U.S. buys Baja

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Americans Stake Claims in a Baja Land Rush

 
OPALÓ, 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.

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



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