The Daily Variety
The New Tijuana
Marking the 100th anni of its birth, Tijuana, second largest city on the West Coast (after L.A.), has changed its image considerably since its rowdy, sleazy days when U.S. citizens slipped over the border for whoopee. Docu out of San Diego's KPBS-TV takes a good measure of its growth.
"The New Tijuana" moves back in time with tinted drawings and 192Os film clips of the more notorious aspects of the town -- gambling, prostitution and, for Californians dried up thanks to the 18th amendment, a place to drink.
What the docu does not do, thankfully, is serve as a tub-thumper for the city of 2 million, swollen in population by immigrants from Latin-American countries as well as from foreign investors from, for the most part, the U.S. and Japan.
Instead, the city's colorful history, including the Agua Caliente gambling spa and the extreme poverty of those early days, is the center of the program.
The end of U.S. prohibition and the gambling shutdown didn't help Tijuana's finances in the 1930s. A reform movement in the 1960s closed down the joints. Without blinking, the program covers the woeful treatment of the river zone squatters banished from their shanties when the new dam's gates were opened.
A new, handsome center went up and, thanks to cheap labor, industries from abroad moved in. More tv sets are assembled in Tijuana than in any other place in the world.
The foreign-backed assembly lines have given the people work, no matter how little is paid. Areas like El Florido, barren land until recently, have blossomed so that the poor have settlements to live in.
Weekly independent newspaper Zeta, printed in the U.S. for safety reasons, lost a columnist when he was gunned down in 1988; the publisher-editor tells of the incident, and the hour moves on to look at Tijuana's political reforms.
For the first time in 60 years the governor and mayor have not been handpicked by the ruling Mexican power, and there's hope that others will see the light.
The worthy program was produced by Paul Espinosa, who wrote it with Frank Christopher, director of the hour. Luis Vajdez narrated the valuable, unsensational look at a city that's drastically changed its image from the days when Rita Hayworth and her father danced at Agua Caliente.
The hour has lots to say about the inhabitants and about the spirit. Tijuana, vigorous and optimistic, is coming into its own.