The Mexican Border’s Lost World
By MARC LACEY
TIJUANA, Mexico — Never a particularly pretty place, the border is at its ugliest right now, with violence, tensions and temperatures all on high.
Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos
The raffish charm of old Ciudad Juárez is reflected in an old-time bar in 1998.
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Luis Hinojos/EFE, via European Pressphoto Agency
Recent violence in Ciudad Juárez.
Once thought of by Americans as just a naughty playland, the divide between the United States and Mexico is now most associated with the awful things that happen here. In towns from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, drug gangs brutalize each other, tourists risk getting caught in the cross-fire, and Mexican laborers crossing the desert northward brave both the bullets and the heat. Last week, a federal judge in Arizona blocked portions of new far-reaching immigration restrictions that she said went way too far in ousting Mexicans. Meanwhile, National Guard troops are preparing to fill in as border sentries.
All these developments are unfolding in what used to be a meeting place between two countries, a zone of escape where cultures merged, albeit often amid copious amounts of tequila. The potential casualties at the border now include a way of life, generations old, well-documented but decaying by the day.
The flow of people at the border has never been one way. The 1,969-mile stretch has long been a netherworld crossed by Americans in search of forbidden pleasures as much as by Mexicans desperate for work.
It is an area neither completely Mexico nor completely El Norte. And a dollop of danger, a quest for sin, was always part of its charm.
The modern story begins with Prohibition, when Mexico became the place for thirsty Americans to go for a cheap, legal drink. Over the years, the lure of cheap booze gave way to quickie divorces, dog races, strip shows, slot machines and brothels where fathers sometimes brought their sons when they hit 16. Through it all, there were plenty of drugs — medicinal (cut rates with no prescriptions) as well as illegal (marijuana, cocaine, heroin).
“The spice of danger adds a zest to the pleasure of thousands who visit them from this side of the frontier,” The Times wrote of the towns of Tijuana and Agua Caliente, in a feature article describing the raging drinking and gambling scene there. The year was 1930.
Name it and one could find it in the back alleys of Tijuana or Juárez back then, The Times wrote of Ciudad Juárez in 1925: “Juarez gambles spasmodically; peddles dope; obsequiously caters to the pennies which the terpsichorean neckers recklessly fling to the kitty; sells rotten whisky and green beer at exorbitant prices and maintains a street gloriously called Calle Diablo (street of the devil), where thoughtless men can go and, at a base price, acquire bitter regrets.”
World War II only boosted the market for a generation of soldiers on leave, and for postwar adventurers seeking music and thrills and sex. Jack Kerouac, in “On the Road,” described their welcome this way:
“Then we turned our faces to Mexico with bashfulness and wonder as those dozens of Mexican cats watched us from under their secret hatbrims in the night. Beyond were music and all-night restaurants with smoke pouring out of the door. ‘Whee,’ whispered Dean very softly.
“ ‘Thassall!’ A Mexican official grinned. ‘You boys all set. Go ahead. Welcome Mehico. Have good time. Watch you money. Watch you driving. I say this to you personal, I’m Red, everybody call me Red. Ask for Red. Eat good. Don’t worry. Everything fine. Is not hard enjoin yourself in Mehico.’
“ ‘Yes!’ shuddered Dean and off we went across the street into Mexico on soft feet.”
In the 1960s, Mexico firmly solidified its place as America’s marijuana and heroin provider. As commerce — licit and illicit — grew, politicians and police protected it. But the rules of engagement that once protected innocents eventually began to break down. Nowadays, anything goes.
In 1958, Orson Welles used the border as backdrop for his classic noir film “Touch of Evil.” (“This isn’t the real Mexico,” says the character Mike Vargas. “You know that. All border towns bring out the worst in a country. I can just imagine your mother’s face if she could see our honeymoon hotel.”) And in the 1990s, Cormac McCarthy set his trilogy of “Border” novels there as well, infusing his writing with adventurous tales and tragic love affairs, some involving prostitutes.
But little that any of the writers or filmmakers came up with rivals today’s real-life spate of killings by men with no compunction about pulling the triggers on their automatic rifles as their drug gangs defy the authorities and fight for pre-eminence.
The naughtiness that used to give the border its flair seems innocent now. The prostitutes, hustlers and con men who once had free rein are, like everyone else, scared out of their wits. The easy smiles of Kerouac’s Mexican border guards, welcoming free-spending tourists, are giving way to fences and armed American soldiers.
And as this happens, longtime lovers of the border fear most for the back-and-forth itself — for the interchange, even if asymmetrical and exploitive, of poorer Mexicans and free-spending Americans that over the generations has, to some degree, fostered understanding between the two countries.
“The relationship that once existed between the two sides is broken,” lamented Luis Ituarte, who splits his time between Los Angeles, where he promotes the arts, and Tijuana, where he runs a cultural center. “There used to be so much mixing. Young people in San Diego would go for the night to Mexico. As a young boy in Tijuana, a night out in San Diego was something I did all the time. You got to know people on the other side.”
As the violence rises — on July 15, officials reported the first car bombing of Mexico’s drug war, in Juárez — tourism has flagged all along the border. Even the State Department forbids its own officials to drive through the border crossings. The latest State Department travel warning speaks of “large firefights” in broad daylight, of grenades being hurled and of highways blocked by outlaws.
Juárez and Tijuana, it notes, have been particularly deadly places for Americans. Other Mexican border towns are depressing shadows of their former selves, with boarded-up storefronts and “Se Vende” signs as common as prostitutes and offers of cheap Viagra.
Cecilia Balli, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin who grew up on the border, recalls how Charro Days, a holiday celebrating the common traditions in Brownsville, Texas, and the Mexican town of Matamoros, used to be a truly cross-border affair, with parades marching across the line.
The last one she attended, earlier this year, was guarded by heavily armed police officers on the American side, and most of the revelers gave up on the idea of crossing back and forth, because of the lengthy lines at the immigration office and fears of violence.
At the other end of the border, Friendship Park once connected San Diego and Tijuana and allowed residents on both sides to picnic together. It now is bisected by barriers that keep Mexicans and Americans well away from any contact.
Not all is dire. The big-name international brands that operate maquiladora factories continue to operate, taking advantage of free trade and cut-rate labor. And one can still find some art museums, fancy business districts and upscale housing developments along the border — where leaders have made special efforts to show that lawlessness is not always the rule. Tijuana, in fact, is planning a high-tech conference in October, with high-profile participants like Al Gore and Carlos Slim (and their bodyguards).
There is also some talk of addressing the sociological problems of border communities by doing things like building more soccer fields for wayward youth. Border experts cite the need for a “21st-century border,” one that uses technology to allow legal trade to flow while slowing the illegal transfers going both ways.
But as I cross back and forth at some of the border’s most troubled points, I find that even a journalist faces scrutiny going both ways. American authorities grilling those entering the United States wonder just what an American could possibly be doing south of the border in this climate. And entering Mexico elicits surprise as well from the American inspectors who now regularly stop southbound cars, looking for gun traffickers and money launderers.
“You sure you want to go down there?” one of them said to me recently.
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