ENSENADA, Mexico — This sleepy tourist resort has awakened with a jolt. Used to surviving mainly on fishermen and cruise ships, it is suddenly doing its best to serve cargo ships marooned off the western United States, according to the Associated Press.
More than 10,000 U.S.-bound containers have been unloaded at Ensenada and seven other Mexican ports since Sept. 27, when a dispute between shipping lines and dock workers led to a shutdown of all major western U.S. ports.
Mexico’s ports lack the infrastructure to handle more than a fraction of the cargo languishing on nearly 200 ships stuck off the U.S. coast. The port in Vancouver, Canada, also is too busy to accept ships that don’t regularly dock there.
Some shipping lines are resorting to the Panama Canal, in order to reach ports in the Gulf of Mexico or on the East Coast, but many ships are too big for the canal’s locks.
Ports like Ensenada, which is relatively shallow, also have limits on what they can handle. Still, a long line of smaller cargo vessels is jostling for space up and down Mexico’s coast in a game of musical ships.
“It’s like squeezing a quart into a pint bottle,” said Mike Power, who runs Mexican ports for Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings Group.
The Ensenada International Terminal, 100 miles south of San Diego on the Baja California Peninsula, is nearest to the United States. It has just one cargo berth and two cranes and handles just 34,000 containers a year, compared to around 10 million in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif.
Ensenada usually handles two container ships a week. Last week, it received eight, and more are lining up every day, taking over a berth where cruise ships normally come in.
Ensenada is planning a $235 million rail line to the border town of Tecate that is designed to handle 120,000 containers a year. Until it is built, it has no rail connection to the United States.
So for now, bigger ships are being diverted to Manzanillo, farther south on the Mexican mainland, which is connected by rail. But Manzanillo, and nearby Lazaro Cardenas, are near capacity as well, and the distance from Southern California makes it a difficult trip for ships that need to refuel.
The small port of Guaymas has unloaded 10,000 tons of vehicle parts and other cargo bound for Long Beach. But to reach Guaymas, ships must travel around the Baja peninsula and up the Gulf of California.
In all, at least 13 ships have docked at Mexican ports since the lockout began, and more are expected this week, said Francisco Avila, Mexico’s national coordinator of ports. Mexico has lowered docking rates and expanded storage room to handle U.S.-bound ships from Hong Kong, Nagoya and Tokyo.
“We are interested in helping our neighbor, of being of service,” Avila said.
Mexican officials also hope a good showing now will help them retain more business when the strike is over. Federal authorities have held meetings with everyone from highway police to railroad officials to customs agents in order to try to ensure the goods move smoothly.
Ensenada is accustomed to handling smaller Asian cargo shipments of auto and electrical components, which are sent to assembly-for-export plants along the border. It also ships fish products to Asia. The port is beginning to export northern Mexico’s pasta-quality grain to Europe.
Now is it dealing with much more. On Saturday morning, port workers unloaded 350,000 cartons of bananas, then hustled to handle another shipment in the afternoon as the Dole Fresh Fruit Co. redirected Ecuadoran bananas from Los Angeles.
“We came down here because we have perishables. It is critical that our pipeline of bananas continues to flow,” said Dennis Kelly, Dole’s vice president of U.S. ports and terminals.
The parking lot quickly filled with containers from Asia carrying stereos, cameras, auto parts, toys, chemicals and packaged foods, waiting to be trucked north to cross the border at Tijuana.
“They are working from seven in the morning to seven at night. Some come back at night,” said Juan Jose Alvarez, 49, a port security guard whose brothers work on the docks. “We’re all earning a little more, but we’re sleeping a little less.”
Some locals expect few benefits outside the ports, and worry that traffic will drive away tourists and create more hassles for the 340,000 mostly poor residents of Ensenada, squeezed between the Pacific Ocean and dry, rocky hills.
“Where is all the money going to go?” said Arturo Saldanar, 27, a bartender at the Las Rosas hotel. “It’s going to go to the people who run the port and who own the cranes and maybe to the truckers, but how many of them stop at our stores or stay in our hotels?”
For now, big rigs have overtaken the throngs of weekend tourists heading along the mountain highway to Ensenada.
Trucks rumble in around the clock, unloading cargo bound for Asia and South America, and loading up for the journey north.
“I hope they get what they’re asking for up north,” said Javier Partida, 66, who gave up his soccer game with his grandchildren to earn extra money driving to the border. “For right now it’s good for us.”