Mayor Torres Tells Expats Of Progress As He Concludes Three Years In Office

ROSARITO BEACH, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO---Mayor Hugo Torres on Saturday told the United Society of Baja California of three years of efforts that have brought the city crime rate to its lowest since the state began compiling figures in 2000.

“If you thought Rosarito was safe 10 years ago, now it is as safe or safer,” Torres told one of the largest expatriate groups in the city which includes an estimated 14,000 foreign-born residents.

Torres, who also owns the landmark Rosarito Beach Hotel, took office in December of 2007 and leaves at the end of this month. Mayors in Mexico are limited to three-year terms.

Torres said he initially did not want to run for Mayor of the city he helped found in 1995: “I’m a business man not a politician. I was borrowed for this job.”

But he was troubled by corruption in the police department, which included a failure to crack down on drug gangs in the city. “If I had owned a hot dog cart, I might have just moved it,” he said. “But with the hotel, I couldn’t do that.”

The first year in office was marked by an assassination attempt on his new police chief Jorge Montero, an Army captain on leave, the need to replace most officers and killings between rival gangs.

“I was threatened at the same time, but we had to get through it and we did,” he said. “When my police chief survived and decided to stay on, I knew we were going to be OK.”

To ensure that Rosarito remains an excellent city in the future, Torres has worked to expand drug prevention efforts, visited all city schools and helped develop more community programs, including the city’s first Boys & Girls Club.

Also, he said, “We should continue to keep an eye on the police, which is something we didn’t do enough of in the past.”

Torres said he regrets that more people in the U.S. are not aware that Rosarito is safer than ever, in part because of extensive media coverage of struggles with drug gangs elsewhere in Mexico including Juarez, 600 miles to the east.

 “Unfortunately, we have not been able to bring the tourists back,” he said. Tourism is the largest contributor to the city’s economy.

Torres thanked USBC members for their support and for being excellent ambassadors for Rosarito by helping inform people in the U.S. what living in the city really is like.

“We loved working with you over the years,” USBC secretary Judy Westphal told the mayor. “You’ve been absolutely fabulous.”