Americans Stake Claims in a Baja Land Rush

[kskiska]

Could this be a sign?


NOPALÓ, Mexico — Slowly but surely, acre by acre, Mexico's Baja Peninsula is becoming an American colony.

"For Sale" signs are sprouting all over the 800-mile-long peninsula, offering thousands of beachfront properties. Americans are snapping them up. They have already created communities where the dollar is the local currency, English the main language and Americans the new immigrants transforming an old culture.

"Everything's for sale, every lot you can imagine," said Alfonso Gavito, director of a cultural institute in La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur, a state with 400,000 citizens and some of the last undeveloped beaches in North America. "It's like 20 years of changes have happened in three months."

This new land rush, involving billions of dollars, tens of thousands of Americans, and hundreds of miles of coastline, is gaining speed despite the fact that Mexico's Constitution bars foreigners from directly owning land by the sea.

Mexico's government wants foreign capital as much as Americans want a house on the beach — maybe more. So it worked around the Constitution. In 1997, it changed the law to allow foreign ownership through locally administered land trusts. A Mexican bank acts as trustee, the foreigner its beneficiary.

(snip)

In Rosarito, an hour's drive south of the United States border, about one-quarter of the 55,000 residents are Americans. "An increasing number of Americans are moving here to escape their government's policies and the costs of living," said Herb Kinsey, a Rosarito resident with roots in the United States, Canada and Germany. "They find a higher standard of living and a greater degree of freedom."

more…
http://nytimes.com/2003/10/26/international/americas/26BAJA.html?hp

[frylock]

1. it sucks. all the good surf spots are now on private property.

38k anb 55k are now inaccessible.

[dArKeR]

2. Just like the White American did to the Hawaiian Islands!

[david_vincent]

3. Years and years ago

I read an article that made an impression on me. The author argued that since Mexico owes America more money than it can ever hope to repay, Mexico should simply cede Baja to the U.S. and as a compensatory gesture of friendship, we could give Mexico City a baseball team.
Now it's going to come true except they won't even get the team.

[MUAD_DIB]

4. Food for thought.

We are simply taking a page out of the Israeli playbook. (But then again we wrote the book first.)

1. Buy what land you can legally.

2. Claim it as your sovereign territory disputed land...even though it is on the other side of the border.

3. Defend it at all costs and take the surrounding lands to create a buffer zone.

4. Add salt to taste.