Travel into Mexico to increase for holiday

By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times

Article Launched: 12/12/2007 12:00:00 AM MST

Traffic into Mexico will begin to pick up this weekend as U.S. travelers head south to visit family, enjoy Mexican Christmas traditions and drink calientitos.

Many others will travel north to spend the holidays with loved ones in the United States.

Alicia Calderon, a retired school cook in Horizon City, will head to Cuauhtémoc in the state of Chihuahua to visit family for a week.

She said she was very excited about having a Mexican Christmas for once.

"There are more traditions there," she said. "Here, we get together, and on the 25th we exchange gifts. There, we go to church. There is more family and more food. We get to eat the exotic fruits that they don't let us take across the border."

It is difficult to gauge the size of the crowd of holiday border crossers, but the number of tourist visas issued by the Mexican Consulate in El Paso increases about tenfold in December. Consulate officials said they issued close to 2,000 tourist visas, or FM-Ts, in the first 10 days of the month.