The San Diego's Reader
May 42, 1990
Tijuana on TV
by Jeannette De Wyze
Dear Francoise and Pierre,
Welcome to San Diego; please make yourself at home. I'm sorry I can't greet you personally.
You mentioned that one of the things you want to do is visit Mexico, which around here usually means Tijuana. Before you go, I recommend watching a program produced by our local public television station. Despite its title (The New Tijuana - ugh!), it moves fast and covers a lot of ground. It will give you a feeling for where our urban neighbor has come from, how much it has changed, and how quickly.
I was fascinated by some of the old footage. Rita Hayworth singing and dancing at the Agua Caliente Casino in its heyday; William Bowell and Carol Lombard gambling at the race track; Jean Harlow on the golf course. And even though I know Tijuana pretty well, I had forgotten one bloody historical footnote to which the program gives some attention. It explains how Mexican officials in 1980 cleaned the river zone of squatters by opening the city's dam and flooding out the shanty communities that had sprung up on the prime real estate. Some 90 people perished; some pretty fancy development has taken place since then.
Pay special attention to the section on the "El Florido" neighborhood, which has sprung up in the southeastern part of the city. This is the truest part of the whole show, a glimpse into an archetypal Tijuana community (a place about as different from Paris as anything imaginable!). You see Reyes Diaz, who arrived in El Florido four years ago, when the weed-infested land contained no streets and few other people. Diaz built a makeshift dwelling and found a job in a factory, but he could hardly support his family on the salary there. So he opened up a tiny grocery store that has since become one of the social centers of the "city within a city" that El Florido has become almost overnight. Diaz is still a poor man, but he recently was able to give his eldest daughter the traditional party celebrating her 15th birthday. He looks very content, at that party. If you could find your way off the main streets of Tijuana, you could meet Diazes by the hundreds.
Watch other parts of the program more skeptically. The announcer says Tijuana has two million people, "making it the second biggest city on thc West Coast," but one million may well be closer to the mark. You'll hear the pampered daughter of one old Tijuana's most aristocratic families declaring that all the city's problems are being fixed. The discussion of Tijuana journalism and politics also flows by swiftly and shallowly.
This program is no substitute for seeing and smelling and hearing the real thing. But it will help prepare you for that. It's scheduled to air from 8:00 to 9.00 p.m. today; Thursday, May 24, repeating at noon, on Wednesdav, May 30. (The producer says it probably will be televised nationally next fall.) Of course, you won't be here then. In the meantime, bon vacances!