Green Stain of Prosperity

From the gin mills of Tijuana and the cotton gins of Mexicali, a green stain of prosperity is spreading south from the U.S. border through Mexico's newest state, Baja California Norte (the 29th, established in 1951). Along the northern half of the mountain-spined peninsula, water is flowing from new wells through new irrigation ditches, turning deserts where the Colorado enters the Gulf of California into fields of cotton, plots of tomatoes and the purple traceries, of grapevines. Mexican and U.S. farmers, industrialists and businessmen are laying out factories, hotels, lawns, streets and truck gardens with assembly-line speed. The citizens of Baja California (estimated pop. 550,000) proudly argue that the new state's standard of living is Mexico's best, a boast bolstered by the fact that its minimum legal wage is the country's highest.

Throne Room. Baja California's economic importance lies in the northern one-tenth of the 780-mile-long appendix, in the area between Mexicali, the capital, on the east, and Tijuana, near the Pacific coast. Cotton is king there, and Mexicali, its population nearly tripled (more than 160,000) in five years, is its prosperous throne room. It has U.S.-style real-estate developments, with hundreds of houses in the $10,000-to-$1 5,000 class. Last year 55 gins, six cottonseed-oil mills and four compresses--the world's biggest concentration of ginning facilities--swallowed the 400,000-bale output of the 1,650-square-mile Mexicali valley, brought in more than $68 million.

Mexicali's cotton prosperity is the offspring of a convenient marriage of U.S. capitalism and Mexican socialism. Between 1936 and 1938 President Lazaro Cardenas expropriated foreign-held cotton land in the valley, doled it out to Mexican peasants. Too poor to buy seed, fertilizer and equipment, the farmers turned to the Mexican subsidiary of the giant U.S. firm of Anderson, Clayton & Co., which branched out from ginning into financing the growers. Since 1939, production has climbed ten times.

Fleshpots & Long Shots. The contribution of Tijuana (pop. 140,000) to the new prosperity is, as always, tourist dollars. Last year just under 10 million U.S. citizens passed through the arched gates at the border, dropped an estimated $70 million at the Hipodromo de Tijuana race track and in curio shops, restaurants, hotels and brothels. Tijuana also boasts flourishing new residential sections of costly ($20,000 to $25,000) houses.

Down a good highway, 67 miles south of Tijuana, Ensenada (pop. 35,000) closes Baja California's boom triangle. Shucking off the manana tradition, Ensenada laborers are working seven days a week to finish a $15 million deepwater port, a $3,500,000 cement factory and acres of new houses. Close to 4,000 workers are employed catching, cleaning and canning plentiful white sea bass, sardines, rock lobsters. A new cannery packs tomatoes and chili peppers grown on farms to the south. White-painted boats chug in and out of the harbor, carrying the guests of 44 new motels to sport-fishing grounds.

Almost everybody in Baja California shares the boom's excitement. Said prosperous Mexicali Air-conditioning Executive Manuel Garcia Prieto: "My wife and I just took a long-delayed vacation in New York. We saw My Fair Lady and Long Day's Journey into Night and Tosca. We'd planned to stay two weeks, but at the end of the first week I suddenly felt strange. I told my wife: You'll think I'm crazy, but I want to go back to Mexicali. It's hot in the summer and dusty in the winter. Yet for me, it's the most exciting place in the world."

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