Ten hours in Tijuana
The border is not an abstraction.
That was what I was thinking when looking south at the crowded Tijuana hills, when approaching the border from San Diego via the Blue Line trolley in the early morning on July 2. As a journalist who has reported on the arts scene there, I have tried to stick to the facts. I have also tried to emphasize the positive. But your impressions of Tijuana, like everything else, depend on whose shoes you are standing in.
For example, Tijuana is frequently dubbed “The World’s Most Dangerous City” because of the ongoing turf battles between drug cartels. Not coincidentally, it is home to the hemisphere’s busiest land border, with access to the world’s largest illegal drug market, the United States. If you are just crossing the border to shop and drink and/or visit a strip club on Avenida Revolución, you probably don’t need to worry much about the cartels. But if you are, say, a Tijuana business owner, you ignore their presence at your peril.
As soon as I crossed into Mexico, I took a taxi to Las Playas de Tijuana aka the Tijuana beach. And that’s part of my usual itinerary in the city. My driver followed the Tijuana-Ensenada Road west, through steep roadcuts crowned by dense apartment blocks and housing on both sides. We followed the high double and sometimes triple fencing of the border composed of rows of rusted iron posts. The border wall follows the contours of the land until it ends, projecting out 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean.
The taxi driver and I talked a little in Spanish but I was out of practice and the effort was tiring for me, and it seemed to be for him as well. We both fell silent. He dropped me off on the westernmost stretch of asphalt in the westernmost city in all of Latin America, and within sight of the border fence.
It was my first visit since before the COVID pandemic and everything looked exactly the way I remembered it since my last visit. Everything, that is, except for a long stretch of fence along the tideline. The border posts were now painted with a massive grayscale mural stretching 150 feet long and 15-20 feet high — the height of the fence. The mural featured the portraits of 15 Mexican nationals who had been brought to the United States as children. Some have been granted permanent resident or DACA status and some have been deported to Mexico. You can scan an oversized QR code on the fence to find out more about the subjects of the mural, and more about the project.
The Playas de Tijuana Mural Project was the work of Lizbeth de la Cruz Santana, a student at UC Davis. This was, in fact, her doctoral dissertation. De la Cruz began her project by drawing each face on canvas. She then enlisted the help of migrant family members or other migrants to help fill in the contours of the painting, which was cut into sections that were attached individually onto the posts of the fence. The mural was unveiled on Aug. 2., 2021.
De la Cruz is not the first artist to attempt to use the Mexican side of the fence as a canvas to convey socio-political messages. Some of this started as the work of individual artists, like Mexican-born, San Francisco-based artist Ana Teresa Fernández who painted a 50-ft.-long stretch of fence sky blue, in a project called “Erasing the Border” in 2012 In a certain light, at certain times of the day, it looked like you could just walk right through the fence. But "Erasing the Border" which Fernandez created on the posts where the De la Cruz project is currently, was erased well before the larger project began. Paint can withstand the elements at tideline only so long.
The same destiny awaits the much larger De la Cruz work. According to a recent article about her project in the LA Times, the artist expected the work to last at least five years. But less than a year into the project, some of the canvases are peeling and fading.
Playas de Tijuana Mural Project by Lizbeth de la Cruz Santana on the border fence
I was walking up along the border fence, trying to find my reference points.
I kept looking for the metal plate on the fence near the tideline where I had seen the words "LA POESÍA ES GENTE CON SUEÑOS” (Poetry is people with dreams) on my previous trips. But I couldn’t find it. I have since wondered about the makeup of the group Acción Poética that painted this wonderful definition of poetry for the border wall. I have likewise found nothing about the origin of this definition, but I did find something about the history of the group responsible for painting said phrase. According to the website Culture Trip the group was started in northern Mexico by poet Armando Alanís Pulido, engaging passers-by in public spaces “with romantic ‘micro-poems.’”
Painted “micro-poem” on the border fence in 2018
Alongside that end goal, per the website, “the Acción Poética movement also sought to promote the act of reading – particularly of reading poetry.”
Reading about Acción Poética reminded me of the various groups of poets that Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño wrote about in his novel Los Detectives Salvajes (The Savage Detectives). I wondered if the group took inspiration from that book, which was a phenomenal bestseller in Latin America as well as in the US. Another sign Acción Poética is said to be responsible for painting, per the website, is one that reads “SIN POESIA, NO HAY CIUDAD” (without poetry, there is no city) which seems appropriate for Tijuana, even though I can't explain how exactly.
Farther up the beach, painted on the border posts, is an American flag depicted upside down, a symbol of distress, with crosses for stars. It was painted by Mexican-born U.S. military veterans who have been deported for infractions large and small—from drug felonies to failure to appear for a court date. (Military service does not guarantee U.S. citizenship to the foreign-born, but it can smooth the path to citizenship.) There are also gardens along the Mexican side of the fence that tend to go untended on the U.S. side in what is called “Friendship Park,” which I have written about previously. But the security precautions and heavy presence of the Border Patrol on the US side didn’t seem particularly friendly.
Border fence in 2016, with “Erasing the Border” mural by Ana Teresa Fernández
The most notable fence painter, whose mural project along the border wall is still ongoing, is the Tijuana-based artist Enrique Chiu. Chiu’s goal is to paint 700 miles of the 2,200 mile long border fence to create a positive reaction to President Trump’s bigoted policies and rhetoric, in the form of the longest mural in the world. It’s known as the Mural de la Hermandad (the Brotherhood Mural). He has enlisted the help of thousands of volunteers to help him accomplish this task.
“I started to paint on Thursday, Dec 1, 2016,” Chiu told me when I visited him in his studio in Nov., 2018. “I was thinking ‘whatever’s coming, I’m going to buy some paint. Whoever shows up can paint with us.’ When I got there there were five women and girls there waiting plus Channel 6 and Univision from San Diego. We painted from 9am to 1pm. On Friday, Dec. 2, when I got there in the morning, it was 50 people. Some of them were like ‘hey can we come back tomorrow.’ I said, “Yeah. We’re going to be painting every Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday Dec. 4, it was like 200 people.”
Eventually, more than 3,600 would show up over a 2-year-period. Often they came with their own brushes, paint, and rollers. Some of those who came—and they came from Tijuana, elsewhere in Mexico, and from all over the world—had specific ideas about what they wanted to paint. Others needed guidance, as well as paint and brushes, which Chiu was happy to provide, and he has organized many painting sessions in cities spanning the length of the 2,000 mile long wall.
Chiu was well-known as an artist before the Mural de la Hermandad, but since 2016 his reputation has exploded not just for his mural project, and his other volunteer activities, but as an artist in his own right. His work promoting and exhibiting his art has taken him all over the world. (One of his favorite subjects as an artist is the Little Prince, after the book by the French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a fact that I note in a recent poem of mine.)
Chiu has posted on Facebook from Turkey, from Egypt, and from Dubai as well as from all over Mexico.
At a tourism booth alongside the promenade, I enjoyed talking to the young attendant whose job it was to promote tourism in the city. The young man saw me struggling to take a selfie in front of a large colorful sculpture spelling out “Tijuana” and offered to take mine and I took him up on that offer.
Spelled out in block letters on the bottom of the sculpture: “Aqui Empieza la Patria” (Here the country begins). It’s a sentence that invites you to contemplate the vast geographies of not only Mexico, but the entirety of Latin America.
I walked to the overlook with the colorful fiberglass heart sculpture commemorating the Teletón, which raises money to construct and operate centers for disabilities people with disabilities in Mexico. A bald, heavily tattooed man was making use of the pull-up bars below the overlook. And then beyond the beach, on top of the very last stretch of the border fence, a group of seagulls sat, and no one asked for their passports.
All in all, it was a pleasant day on the Tijuana beach, one of my favorite places on earth. There were a few families with blankets out in the sand and a couple was talking with a vendor by the fence. Only one person was wading out in the water, which was said to have a very high bacteria count. Looking through the fence to the American side, to Border Field State Park, I could see one of the distinctive Border Patrol vehicles parked near the tideline.
It was a beautiful day but I was frustrated. I had failed to schedule any interviews in advance, I wasn’t writing for any publication except my own blog, and my Spanish was too broken to get into any meaningful conversations.
I needed a cup of coffee. I walked up the street to Huerto Urbano, an organic cafe where I ordered a latte and a cheesecake muffin and recharged my phone. It was the kind of eatery that would fit easily into San Diego’s hippest neighborhoods like Mission Beach, and to me represents the hope of a younger generation in Mexico.
When I asked the man who served me when the cafe had opened, he told me it had opened four years ago. They had remained open for carryout during the worst of the pandemic in 2020, even though the entire beach had been shut down during that time. As we spoke, a motorcyclist with Uber Eats pulled up in front of the restaurant.
There were two women in the cafe speaking to each other in English. Both seemed to be in their late 50s or early 60s. By listening in on their conversation, I got the impression that they were permanent residents like 90,000 other US citizens who call Tijuana home, rather than tourists.
If you want to know what is driving this phenomenon, all you need to know is that, as of July, 2022 the average studio apartment rent in San Diego was $2,789 and that 13.5 percent of San Diego home prices exceeded one million dollars. The prices in Tijuana are much cheaper, but they are no longer the bargain they once were, as the influx of Americans was driving up the market.
(If I were writing a longer article, I could also talk about how Tijuana was a lifeline for US citizens needing affordable medical care, or about how recent weeks have seen an increase in women traveling to Mexico for abortions. Mexico legalized abortion in 2021.)
I hailed an Uber to my next destination, the Tijuana Cultural Center in the Zona Rio District. The first time I had visited the Centro was back in June 2001, when I had crossed the border with my father. This was during the time when he and my mom were in the process of moving from Carmel, Indiana to La Jolla — a particularly wealthy part of San Diego — for retirement. I had convinced my dad somehow to cross the border and we visited not only the Museo de los Calfornias at the Cultural Center but the Tijuana Wax Museum. My dad was less than impressed about everything in Tijuana, except for the Museo de las Californias, and he hasn’t been back since.
But I had a specific event in mind this time around. The Cultural Center, which encompasses the the Museo de Las Californias, was holding a weekend-long event “FestiArteXX” on its outdoor esplanade, where there were vendors galore, for food art, and handicrafts, as well as live music.
Los Coyotes at FestiArte XX
I arrived there at 1pm. The band onstage, Los Coyotes, sounded a little like Los Lobos meets No Doubt — roots rock meets Ska — but was really its own thing. The lead singer played a keytar and sung passionately and the band behind him rocked at ear splitting volume. His seated audience, however, barely cleared the single digits signaling that the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce's high hopes for the July 4 weekend, in terms of attracting foreign tourists and revenue, would not be realized.
While coronavirus restrictions had been lifted since November, 2021, that does not necessarily mean that Tijuana (or San Ysidro on the other side of the border) has come roaring back to life economically. The US State Department hasn’t been helpful in this regard. Their warning of March 16, stated that US citizens should reconsider travel to Baha and Tijuana. They warn that those who chose to go anyway "should remain on main highways and avoid remote locations,” because of the increased danger of homicides and kidnappings.
However, probably the most danger I put myself in — up to this point in my trip at least — was spiking my cholesterol by buying a “Superdog” with sautéed onions from one of the many food stands at the Festival, in the shadow of the ball shaped dome that serves as an IMAX theater — the centerpiece of the cultural center that has become an iconic symbol for the city of Tijuana.
After eating my superdog (delicious), and watching a so-so heavy metal band perform onstage, I decided to explore the Cultural Center, which was featuring the winners of the Trienal de Tijuana painting contest. (Note: I fail to do justice to Tijuana’s top-notch food scene here, but I’ve written about it elsewhere).
An oil painting by Diego MTZ Peña, “Watching the American Debacle” struck me with its very strange American flag. It eclipsed Jasper Johns in its literalness with its attention to detail, down to the wrinkles in the the fabric. But the gravitational pull of the center point pulled at the flag fabric, as if into a whirlpool or around a singularity. The border may be an abstraction as seen through the lens of this painting, but the abstraction is no less real.
The wall text inevitably mentioned Trump, his quasi-genocidal rhetoric, and his use of social media to incite his followers.
“Watching the American Debacle” by Diego MTZ Peña
The other work that really struck me in the Trienal was sculptural, a scale model of a food cart by a group called Colectivo La garrapata de la oveja (Bayrol Jimenez/ Ronanda Martinez). On the side of this sculpture a video played on repeat, showing the speeded-up composition of various commercial painting processes on the walls of Mexican businesses. One of the funnier ones is a sign for an ice-cream cooler reading “Ricas Paletas” (Rich ice pops). It portrayed a peaceable kingdom of sorts — a cat and mouse enjoying ice cream bars together — and it shows how the art of commercial illustration is an everyday thing in Mexico.
I took a brief walk through the permanent exhibition of the Museo de las Californias with its exhibits about native civilizations and Spanish conquest leading up to the modern era. It was my first time back in this exhibition space since my dad and I had toured it 21 years previously
and I recalled the feeling I had then of walking through a looking glass. After learning from one exhibit that the US nearly invaded Baja during World War II, under the pretense that the North American Pacific coast had to be protected from imminent Japanese invasion, I looked out the museum window to see the densely-packed neighborhoods of Zona Rio staring back at me.
After I had my fill of the museum, I took a taxi to the main tourist drag Avenida Revolución. I got into a conversation with the driver, who spoke good English, about waiting times at the San Ysidro pedestrian border checkpoint. As I have sometimes experienced wait times greater than two hours, I was hoping for some positive news and he didn't disappoint. He told me that he had just driven past the waiting line and that I shouldn't have to wait too long.
He dropped me off in the shadow of the 96 foot-tall Reloj Monumental de Tijuana, a metal arch stretching 110 feet over Avenida Revolución, looking like the spawn of McDonalds and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. I think it does a fine job of welcoming visitors to the city all the same. But this arch, unlike its antecedents, incorporated an LED screen showing the time, the “reloj” (clock) of its title. It also gave various announcements, including one for the Festivarte XX that I had just left. It also displayed the rainbow-colored Pride Flag.
Across the street, I spotted the signage for the El Zorro night club, which also welcomed tourists. The signage, however, deliberately misspelled "Welcome" as Wel-cum" in case visitors were confused about what kind of swordplay, as it were, took place inside.
Instead of going there, I walked to Tijuana’s most renowned cathedral, Catedral Metropolitana de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, three blocks to the west of Avenida Revolución. I was on something of a spiritual kick, I guess. I found the sidewalks along Calle Benito Juárez densely packed with pedestrians. Many were wearing facemasks. I took this as a sign and put on mine. I had both the feeling that I had strayed from the tourist zone and the sense that I was being followed way too close by a potential pickpocket or worse. This latter feeling only grew as I stopped in my tracks and watched the potential perp circle back and resume tailing me as I started walking again.
Fortunately, I was close to the entrance of the cathedral. I entered. There were dozens of people in the pews and I sat down with them. A cool breeze blew through the building. But no service was taking place. The fact that it was open to all, rich or poor, moved me. In a city where human dignity itself—especially in regard to prostitution-related human trafficking—is for sale, this cathedral stood out as a place of physical, as well as spiritual, refuge.
But the cathedral also stands out for another reason. It is where Enedina Arellano Félix got married to Claudio Vázquez, at least according to the Netflix series Narcos Mexico. If, per the series, the Catholic Church tacitly condoned the cartels’ activities by facilitating this wedding— adding to its many other sins—well, that just goes to show how complicated life can be.
On my walk back to Revolución I bought a lime soda along the way from one of the ubiquitous pharmacies. I also went to the Tijuana History Museum, which was free, and definitely worth a visit. I thought about getting a Caesar Salad at Caesar’s, where the Caesar Salad was invented., but I wasn’t really hungry and there was a line at the door of the restaurant and I’d had it before anyway. (Made with raw egg, the best salad ever.)
Soon enough, I found myself in front of the Tijuana Wax Museum. As I recall from my two previous visits, the only halfway realistic figure depicted was the gloved one, Michael Jackson. This museum happened to be in close proximity to the red light district. I won’t deny that I was curious about what went on between the El Zorro night club and the others. I won’t deny that I have a libido. My favorite poet Charles Baudelaire would have certainly tried to provoke me into walking through those doors. I imagined him laughing in my face as I tried to describe the serious problem of human trafficking for which the strip clubs act as a gateway.
Baudelaire, who wrote about both the sublime and the sordid — often in the same poem — was a poet who liked to shock.
“If slaughter, or if arson, polonium-210, rape/have not yet incited our libidos/The boring canvas of our day-to-day/It’s only that our souls aren’t tough enough”, he wrote, or something to that effect (forgive my extremely loose translation from the French), in his introductory poem “To the Reader” in his book The Flowers of Evil. While I prefer to read these lines ironically, it’s possible that he meant every word he wrote. Literally.
Anyway, I would tell Baudelaire that, if poetry is people with dreams, then it follows that there is no poetry in human trafficking because it smothers dreams.
It was 4:04pm per the El Reloj Monumental clock. It was a good visit after all, but I was done with Tijuana for the day and needed to go.
I headed back toward the border.
El Reloj Monumental on Avenida Revolucion
