Tijuana Trying to Redeem Its Reputation

Pity the poor city of Tijuana.

Since Prohibition put it on the map, Tijuana has been known for drinking too much, partying too late, and embracing hedonistic strangers. But like an aging wild child, it wants to be known for more.

Tijuana is trying to change its image. If the city pulls it off, it will be its biggest reinvention since a Tijuana nightclub dancer named Margarita Cansino morphed into sultry Hollywood legend Rita Hayworth.

Behind the effort to improve public perceptions is the Tijuana Image Committee, which meets regularly to strategize how to showcase things the city would rather be known for: restaurants with inexpensive nouvelle cuisine, an internationally recognized modern arts scene, and the manufacture of more television sets -- 8 million a year -- than anywhere else in the world.

The committee invites foreign press members to events like the unveiling of a monument to victims of Sept. 11. It invited sculptors worldwide to loan some 60 sculptures that have been erected on Tijuana avenues. The committee backs things like the cleanup of Tijuana's iconic Avenida Revolucion, where shopkeepers are being warned to stop displaying drug-smoking pipes.

"We want the perception of the city to be the real one: a city of industry, of hard-working people who have found something here that was denied to them where they came from -- opportunity," said Jose Galicot, president of the Comite de Imagen.

It was Galicot who persuaded Tijuana to run from Mexican producers who wanted to set a soap opera, "Tijuana," in the city in 1998. Drug cartel violence was already earning the place comparisons to Al Capone's Chicago.

Televisa producer Raul Arauza protested that 20 movies about Capone "didn't ruin Chicago's reputation." But he conceded defeat when city officials protectively registered Tijuana as a trademark.

Tijuana's image make-over has made city leaders, once known for an exuberant lack of self-consciousness, touchy and circumspect.

"We've had enough of the identity of the city and its inhabitants being soiled because of a foreign group," said a letter from Mayor Jesus Gonzalez distributed at a U.N. development conference in Monterrey.

But the road to redemption is never easy. And for Tijuana, it's been a minefield.

Tijuana's most recent indignity is a radio hit by French pop singer Manu Chao with the Spanish-language chorus of "Welcome to Tijuana, tequila, sex and marijuana."