Las Vegas that was begun by mafias
has become a family tourism destination, and a place like Tijuana that
began with tourism is now more known for its mafias," he said.

Tintos, and an influential circle of business leaders who back his
efforts, are playing up Tijuana as a gateway to family-friendly
beaches, whale-watching boats and boutique wineries.

Promoting a planned conference center and sports arena, he's also
trying to lure business travelers who traditionally stay over the
border in San Diego. Hotel occupancy rates are climbing, and it seems
a new golf course opens every year.

By the numbers, the city's makeover project is succeeding. About 17
million people crossed from San Diego to Tijuana last year and spent
at least $1.3 million in its shops, hotels and restaurants. Tijuana's
airport ushered in 3 million passengers last year. And an emerging
film and television industry spawned by the filming of the megahit
"Titanic" in nearby Rosarito has been host to 76 productions since
1996, pumping almost $1 million more into the Baja economy.

"They're seeing what we've seen," said the Tijuana born- and-bred
Tintos, whose U.S. mother fostered his smooth, slang-laced English.
"This crime wave is isolated. It has nothing to do with tourists or
the average citizen of Tijuana, and so people keep coming.

"But you'd never know that from the headlines. I must ask if people
stopped visiting Miami after the tourist murders? Or do people skip
Disneyland because of the gang violence in Los Angeles?"

U.S. law enforcement officials say Tijuana will have a tough time
straightening out its image until the Arellano family is behind bars,
meaning the leaders of the Arellano-Felix crime syndicate, a broad
criminal network that is important in smuggling illegal drugs into the
United States.

"There's no need for [the Arellanos] to go anywhere else," said one
U.S. official who asked not to be identified. "In Tijuana, they have
all they need: State and municipal cops are completely corrupt. It's a
60-year tradition in Tijuana."

And for all of Tintos' efforts, Tijuana still hasn't shaken its tag as
Sin City -- home of the unending disco beat and sweaty teen-age
hip-hoppers at Club A or the "Live Nude Dancers!" hawked to young U.S.
Marines by barkers at Madonna's or Club Ecstasy.

Very young American teen-agers still dance and drink to excess there
on weekends, despite a crackdown on underage tourists looking for
lenient bars.

Identification is now a must, and kids younger than 18 need a parent's
letter giving them permission to go to Mexico.

But none of that has stopped Such teens as Lilia from clogging Avenida
Revolucion on weekend nights, cruising down the street as the beat of
bass drums in countless nightclubs shakes the asphalt. Lilia wouldn't
give her last name, but swore she was 18 and from San Diego.

Thousands of teens like her -- most dressed to kill and barely 18 --
troll Revolucion in search of a good time. The teen-agers from Orange
County, Calif., showing tattered ID cards to the guards outside a
crowded club on a recent Friday night said they favor the new travel
restrictions. They say the rules keep the really young out of Tijuana,
its gutters and its jail -- the kind of trouble that gives the city a
bad name.

"But that won't stop the rest of us," Lilia said. "We're children of
the hippies who came down here in the '60s and grandchildren of the
sailors who came before. We're all looking for what we can't get
legally in the United States. That's what Tijuana is all about."