Tijuana Gringo – (Third? Version)

February 2002.

Several years ago, before he met his personal firing squad, Michael took a last class at City College: Mythology. The final week of lecture, their prof – who was given to flights of discourse – challenged those students to re-enact the journey of Theseus through his landscape of thieves and murderers, to walk all the way to Athens, where destiny waited.

"But you don’t need to go back to ancient Greece, three thousand years ago, no! Right here in our own San Diego backyard we have an equally dangerous landscape, wild and threatening as the path Theseus followed, a wilderness where gangs of bandits rape, murder, and steal, then pay bribes to police and army to leave them alone. If you walk there, they will rip you from everything you own, hurl your body off the edge of the cliff, and let you fall down the mountain to the barren desert floor."

Doctor Peralta paused, glancing across the faces of his students. Without raising his hand, Michael spoke, "You’re talking about the border."

"Yes!" Peralta pointed at him, "I am! But exactly where on this border? What is the almost mythical name of that dangerous zone?"

Michael pondered a moment. The professor glanced around his class. Other students were silent. Then Mike remembered the word. "La Rumorosa," he said.

"Exactly!" The prof exclaimed, turned, and wrote the name in capital letters on the blackboard, "RUMOROSA – regard this word well, ladies and gentlemen, see how even the name itself echoes with power and mystery. Fijanse bien, rumor, rumored, rumorosa, that noise of struggle and grief rumbling in the distance... like when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, just as old Jesus said, eh? La Rumorosa. This is our own mythic land of bandits and danger."

Professor Peralta drew himself up and swept his hand across the small lecture hall, "If any of you dare to walk that landscape, to go on foot across a hundred miles from Tijuana to Mexicali, and if you survive... then you will have created your own mythological journey, you will become another Theseus, and conquer the procrustean bed of iron."

This time Michael raised his hand. Peralta arched an eyebrow ironically at that sign of respect. "Yes, Mike? Are you volunteering?"

Nervous laughter buzzed on the class’s lips.

"No, not exactly."

"Oh? Well... what?"

"It seems to me, professor, that you have eloquently given voice to your own quest. A noble and difficult – although perhaps foolhardy – challenge to walk the California-Mexican border and pass through its dangerous heart at la Rumorosa. But... if any of us were to embark on the hero’s journey Joseph Campbell speaks of, then we must each find our own quest, hear our own call, and follow our own path, not necesarily yours."

"Ah," Peralta smiled, "you have done your reading, eh? But what, then, may I ask, is your dream quest?"

Michael cleared his throat, answered, "Forget the bandits in the wilderness. I want to go straight to Athens, live with its rulers, and learn – from their own lips – their history and culture and language."

Now the professor frowned, rubbed his neck, "But you don’t mean Athens, Greece, do you?"

"No. I dream of nothing less than living at the heart of the other which has boomed on our doorstep: the huge, new megalopolis of Tijuana."

Dr. Peralta laughed, "Ah, yes. Tijuana. Another name of mythical proportions – a name far more famous than la Rumorosa. Tijuana – the veritable nexus of another culture-world, exploding right here on your own Anglo frontier." He shook his head, "Ah, Michael, good luck... for luck is exactly what you will need. To meet the true rulers of your Athens, to know when to listen, what to say, what not to say, and what words to bring back into your own English-speaking world. For that is the end of the hero’s quest, no? To return from the other world, to his own, bearing the boon, the gift he has received from the other."

"Yes. That is what this is."

"And so long lives this, these lines give life to thee, verdad?"

"Eh. Something like that."

"Bueno, vaya con Dios, Miguel."

"Gracias...."

My great-grand-aunt Juana Lugo de Arguello lived her last years with my parents and my brothers and me, here in our house on Calle Cuarta, across from the park. I was their only daughter – I’m sure that’s why old aunt Juana singled me out as her favorite. That, and because I was named after her. Yes.

Ah, Miguelito, those years before she died she could not walk much at all, but she used to sit in the kitchen and help my mother with the cooking, a pinch of this, a bit of that, and no, a few minutes more, yes. My parents said in her day my aunt Juana was a truly great cook. That people came from miles and miles to eat in her kitchen. When my mother left the room, great aunt Juana would keep one eye on the stove and start to tell me stories. She would forget things that happened last week or last year, but remembered events from eighty years before as if it were yesterday. She was 98 when she passed to her glory in 1933. I was only twelve.

Now it’s my turn to get old, eh? Eh. But I remember the things she told me when I was a girl, even though I have trouble remembering when I met you last year... yes, that’s right, you’re right, it was when you helped me across the street and it turned out you knew the taxidriver who was honking at me to get out of his way and then he actually apologized when you called him a bus – un "camión". Ja ja ja that was qué barbaro, muy chistoso, no? Sí. And then, what was it... oh yes, that’s right, thank you, it was Carlos the chef who re-introduced us a few weeks later when I went to his catering kitchen with my niece to talk about her daughter’s baby shower. Yes. Thank you; you see what I mean? Time creeps up on you until today is nothing, but yesterday sticks on the mind like glue.

My great aunt was the same. Remembered her childhood and youth better than today’s shopping. She was from an old frontier family – her great-grandfather came north as a young soldier with the de Anza expedition of 1799, his daughter married a hard-drinking sailor out of Boston looking for his fortune in Mexican California, and their oldest son – who fought bitterly with his father – went north, took only his mother’s name, and managed to get ahold of a Russian girl who ran away from Fort Ross. Married her, even though they said she did not love him. My great-grand-aunt Juana was their oldest child – they had three girls before the mother died, and at nine years Juana had to take over the household duties.

She was eleven years old in 1846 when the United States invaded Mexico and defeated Santa Ana – partly because of his mistakes and monstrous ego – you would think that caudillo would have learned something from losing Texas ten years before, no? No. The U.S. army occupied Mexico City, and forced us to sign a peace treaty giving up California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. You know your history, no? Yes.

At the time, Juana, her father, two sisters, and an Indian servant were living in San Diego, in what your people now call Old Town. A little village surrounded by miles and miles and miles of open land. Wild Indians in the mountains. What, Michael? No, their house isn’t there any more – it crumbled away long ago and has some tourist restaurant or another built on top of its melted adobe ruins.

Her father and his brothers all hated their father, and opposed the American invasion. One of her uncles was wounded at San Pasqual battle, and they decided to leave, to go back to Mexico. Then Juana’s father found work for himself and his brothers with the mayordomo on the rancho Tijuana, most of which now lay south of the new border line. The three men were good riders and excellent vaqueros – what you call cowboys, eh? Juana’s father also had a head for figures, and all three spoke English – if they had to – the one and only good inheritance which came from their yankee father – who had by now died after a cantina brawl in Santa Barbara with some other sailors. It was Juana who taught me to speak your language. So if you can’t understand me, just ask, and I will try to explain in English, okay? Okay.

My aunt Juana used to joke that she was the original "tia Juana" – the legendary lady who people say used to make food for all the travelers who stopped at the rancho on the way from San Diego to Ensenada during the Baja California gold rush. But then, she also told me that she knew perfectly well that the name of Tijuana was already much older, and no one knew what it really meant – only that it was originally the name of an Indian village which the priests from mission San Diego used to visit – I’ve heard it was somewhere near the country club, between the hot springs and the hills. Maybe the missionaries gave it the name Tijuana, maybe not. Then after the missions were closed by the Mexican government, the name got transfered onto the rancho Tijuana, which stretched along the river valley and up into the hills. Whatever, there probably was no "real" tia Juana, but there have been plenty of aunt Janes, yes, so it was easy for people – especially you gringos – to confuse the two, even to tell each other that my aunt Juana was the real one.

The rancho Tijuana was owned by the Arguello family – cousins of my aunt Juana’s husband Javier – but she didn’t know him yet. Met him later, after the war, when her family moved here onto the rancho and began to work and live on the land.

My aunt Juana learned to ride like a boy when she was young. It was necessary for everyone in the family to be able to do so – especially the three girls as they had no brothers and the uncles never married. Juana often rode out to wherever her father and his brothers were working, taking them food for their mid-day meal – el almuerzo. Many times she also carried her father’s paperwork back and forth – or brought messages from the stagecoach which he might have to answer. That was how she met her husband Javier. He was one of the young men of the Arguello family who were working and keeping an eye on the ranch and on the Indian cowboys. Their courtship began simply enough – talking over those lunches in the countryside, under her father’s or uncle’s watchful eye.

Later, on Sundays, they took to riding together, after prayers in the ranch house. Sometimes they would go picnic by the hot springs – agua caliente. This was long, long before the casino and hotel were created there in the 1920s – even some 30 years before the first wooden bathhouses were built during the land boom of the 1880s, when San Diego went crazy and started building paper cities everywhere. It was always a magical place, those hot springs. To the Indians the waters were sacred, a holy, healing gift from the earth to mankind and the animals. Agua Caliente sits right in the bend of the valley, where the river squeezes between the opposite sets of hills, like in a doorway between two huge open valley spaces. My grandson is a geologist – he says that there is a crack in the earth, deep underground, where boiling water seeps up from the roots of the world. Yes, he is somewhat a poet, like you, no?

There were hot springs on both sides of the river – the biggest (and most famous) were on the south, where the ruined swimming pool still sits on the grounds of the Cardenas educational complex. That empty pool and the minarete chimney are all that is left from the casino and hotel – except for the old bungalows beyond the school buildings. No, no one bathes there anymore. Those springs are all shut down. Wells and pumps all over have sucked so much water from the ground that there’s practically no more pressure in the water table, or so my grandson says. But there is still one place, across the river on the north shore, right above the head of the railroad bridge. A motel complex with the words Aguas Termales written on its walls. It has a bath owned by old Alejandro Borja. Yes, I knew him quite well. And his wife, who passed away just two years ago. I spoke briefly with her daughters at the masses. But I haven’t seen Alejandro since the big 100^th anniversary party for the city of Tijuana in 1989. Now there was a big fiesta! You should ask your friend Carlos about that – he made thousands and thousands of liters of pozole, and his family paid for it. What a party... you should have seen it, ay Miguel, it went on for two, even three days....

Where was I... oh yes, the hot springs. Well, the city has swallowed up everything around there now. But a hundred and fifty years ago it was all open countryside. The main springs, on the south side of the river, were just a big wet patch of sulphur-smelling mud and messy ponds surrounded by tufts of reeds and copses of scrubby trees. A mist from the hot water often hung in the air, filtering through the bushes and branches. My aunt said the place always seemed a little haunted – very exciting and moody for a young girl, you know. She enjoyed riding out there and picnicking nearby, watching the foggy wraiths twisting through the dwarf oak trees. What? No – they didn’t go swimming, not then. My aunt was a young lady, she would never do such a thing – it was a little scandalous that she went there with Javier – even with an uncle or one of the Arguello wives or sisters to chaperone. But... after they were married, well, they took to going there alone on their Sunday outings. She once whispered to me, in English, which our domestica didn’t understand, that her first child was conceived there on a blanket stretched out under the trees, in the late afternoon, three weeks after their wedding.

They had stayed very late – the golden sunbeams angled down through the branches, casting strange shadows through bits of fog that rose off the warm water and floated toward the hillside. Not too far away, their tethered horses nibbled on the fresh spring grass, and a little further on, a cluster of cattle muttered. The everpresent herds of cows were another reason why they didn’t go swimming – cattle always messed up the ground around the springs – the beasts liked the shade, even though they didn’t drink much of the sulphur water, preferring the fresher taste of ponds dug down in the river bed. No, people didn’t swim there much until the first bathhouses were built and fences put up to keep the beasts out. But... it seems to me she said the Indians still went there... that there were some old tubs sitting around, almost like watering troughs with a bucket you could fill... or was that later? Sigh. Somethings I remember her telling so clearly, others, not.

Well, then... two ranch dogs had ridden out with them that day. Juana and Javier knew if anyone came, the dogs would hear and give warning. And it was good to be alone together. That Sunday, not even a month after their marriage, very fresh in their new passion, savoring their solitude on a day when no one had to work, they made love several times, secluded in the trees, on their blanket, guarded by the two dogs. Later, as they rested before packing up to return to the ranch house, my great-grand-aunt felt something change inside her, and she told me she knew, then, that day in 1857, that her first child had just been conceived. Joaquin Javier Arguello Lugo. She always called him Aguito – little boy-water. She never told anyone why, until years later, when she told me, whispering in the kitchen while I was watching the caldo and the beans. Everyone thought she called him that because his birth was so easy – like a drink of water.

I knew him, of course – my tio Aguito – we all called him that, but most never knew the real reason why. He eventually married an Arellano girl and they had many children and grandchildren – who are spread all over Tijuana. Some of them even went away to Mexico City, poor things. Others, well... no, I won’t tell you that... there are some things you should not write. No.

They call it the golden age of tourism, yes? What, Mike? Who calls it that? Dude, los historiadores, the historians, they call it the "golden age." Why? Because that’s when all the gold came to T.J.! Ha! No, seriously, because during those years, between the opening of the Panama Canal and the closing of the Casino, roughly the late teens, the twenties, and the early thirties, Tijuana experienced its greatest and most glorious boom in tourism. Later on, during World War Two, we had the silver age, so to speak, with all the sailors and soldiers. That kind of lingered on into a bronze age of Korea and Vietnam.

And now, well, now we want the family tourist in the daytime and for the weekend, but we still get the 19-year old drinkers at night. We want business and factories, and we have them – more televisions are put together here than anywhere else in the world, but... the workers make only sixty, maybe seventy dollars a week, and work long and hard. Still, it’s work, eh? Better than begging or whoring on the street.

Yeah, thanks, I’ll have some more. Coffee’s good here, eh? Eh. So, well, the golden age then. I suppose the biggest thing was the years when your country had prohibition. La famosa ley seca – the dry law – the Volsted Act, it was actually a whatayacallit – ¿como se llama? – an amendment to your U.S. constitución, no? Yes.

The ley seca came on the heels of other laws in California and your northamerican union, laws that made card gambling illegal. Laws that regulated or outlawed horse racing. Laws against prostitution. And finally the drop that overflowed the glass – the prohibition of alcohol – that really did it! Imagine, all those thousands and thousands and thousands of thirsty yankee gringos, over there in San Diego and up in Los Angeles, they could either find some bootlegger who probably smuggled his liquor in from Mexico anyway, or they could have themselves a little vacation, drive on down the new cement coast highway through San Diego to the border, and cross over into Tijuana for a real trip to Mexico and a lot of good drinking, gambling, horse racing, shopping and whatever. Of course they all had to eat, and... do you know, the U.S. border gate used to close at night and people would be stuck here, and one weekend every hotel room was full and the town practically ran out of food! People were backed up at the gate sleeping in their Model-Ts and whatever. Almost as bad as in the workday mornings today after the terror war has started. Or so they say. One never knows about stories like this... you know the one about old aunt Jane, eh? "Tia" Juana? Yes, one simply doesn’t know what is mythically true and what is truly false, eh? Eh.

So they came here – all your thirsty countrymen – tus paisanos – hungry for drink, they came in the first golden wave of tourism. It lasted almost twenty years, from the First World War right up into the depression. They brought their gold with them, yes, in those days both countries still used real gold – and much more silver – in the money. Of course you must remember it got so that nobody here in Tijuana had any pesos at all, no, every exchange in every store and business was done in dollars. Puro dolar. No habia nada de moneda mexicano. Well, yes, there are plenty of pesos now, yes, ever since the oil boom and then the shocking devaluations of the 70s and 80s and 90s, well, but you know everyone still uses dollars. Hasta cualquier taxista o dependista – until any taxidriver or store clerk knows like automatically how many pesos equal how many dollars, and a lot of cash registers have the exchange rate programmed right in, fresh every morning and night, you push a button and click – blink – your price converts into dollar – flash – at the speed of electronic light.

But I’m getting away from... where was I...? Oh yeah, the golden age. Fíjate, man, they came, especially with money from Hollywood – and you know they still do – why just last year I saw what’s his name from Star Trek – commandante Wil Ryker – you’re a fan, what’s his actor name? What? Jonathan Frakes? Whatever, I saw him, man, I tell you he was listening to mariachi over in Carnitas on the boulevard. That was the night InSite had some art performance at the wrestling lucha libre. And check this out, Mike, did you know Marylin Monroe used to get dresses made here in Tijuana? Yeah, I swear, man, te lo juro que me corto un huevo si no te digo la verdad, man, you know who says he saw her? Your landlord Carlos, ask him, man! When he was a kid she came to the seamstress that used to live next door to his grandmother’s house, where he lived with his parents. Yeah. Hey, does he ever give you any of his food, maybe even leftovers from those parties he does? Mmm. Once, when he was dating my cousin, we were sitting around his kitchen visiting and he gave us each a plato de chiles enogados... one each, and damn! It was GOOD! That was the day he said he saw Marilyn Monroe several times, right there on Third in front of the park.

Yeah, but that was years after the golden age, wasn’t it? ‘Course I don’t remember any of that – prohibition or anything – that was even before my father’s time – but I’ve studied it and written about it. Even been multiple times up to the Baja California archives at UCSD. You know I’m doing my disertation on local history. What’s my thesis... oh, well, the whole boom-and-bust cycle that keeps repeating over and over in Baja California. The gold rush in Ensenada in the 1870s, the golden age of tourism in the 1920s, and now this whole maquiladora thing... which kind of scares me, since now we have such problems going back and forth across the line after your September Eleven tragedy. Except that now your side depends as much on our consumers as we do on yours. That’s globalization for you.

No. It’s not as simple as it was, back in the golden age, eh? Back then, you just put down your nickel at the world’s longest beer bar – the original la Ballena – and you got a big glass of beer. Of course there were other cantinas, too, and souvenir stores. Or if you were into something more high class, you went a block up the street to the fancy Foreign Club – mostly only rich white people there, speaking English, or course – you want to talk about neocolonialism, eh? Or for the ultimate in swank, after 1927 your really rich visitor with gold to melt and money to burn could just head on out the new cement boulevard, leaving old Tijuana behind, winding along below the empty hills for a couple miles, not too far, but in those days definitely out of town, out in the fields and open land – back then Tijuana was only a small town, nothing more than the few dozen blocks of what is now downtown, the centro. So, back then, you drove on out the new Bulevar Agua Caliente, until you got to the private air strip where growling single or double or trimotor propeller luxury planes from Hollywood would touch down, and you turned left under the moorish tower arches and drove downhill toward the Agua Caliente Hotel and Casino.

Sigh. Palace of dreams, temple of drinks. Casino. The baths, the dining rooms, the gilded gambling salons, ballrooms, patios, courtyards, gardens, golf course, private airport, race track, luxury hotel, bungalow villas, all of it done in Moorish Spanish tile,
with a driveway that stretched over a mile, yes, Mikey, the Casino was definitely something else. It was huge, just the expanse of land... you know the country club... that’s still out there along the boulevard, below the rich houses in Chapultepec? Yep, that’s right. That was the resort golf course. Just the golf course.

And further along, the hipodromo – that famous Caliente racetrack that now only runs dogs... yes, you guessed it, that was first built as the race track for the Casino, yes. And right there where the boulevard divides in front of the twin glass skyscraper towers, symbols of our "new Tijuana?" Yeah, that big oval stretch of blocks between the one-way sections of the boulevard – well, that piece of land used to be the airstrip. Uh-huh. And they still call that neighborhood – you know what – Aviación! Yep. Dude, it was a monster, stretched out across a swath of real estate. A little city of palaces scattered between orchards and vinyards and open fields. Of course it had its own train station. Power generators. The Moorish tiled minarete – one of the few things left – was nothing but the chimney!

You should see the old photographs. The gardens and patios, the baths, and the Golden Salon... the main gambling hall...with its adjoining nightclub where top acts of the west coast would entertain the silent movie stars from Hollywood....

I tell you, Miguelito, that place was lifted up to welcome the roaring twenties, and it – the Casino – ruled the golden age of old Tijuana. It was the chief of crown jewels and the prize of bourgeois bosses who gathered and wallowed in its stream of shining gold and gleaming silver coin from Hollywood and all that world. Laurel & Hardy both came, saw, and spent. Charlie Chaplin. And so many, many others....

Of course, its official name was Agua Caliente Touristic Complex, but everyone just calls it all with that one word: the Casino, although technically that name really only belonged to just one of the vanished buildings.

Eh? What happened to it? Well....