By Lisa Allen-Agostini
Washington Post Staff Writer

Trinidadian journalist Lisa Allen-Agostini, The Washington Post's 2001 Alfred Friendly Fellow, has been exploring the United States via Greyhound.

LAREDO, Tex. -- The streets of Laredo were slick with rain. Heavy showers had given way to a sullen, intermittent drizzle, the remnants of a storm that hit southern
Texas last week and killed several people. It didn't get that bad in Laredo, but when nearly four inches of rain are dumped onto a town that's sunny 320 days of the
year, it is enough to stop traffic -- literally.

Taxi driver Nora Madrid grumbles apologies to her passenger for the delay. The traffic is usually bad, she says, but it flows, you know? It doesn't get tied up like this.

Madrid has been hacking in this Texas border town since she arrived here from her native El Paso seven years ago. Everybody in Laredo, it seems, knows the
fast-talking, fast-moving, honey-brown-haired driver who likes to wear her ponytail threaded through the back of a baseball cap.

Folks at the Marriott Courtyard hotel greet Madrid by name. "Hey, Nora," the manager says when she enters the lobby. It's the same at the Exxon. And the bus
station. Madrid is constantly on the move.

Except when there's a flood. Cars creep along the streets, making slow waves in the muddy puddles. Madrid unwraps another stick of Doublemint -- she's trying to
lose weight and the gum helps, she says -- while she navigates through the congestion. Water laps at the curbs and entire streets are submerged, but Madrid, 32, is
trying to get her share of the few fares left since Sept. 11.

There are two industries here -- trucking and retail tourism, mostly from Mexico. Along with its sister city, Nuevo Laredo, Laredo straddles the Rio Grande. It serves
as the main land port in South Texas for Mexico-U.S. trade. The trucks at least are still rolling. Not so the shoppers who cross the border in search of bargains.

The rain is just a bigger headache, Madrid says. The last thing she needs is another problem.

"It's very bad. The transportation is maybe 60, setenta percent less," Madrid says in a mixture of Spanish and English.

Madrid began hacking because her husband owned a taxi company, she says. He's gone and so is the business, but she's still driving -- at least trying to.

Customs and immigration checks have been tightened since the terrorist attacks, with stringent examinations of vehicles; pedestrians, too, stand in long lines at the
border. Presumably it's now harder for illegal immigrants and would-be terrorists to enter the country, but it's also harder for the shoppers.

"On the bridge, you make two hours; before, you only make 15 minutes," Madrid says. "If you are there on the Mexican side, you can't leave. For the tourist coming
from Mexico, it's very scary."

There may be fewer shoppers, but you can't turn around in Laredo without seeing the trucks. You can drive along Santa Ursula Boulevard and be completely walled
in by 53-foot trailers.

These behemoths are the city's ultimate lifeblood, carrying goods from Mexico to the United States and vice versa. About 8,000 trucks make the crossing every day,
Mayor Elizabeth G. Flores told a Senate committee in July during the controversy over the safety of Mexico's vehicles. They thunder along the highways with food,
hardware and other items for distribution to the rest of the country; $247.6 billion worth of cross-border trade passed through Laredo last year.

Is there economic trouble in the city because of Sept. 11?

"It depends on who you talk to," insists John A. Adams Jr., executive director of the Laredo Development Foundation, a nonprofit set up in 1966. He notes that
unemployment dropped from 6.5 to 6 percent last month, according to a report by the Texas Workforce Commission. Local sales and use taxes were $300,000
higher this September than last, he adds.

"They did not do all this in the first 10 days of the month," says Adams, who contends the attacks caused only a week and a half of panic.

Struggling folks like Madrid see things differently.

"Right now it's supposed to be heavy money for the Christmas, you know," she says, sitting in the shadows of 18-wheelers that dwarf her gray '93 Ford Crown
Victoria. "If we have this situation, I don't know what we'll do. The bills, the taxes, much up, and you don't have the money."

She has a daughter, 13, and a son, 5, to feed. And until Sept. 11, she was sending money to her parents in Mexico.

Now she drives her frustration through Laredo's downtown, a squat, congested hive of stores. Some are as narrow as their doorways, urban caverns about 20 feet
deep and crammed with padded plaid shirts, Barbie dolls, "Air Nice" sneakers and shiny new boomboxes. Other shops take up half a block, selling much the same
items but with more room for customers to maneuver. The clerks and customers are mostly Mexican or Mexican American, except for a handful of Asian traders
who followed the bucks to the border.

At Convent Avenue and Water Street, feet away from the Last Chance Cafe, is Bridge 1. Officially called the Gateway to the Americas Bridge, it's the only
pedestrian crossing of the four Laredo bridges. More than 5.5 million people walked over from Mexico last year, according to the Customs Service. Saturday at
midday, the pedestrians weren't pouring in, though. Rain was only part of the reason.

Mexican visitors must have the new laser-imprinted visas, a revision that was in the works two years ago but became mandatory shortly after Sept. 11. The offices
that issue them receive as many as 1,500 requests a day, and the backlog extends to January. The cards allow Mexican tourists to travel up to 25 miles north of the
U.S. border for shopping or pleasure. Except many people don't have them yet.

Those who do have the shiny new cards have plenty of room to swing their crinkling plastic shopping bags on downtown streets. Many stores are empty, and idle
clerks talk on the phone or with each other. In the NSL International perfume store, a man, the only customer, haggles over the price of a bottle of designer
fragrance. How is business? "As you can see, it's very bad," says J.S. Lamba, the store manager.

Over at El Mundo, which sells fabric, bedding and clothing at discount prices -- "Nobody sells cheaper!" a sign declares in Spanish -- there are a few customers, but
just a few.

"Ninety percent of our sales go to Mexico," says Anibal Diaz, vice president of operations for the store's parent group, International Stores. "If they don't come, we
don't sell. Now we worry about this coming season. It's not going to save us from the two or three months of bad sales."

In Plaza Jarvis, a park downtown, a middle-aged man stands in front of a blooming hibiscus shrub and sings Spanish hymns in a mournful baritone. Three shoppers
rest on a nearby bench, sometimes clapping along with the songs about the resurrectionand the blood.

At the corner, a long line of taxis, including Madrid's, sits waiting for passengers.

                                               © 2001