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Headline from the New York Times
Americans Stake Claims in a Baja Land
TIM WEINER
Slowly but surely, acre by acre, Mexico Baja Peninsula
Published: October 26, 2003
NOPALÓ, Mexico— Slowly but surely, acre by acre, Mexico's Baja Peninsula is becoming an American colony.
''For Sale'' signs are sprouting all over the 800-mile-long peninsula, offering thousands of beachfront properties. Americans are snapping them up. They have already created communities where the dollar is the local currency, English the main language and Americans the new immigrants transforming an old culture.
''Everything's for sale, every lot you can imagine,'' said Alfonso Gavito, director of a cultural institute in La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur, a state with 400,000 citizens and some of the last undeveloped beaches in North America. ''It's like 20 years of changes have happened in three months.''
This new land rush, involving billions of dollars, tens of thousands of Americans, and hundreds of miles of coastline, is gaining speed despite the fact that Mexico's Constitution bars foreigners from directly owning land by the sea.
Mexico's government wants foreign capital as much as Americans want a house on the beach -- maybe more. So it worked around the Constitution. In 1997, it changed the law to allow foreign ownership through locally administered land trusts. A Mexican bank acts as trustee, the foreigner its beneficiary.
It took about four years before that new system worked smoothly. But now, most often, it does. One result has been a boom in migration, speculation and permanent vacation. ''It's human greed -- it's human nature,'' said David Halliburton, who owns a hotel outside Cabo San Lucas, on Baja's southern tip, where uncontrolled growth already strains the social fabric. ''The amount of money coming in here through overzealous developers and buyers is staggering.''
Baja is closer by land and air to the United States than it is to the rest of Mexico; state officials recorded more than 30 million trips by Americans who spent well over $1 billion last year. They say they have no idea how many Americans are living in Baja today, because a certain number are illegal immigrants who never register their presence. Anecdotal and statistical evidence suggests that the number is more than 100,000, probably far more, and growing fast since the Sept. 11 attacks and the souring of the economy in the United States two years ago.
''Since 2001, we have seen a boom in real estate sales, and the full-time population of Americans is growing rapidly,'' said Tony Colleraine, an American in San Felipe, about 160 miles southeast of San Diego. He said about one-quarter of the town's roughly 30,000 residents were Americans, many of whom want to ''get away from the regulations and rhetoric, and get out of the bull's-eye'' in the United States.
In Rosarito, an hour's drive south of the United States border, about one-quarter of the 55,000 residents are Americans. ''An increasing number of Americans are moving here to escape their government's policies and the costs of living,'' said Herb Kinsey, a Rosarito resident with roots in the United States, Canada and Germany. ''They find a higher standard of living and a greater degree of freedom.''
At least 600,000 Americans -- again, an acknowledged undercount based on government records -- are permanent residents of Mexico. That is by far the largest number of United States citizens living in any foreign country.
Americans living throughout Baja say their new neighbors include professionals in their 30's and 40's putting down roots, not just retirees in recreational vehicles. In Rosarito, the new home buyers include lawyers and members of the military who commute across the border to San Diego, where housing costs are about five times higher. A pleasant house by the Pacific in Rosarito can cost less than $150,000; property taxes are about $75 a year.
However, this situation has changed as of 2011, update coming soon...
