People who shop with pesos in the United States have lost about 25 percent of their purchasing power thanks to the recent devaluation of Mexican currency, the El Paso Times reported.

In July, Bloomberg reported the peso's value to be 10.005 to the dollar, but that has recently fallen to 11 to 14.20 pesos to the dollar, the Times reported.

Mexican shoppers account for about 11 percent of El Paso's overall retail business, with some stores in South El Paso relying on shoppers from Juarez for about 40 percent of their business, according to a 2006 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas report.

In other border cities in Texas, Mexican buyers account for 26 percent of Brownsville's sales, 36 percent in McAllen and 51 percent in Laredo, the Times reported.

"Our shoppers from Mexico have to buy dollars to shop at our stores in El Paso," Alfonso Flores, operations director for El Paso's Central Business Association, told the Times. "But the dollar has become more expensive for them."

The devalued peso doesn't necessarily translate into bargains south of the border, Jim Peach, a border economy analyst with New Mexico State University, told the Times.

"If the peso is devalued, domestic prices go up in Mexico because they import so much," Peach told the paper. "The peso is going to be the key to watch. Remittances from the U.S. likely will drop off, too. The bigger deal will come when the U.S. economy slows down, which will result in fewer Mexican exports and increased unemployment."

In 1994, the peso lost two-thirds of its value, devastating many U.S.-Mexico border businesses, a crisis that required a $48 billion bailout, the Times said. 

Peach said the Mexican government is pumping money into its economy to slow the peso devaluation, the Times reported.

"Another big difference from 1994 is that Mexico has about $80 (billion) to $85 billion in reserves, which allows it to prop up the peso," Peach told the paper. "They're not calling it a bailout, but Mexican officials said they plan to do some spending to bolster the economy."