Ester Villalobos has 22 years old and is the mother of a 6-year-old girl.
She lives in Tijuana, Mexico, but works in San Ysidro, a border town of San Diego, United States.
“Every morning and afternoon I cross with my motorcycle”, tells BBC Mundo a hot noon in March in front of his work a few meters from San Ysidro Boulevard, the main street of this city that is home to small family businesses, exchange houses and pawnbrokers that serve customers from both sides of the border.
“Sometimes it takes me 40 minutes on the line, another 5 hours”, he says.
The line is what the locals call the Garita Intern border crossing National San Ysidro, the westernmost between Mexico and the United States and where it is estimated that they cross almost 100,0 people daily, 60,000 of them to work.
This is the crossroads with the highest traffic in the country.
The border between the United States and Mexico is often in the news because of the wall that divides it and because of the migrants who try to cross it. But at the west end of those almost 3,177 kilometers, there is also a community that is in constant interaction.
“It is a floating city”, defines David Shirk, head of the Department of Political Science and International Relations from the University of San Diego (USDC), California.
“Thousands of people cross to do their shopping, go to school, work… it is a small city that crosses the border to daily because it is a single economy that exchanges consumers, workers and investors”, he adds.
“We are a region binational and inseparable. We have the best of Mexico and the best of the United States on the same corner,” says Jason Wells, who grew up in Chicago almost 50 years, but who lived between Tijuana and San Diego almost the last 30 .
Wells, who is in charge of the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce, crosses several times a week to Tijuana to shop, for medical appointments, to take the dogs to the vet or simply to eat some birria tacos (sheep meat with a chili and spice sauce), typical of the Mexican city.
But beyond the benefits of the exchange rate between the dollar and the Mexican peso for those who earn in US currency, at the macroeconomic level this border area has a particular component.
Functions as a binational integrated economic region inhabited by aos 7 million people and although a line divides them, both sides say they have been working together for decades to go out and compete globally as a unit under the name of Cali Baja.
What is Cali Baja?
Cali Baja arises from the merger between the names of the state of California (USA) and the state of Baja California (Mexico).
The region is made up of the counties of San Diego and Imperial Valley on the US side and the five municipalities of Baja California on the Mexican side: Tijuan a, Tecate, Mexicali, Playas de Rosarito and Ensenada.
Cali Baja has a regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $287,000 million and cross-border trade flows estimated at $53,000 million, says the report of 2022 The Cali Baja Regional Economy (“ The regional economy of Cali Baja”), from the USDC.
The main industries are audiovisual manufacturing, medical equipment, furniture production, tools, semiconductors and other electronic components, musical instruments and the aerospace industry.
The region also has large agricultural areas, a tourist industry and important ports for trade with Asia and other parts of the world.
According to Professor Shirk, Cali Baja benefits, on the one hand, from the production capacity and the competitiveness of wages offered by Mexico and, on the other, the efficient administration of supply chains for exports and the sales capacity of the United States.
“ The combination of the two economies is something special and is not easily found”, he analyzes.
In figures
Cali Baja does not have regional investment and export measurements, but there are figures from both sides of the border that give an idea of its impact.
The San Ysidro border crossing is the busiest in the United States. It is estimated that some 89,000 people cross it daily.The eight main groups of the binational manufacturing industry represent approximately 43,0 jobs in San Diego and the Imperial Valley and 177,549 jobs in Baja California, says the USDC report, with data from 2018.
Collectively, these industries generated 7% of the region’s GDP.
The San Diego and Imperial Valley area added value ( that is, the additional utility acquired by goods and services after being transformed in the production process) of $14,900 million dollars, this meant about $287,549 per worker.
While in the Baja California area, the added value generated was $2,215 million dollars, representing $12,250 per employee.
On the other hand, foreign direct investment in Baja California in 2020 was $1,112 millions finger lares, according to data from the Mexican Ministry of Economy.
Furthermore, venture capital flowing into San Diego has increased considerably in recent years and exceeded $2,00 $0 million quarterly as of mid 2021, mainly in biotechnology and pharmaceutical products.
Y the region also benefits from the incentives offered by Mexico.
“When we go out to promote we offer all kinds of industry, but the one that has grown the most is the maquiladora industry “, says Kurt Honold, Secretary of Economy and Innovation of the state of Baja California, Mexico.
The maquiladora is a type of production line in Mexico, and especially in Tijuana, whose capitals are usually foreign. The company imports raw material without any type of tariff to manufacture a certain product and then exports it.
The maquiladoras arose from mid-twentieth century in Mexico as a way to encourage foreign investment and combat unemployment in the country, although this model presents numerous criticisms of labor exploitation.
How Cali Baja was born
The organization CaliBaja Bi-national Mega-Region began as an initiative of several businessmen and chambers of commerce from San Diego, Imperial Valley and Tijuana. Other actors joined later.
It was a marketing-economic strategy that began to operate in 2010, but the idea of a binational region had been developing and even being applied in the facts since the decade of 981 by the maquiladora industries on the Mexican side and after the growth of the population of the southwestern United States after World War II.
“I don’t think twice before e get in my car and drive across the border to meet someone to do business with,” says Timothy Kelley, president and CEO of the Imperial Valley Economic Development Corporation in United States.
“We are a unique region because we have binational opportunities to offer. We put together an organization to attract investment and we wanted to create an initiative so that at a national and global level, they know and look at the region in a different way and not as sub-regions”, adds Kelley, who is a founding member of CaliBaja Bi-national Mega-Region. .
“The people who live in this region are bicultural, binational and bilingual. We want to make sure that it is understood that business can be done in both countries at the same time”, he emphasizes to BBC Mundo.
Of the other side of the border also highlight this special economic and social interdependence of their communities.
“If they get the flu, we also get the flu. We are the same, so we have decided to work together, especially in the economy, to go out and promote the region”, says Honold.
“In Cali Baja there are no borders. A line divides us, but we don’t see it”, he adds.
The truth is that the concept of Cali Baja became popular among circles on both sides of the border, even though the activity is not directly associated with the organization that operates under that name.
“People use the word Cali Baja as part of the regional vernacular and that is good”, analyzes Christina Luhn, a trade policy adviser who was a founding member of the Cali Baja Bi-national Mega -Region.
There are several sectors along the long border between the US and Mexico where their communities also interact and they are economically related binationally, as in the case of El Paso-Ciudad Juárez; but they do not house as many people nor are their industries as interrelated as the merger that exists in Cali Baja.
Advantages
The Cali Baja region brings with it points for and against.
“There are positive and negative aspects. When you put them all together, the positives go up and the negatives go down,” says Kelley.
According to him, a fundamental advantage it is the diversity both in the industries offered by the region and in the population that makes it up.
“Beyond the border, most people do not realize the importance of Mexico in our country”, affirms the American.
For the Secretary of Economy and Innovation of the state of Baja California, Kurt Honold, the benefits of binational region are multiple.
“We work together to solve problems because when a job is created in Mexico, another is also generated in California. The conjunction of forces helps us to attract more investment to both sides of the border”, he affirms.
According to the sources consulted, it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of this type of binational regional associations.
“When people asked me: ‘how will we know if this will be successful?’, I answered: ‘ask me again at 50 years’. Economic development is a long-term commitment“, explains Christina Luhn.
But some of those interviewed say that the clear example of success in Cali Baja is the Cross Border Xpress (CBX) binational bridge that was inaugurated in 2015.
It is about of an airport terminal located in the Otay Mesa area, east of San Ysidro, on the US side, which connects with the Tijuana International Airport with an access bridge. This makes the latter a geographically binational airport.
“Some build walls, others build bridges,” says Kenia Zamarripa, Executive Director of International Business at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, in reference to the border wall between the United States and Mexico.
The tightening of immigration measures during the Donald Trump government also had an effect in Cali Baja, although it had apparent positive streaks.
“We had little stones that made it a little harder for good people who arrived in Mexico and who sought to cross into the United States to achieve the American dream”, analyzes Honold, from the government of Baja California, who highlights that these migrants remained in the country s increasing work capacity.
Difficulties
One of the difficulties that Cali Baja faces in promoting its businesses is precisely the border that divides it.
Various of those interviewed agree on the claim to the federal governments to speed up the crossing of both pedestrians and cars and trucks at the five border crossings that Cali Baja has: four by land (San Ysidro-Tijuana, Otay Mesa-Tijuana, Tecate-Tecate and Calexico-Mexicali) plus the CBX bridge.
“We need to have a good flow of people and goods to cross the border. This is going to benefit both Mexico and the United States,” says Kelley of the Imperial Valley.
Kurt Honold agrees with the demand for technology to speed up the crossing that is often congested: “Many of the workers are Americans or have their permission to work in the United States. That money they earn is spent on the Mexican side and vice versa”.
Cali Baja also faces probl environmental issues with the contamination of the Tijuana River that usually harms the beaches of San Diego, often causing their closures.
“We work together to find a way to solve it because they are Binational, Calibajian issues that affect us both”, describes the official from Mexico.
And from an academic point of view, David Shirk says that workers need to be trained.
“On the US side there is a tragic lack of people who speak Spanish . We do not invest in educating our Anglo students so that they can take advantage of the binational region”, he says.
Representatives from Cali Baja meet bimonthly to work on improving the region and also make annual trips to Mexico City and Washington to present to the federal governments problems that tend to be unique in that corner of the border.
“It is a cross-border community and it is difficult to understand. For example, in Washington they don’t understand that we are interdependent. Our first obstacle as a region is the lack of understanding of how border regions work”, analyzes the professor from the University of San Diego.
“Identity crisis”
Ester Villalobos says that she loves living in one country and working in the other.
“There is no rivalry between people on the border. There is a lot of empathy”, he says.
His boss, Mike Mattia, is American and doesn’t speak Spanish, but he opted to open his package delivery company franchise business in San Ysidro in November 2018, in the midst of a pandemic.
“I only hire local people ”, says and tells that three of his four employees live in Tijuana and cross the border every day to work.
“This is a special place, people here are very intelligent and skillful. The community understands the border and its needs”, he assures.
The high income and the difficulties to access housing in San Diego makes the majority of the inhabitants of this cross-border region live in Tijuana and work on the US side.
BBC Mundo walked across the border to find out how Cali Baja looks and lives on the other side of the line.
In that area of the San Ysidro crossing, the high metal wall is incomplete and people line up to cross from one side to the other as if it were a line for the bank or the supermarket.
Miguel Marshall is a young man from San Diego who chose live and invest in Tijuana. He says that he is the fifth generation of a binational family.
“My roots are from Tijuana. I have business here and I’m thinking of setting up a business in San Diego” , Marshall says that he is an urban real estate developer and gastronomic entrepreneur who bets on Cali Baja.
“In Tijuana I am happy, we are a multi-region and the food is a fusion of both sides”, he describes.
Kenia Zamarripa also lives in Tijuana and crosses to San Diego every week to work at the regional Chamber of Commerce in that city.
“We are a community divided in two by a line” , she details her.
“Sometimes I feel that I am not entirely Mexican, nor am I entirely American. I was born in the US, but I feel like a migrant. There is an identity crisis”, she describes.
” But I like it that way, because I have both things both sides “.
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