Time change confuses as parts of Mexico, Texas out of sync

The largest metropolitan area at the Texas-Mexico border fell out of step this week after the hour regressed in El Paso and remained unchanged in Ciudad Juárez, adding another layer of logistical gymnastics to the border crossing routine.

For more than two decades, the sister cities have kept their clockwork the same and residents sane, “springing forward” and “falling back” together on the same day and hour, as one. Thousands of Borderland residents crisscross with such frequency that gaining or losing an hour multiple times a day provoked an immediate, collective mental strain when El Paso returned to Mountain Standard Time and Juárez kept clocks ahead over the weekend. It appears it was all a big mistake. Mexican lawmakers passed a law on Oct. 30 eliminating daylight saving time in 26 states. The law granted exceptions to the country’s northern border states but failed to include its largest border state, Chihuahua.

“Federal representatives from Chihuahua didn’t present the required accord regarding standardizing the hour with our counterpart border communities,” said Rogelio Ramos Guevara, president of the business association CANACO in Juárez. “By contrast, the representatives from Tijuana did.”

Unlike Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo and other Mexican border cities granted exceptions under the new national time scheme, Juárez was unable to roll back its clocks on Sunday.

“It takes us back to the old days before El Paso and Juárez stayed on Mountain Standard Time,” said Jerry Pacheco, president of the Border Industrial Association. “Back then it was chaos. So many people would set an appointment and forget Mexico was on a different time part of the year.”

The “old days” were before the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, when trade across the entire U.S.-Mexico border was a fraction of what it is today in the “Borderplex” region encompassing El Paso, Santa Teresa and Juárez.

Today, every month, 65,000 to 75,000 cargo trucks pass through El Paso’s two commercial ports of entry, according to an analysis of data by Border Region Modeling Project at UTEP. In 2021, more than 847,000 cargo trucks crossed the border in El Paso, compared with fewer than 281,000 cargo trucks in 1996.

The personal ties between the two cities are also evident in the data: In August alone, El Paso international bridges logged roughly 1 million personal vehicle crossings and 400,000 pedestrian crossings, according to data analysis.

The Chihuahua state agency that manages the fast northbound SENTRI lanes changed its working hours from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m., instead of 6 a.m. to midnight, to match the hours worked on the U.S. side. But many businesses in Juárez are constrained by labor laws and can’t easily shift work schedules to mirror those of clients and suppliers in El Paso.

The time change was front page news in Juárez on Sunday in El Diario, along with a call for Juárez and Chihuahua elected officials to get Mexico’s congress to add the state to its list of exceptions.

On Monday, the newspaper published an editorial conceding it could have been worse: Had Juárez fallen an hour behind El Paso instead of remaining an hour ahead, it would have been even harder for “juarenses” to get to school and work on time in El Paso.

“That doesn’t ameliorate the pain or the powerlessness that people feel having to combine activities on both sides in this border community, in which, in the case of the new time zone, was divided in two, as if instead of being one region we were two isolated cities,” the editorial said.

On Monday, border commuters posting in the Reporte de Puentes Facebook group, which has more than 313,000 members, jumped into the habit of noting “El Paso time” and “Juárez” in their morning bridge traffic reports. One member identifying as Jerry Vazquez-Todd tagged his post with a photo from the top of the Paso del Norte bridge and a quip: “Just here casually time traveling.”