The 4-by-4 block section of Nuevo Laredo has many names, but there's only one reason to go there: legal prostitution. Mexican law holds that prostitution is in a strict sense legal, but being a pimp or procurer is not. Cities can pass laws that form "zones of tolerance" to focus prostitutes into one area and--in Nuevo Laredo's unique case--wall it off from the rest of town.
A two-car-wide entrance is the only gap in the 8-foot-high walls, which are decorated with political posters and other ads. Inside is a dark and never-ending dynamic of hookers and johns, of wasted nights and frantic coupling, a cycle broken only by the appearance of a blistering sun.
You don't drive south on Interstate 35 as much as you fall, like a seed from a lime dropping down the neck of a Corona. On Friday nights the Texas license plates are as common a sight as taxis. Most border towns in Mexico sport red light districts. None matches the allure of Nuevo Laredo's walled Boys Town. NAFTA has changed the border, but some things remain the same. La Zona Rosa is one of them. This is the place where a generation of Texas forefathers came to cheat on their wives.
This is the place where you can find online reviews of the best bars for attractive partners and the worst of men can turn the tables and dismiss scores of women as being too ugly. This is the place that's so safe that old men pop generic Viagra in a bid to relive their youths and timid first-timers drive for hours to go whoring. There's something enticingly familiar about the concept of the Mexican whorehouse.
The prostitute is the prize cowpokes earn after a long, hard trail. Riding into this fantasy of outlaw pleasure does not mean accepting too much risk. It's an odd fact that men will travel far out of their way to go whoring in Mexico when there are certainly prostitutes closer to home. For all the forces keeping La Zona operating over the decades, none of them is more fascinating than the psychological forces of exotic adventure and sexual desperation that keep men coming here year after salty year.
