Company Town

For years, the property owners in Tijuana have watched land values boom in their bawdy Lower California border town, but no one could be sure for whom they boomed. A vast lawsuit dragging through Mexican courts cast nagging doubt about ownership of the land. Last week Tijuanans had to face up to the hard fact that a big land company held legal title to almost the entire city--and technically could dispossess some 22,000 Tijuana residents.

The roots of Tijuana's travail reach back more than a century. In 1862 the 26,000 acres that make up most of present-day Tijuana were deeded to one Santiago Argueello, a politician and soldier of fortune, by President Benito Juarez. The family did nothing with the land, and over the years squatters moved in, gradually building a town. In 1929 the Mexican government declared the land a patrimony of the nation, and began doling out titles to the plots occupied by the residents. Immediately Argueello's heirs went to court and began a complicated legal fight that dragged on for more than three decades. Last year, to everyone's astonishment, the Mexican Supreme Court finally ruled for the heirs; now a Tijuana judge has ordered the decision carried out.

The town's new owner is California Realty Co., a Tijuana-based corporation formed in 1957 by a group of Mexican real estate investors. In 1959 the company bought all Tijuana property rights from the Argueello heirs, is thus entitled to Tijuana's sprawling residential and farming suburbs, as well as the whole downtown section with its six major brothels, 96 strip joints, 29 liquor stores, 82 curio and aphrodisiac shops, bull ring, Agua Caliente race track, jai alai fronton, even the public parks, streets and municipal palace.

California Realty quickly assured Tijuanans that it has a soft--and realistic--heart. The company says that it will sell only 6,000 acres of unoccupied land (estimated value: $48.5 million) in and around Tijuana, and impose settlements on certain "major" enterprises such as Agua Caliente and the bull ring. All government agencies, home owners, farmers and small businessmen will get clear title at no cost. But the townsfolk are hard to convince. One day recently, 10,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the company offices and hurled Molotov cocktails through the windows.

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