Mexico Slowdown on the Border

From Tijuana to Brownsville, Texas, along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border, everything on wheels moved at a lentissimo pace last week, when it moved at all. At the point known locally as the "world's busiest border crossing," between Tijuana and San Ysidro, Calif., the usual 20-minute delays on the 22- lane northbound approach plaza dragged on for as long as seven hours. The number of U.S. motorists heading south had dropped dramatically. Howls of pain rose from local businessmen as the supply of vacationing gringo customers dried up. Said Pablo Gutierrez Barron, president of the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce: "This is not the way to put pressure on our government. It hurts relations between the two countries and hurts our business."

That seemed to be the point Washington was trying to make. U.S. Customs agents at every one of the 15 official crossings into Mexico carried out an excruciating campaign of car-trunk by car-trunk inspection known as Operation Camarena. They were acting on direct orders from Customs Service Commissioner William von Raab, who in turn was responding to an appeal from Francis M. Mullen Jr., head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The ostensible aim of the exercise: to discover the whereabouts of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena Salazar, 37, who was abducted by four machine-gun-toting men on the streets of Guadalajara on Feb. 7.

No one seriously believed that Camarena, an eleven-year DEA veteran, would turn up in the search. Instead, the border operation was the Reagan Administration's way of trying to force the Mexican government of President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado to step up its hunt for the missing agent. According to Mexican officials, the search was already being pressed hard, with 1,000 heavily armed police agents scouring the states of Sonora, Sinaloa and the Baja Californias.

Although traffic at the border crossings was returning to normal by week's end, Mexican officials were stung by the American action. In Washington, Ambassador Jorge Espinosa de los Reyes presented a formal note to the State Department expressing his government's "profound concern" at the border operation. The Customs campaign, said the note, was "incongruous with the spirit of cooperation" that exists between the two countries. Meanwhile, the Reagan Administration's controversial Ambassador to Mexico, John Gavin, returned to Washington for consultations.

High on the list of Gavin's topics was whether to issue a State Department travel advisory that would warn American tourists to use caution when visiting Mexico. The proposal was another measure to jog the Mexican justice system, this time in connection with a spate of violent crimes, including six possible homicides, against U.S. visitors in the past few months. Such an advisory would damage Mexico's $2 billion tourist industry, the country's second- largest foreign exchange earner after petroleum. Said State Department Spokesman Bernard Kalb: "Certainly, the safety of Americans in Mexico is a matter of current concern. We are monitoring the situation."