BY RICARDO SANDOVAL
 Herald World Staff

 TIJUANA, Mexico -- Juan Tintos Funcke has what looks like one of the toughest
 jobs in Mexico: changing the image of Tijuana and its state of Baja California del
 Norte.

 As state chief of tourism promotion, he winces every time bad news about Tijuana
 makes world headlines.

 There was the recent series of drug-related murders, highlighted by the brazen
 killing of the police chief in this city across the border from San Diego. And there
 was the American tourist who died in custody after a car wreck last year while his
 family and doctors pleaded with Mexican authorities to get him to a hospital.

 ``All this does make the job tougher,'' Tintos said after the murder of Police Chief
 Alfredo de la Torre, in what local officials say looked like a classic
 organized-crime hit.

 Tintos fights every day against Tijuana's long history as a playpen for drunken
 American sailors and teenagers, prostitutes and drug lords. His message, that
 Tijuana is a nice place for a family to visit, seems at odds with reality. But reality
 has never been simple in Tijuana.

 Despite drug gang shootouts, business travelers are drawn by a booming
 manufacturing industry. Modern hotels carve a new skyline alongside
 rent-by-the-hour, no-tell motels. It's a city of 1.2 million people and a 1 percent
 official unemployment rate, which skeptics dismiss as they point to homeless
 young women with their babies wrapped in dirty shawls sitting on the sidewalk as
 they hit up tourists for small change.

 SEEKING LAS VEGAS-STYLE RENAISSANCE

 Tijuana is the world's leading maker of Japanese television sets, from Sony to
 Panasonic. The state-of-the-art assembly plants are often in neighborhoods where
 the only paved roads lead to the factories, and legions of workers share cramped
 cinder-block apartments with several families.

 Tijuana has a world-class performing arts center not far from Avenida Revolucion,
 a world-class-tacky strip of discos, rowdy bars, overpriced curio shops and stores
 selling cheap leather jackets.

 Tintos' problem isn't getting people to come to Tijuana: They've been drawn for
 decades by its dark allure -- its prostitutes, gamblers, drug dealers and
 bartenders who were more than willing to serve tequila to 15-year-olds from
 Southern California.

 But Tintos, 41, wants a Las Vegas-style renaissance, sort of in reverse.

 ``It's interesting that a place like Las Vegas that was begun by mafias has
 become a family tourism destination, and a place like Tijuana that began with
 tourism is now more known for its mafias,'' he said.

 Tintos, and an influential circle of business leaders who back his efforts, are
 playing up Tijuana as a gateway to family-friendly beaches, whale-watching boats
 and boutique wineries.

 Armed with a planned conference center and sports arena, he's also trying to lure
 business travelers who traditionally stay over the border in San Diego. Hotel
 occupancy rates are climbing, and it seems a new golf course opens every year.

 `THIS CRIME WAVE IS ISOLATED'

 By the numbers, the city's make-over project is succeeding. About 17 million
 people crossed from San Diego to Tijuana last year and spent at least $1.3
 million in its shops, hotels and restaurants. Tijuana's airport received 3 million
 passengers last year. And an emerging film and television industry spawned by
 the filming of Titanic in nearby Rosarito has hosted 76 productions since 1996,
 pumping almost another $1 million into the Baja economy.

 ``They're seeing what we've seen,'' said the Tijuana-born Tintos, whose American
 mother fostered his smooth, slang-laced English. ``This crime wave is isolated. It
 has nothing to do with tourists or the average citizen of Tijuana, and so people
 keep coming.

 ``But you'd never know that from the headlines. I must ask if people stopped
 visiting Miami after the tourist murders? Or do people skip Disneyland because of
 the gang violence in Los Angeles?''

 U.S. law enforcement officials say Tijuana will have a tough time straightening out
 its image until the Arellano family is behind bars, meaning leaders of the
 Arellano-Felix crime syndicate, a criminal network important in smuggling illegal
 drugs into the United States.

 ``There's no need for [the Arellanos] to go anywhere else,'' said one U.S. official
 who asked not to be identified. ``In Tijuana, they have all they need: State and
 municipal cops are completely corrupt. It's a 60-year tradition in Tijuana.''

 TEENS STILL LOOK FOR THRILLS

 And for all of Tintos' efforts, Tijuana still hasn't shaken its tag as Sin City -- home
 of the unending disco beat and sweaty teenage hip-hoppers at Club A or the ``Live
 Nude Dancers!'' hawked to young U.S. Marines by barkers at Madonna's or Club
 Ecstasy.

 Very young Americans still dance and drink to excess in Tijuana on weekends,
 despite a crackdown on underage tourists looking for lenient bars.

 Identification is now a must, and youths under 18 need a parent's letter giving
 them permission to go to Mexico.

 But none of that has stopped teens such as Lilia from clogging Avenida
 Revolucion on weekend nights, cruising down the street as the beat of bass
 drums in countless nightclubs shakes the asphalt. Lilia wouldn't give her last
 name, but swore she was 18 and from San Diego.

 Thousands of teens like her -- most dressed to kill and barely 18, if that -- troll
 Revolucion in search of a good time. Teenagers from Orange County, Calif.,
 showing tattered ID cards to the guards outside a crowded club on a recent
 Friday night said they favor the new travel restrictions. They say the rules keep
 the really young out of Tijuana, its gutters and its jail -- the kind of trouble that
 gives the city a bad name.

 ``But that won't stop the rest of us,'' Lilia said. ``We're children of the hippies who
 came down here in the `60s and grandchildren of the sailors who came before.
 We're all looking for what we can't get legally in the United States. That's what
 Tijuana is all about.''