Tijuana: assembly plant to zebra
Thursday, May 24, 1990
by Robert P. Laurence
The zebra-painted donkey -- perhaps a great grandson of original? --
still poses for tourists snapshots on Avenida de la Revolucion, but not much else is the
same in Tijuana.
New people, new businesses, new politicians, and a new sensibility have
all transformed the once-raucous border town into a bustling, ambitious big city -- the
second biggest on the West Coast of North America. Some of the results are seen in
"The New Tijuana," an illuminating one-hour special at 8 tonight on KPBS-TV,
Channel 15.
Produced by Paul Espinosa (who wrote the script with Frank Christopher)
and financed by a $230,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, "The
New Tijuana" offers little new for San Diegans who have been paying attention to
recent developments. It does, however, wrap up those events in a coherent manner and place
them in historical perspective.
Most interesting of all, actually, are the historical photos and movie
films Espinosa and his staff have dug up, beginning with a shot of a few wooden buildings
clustered around a wide patch of dirt - Tijuana at the turn of the century.
In clips from the 192Os, we see yanquis who headed south of the border
to find booze during Prohibition. In the 193Os, the young Rita Hayworth dances in a show
at the Agua Caliente race track's nightclub while movie stars William Powell and Carole
Lombard lap up cocktails and Jean Harlow strides about the golf course.
In the early 1940s, several American sailors are pictured with smiling
young Mexican women, and narrator Luis Valdez says delicately that they are "seeking
a temporary diversion from the rigors of military service."
A scene or two later, he speaks more frankly of Tijuana's "gaudy night clubs, live
sex shows, drug dealers and prostitution."
Always, it seems, Tijuana has specialized in providing Americans and
other foreigners with what they could not, or dared not, buy at home. Its main commodity
bas been the poverty of its people.
In one fundamental way, that has not changed Much of Tijuana's new
financial resurgence, has been accomplished with the help of maquiladoras assembly plants
built by Japanese and American manufacturers taking advantage of the availability of cheap
labor. Wages average about $1.25 an hour, according to the film.
Espinosa in an interview admitted "that's sort of a liberal
figure." At that, the Mexican workers are earning significantly more than they could
in the villages where they once lived. So, their friends and families continue to migrate
to Tijuana from the countryside.
Cheap labor, Espinosa said, is "definitely the attraction of the
maquiladoras. That's true of all the border, of the whole runaway shop syndrome, with
American companies building assembly plants in Singapore and Hong Kong."
Tijuana, he said, has the additional advantage of being next to the
U.S. border, and close to American markets.
"Historically, and still in the present," he said,
"Tijuana has been providing for Americans on a certain level. There are more
televisions assembled in Tijuana than any other place in the world.
"And young Americans still go to drink there on the weekends. They
are looking to get things they couldn't get in the United States. There are still some
aspects of previous history, but it's not as sordid as in the 1920s and l930s."
Espinosa's camera explores the new shopping centers, the factories
where Tijuanans work, the new cities that have sprouted up on the outskirts of the city.
He interviews editor Jesus Blancornelas of the rebel newspaper Zeta, who discusses the
assassination of columnist Hector Felix, called "El Gato."
As Espinosa's cameras show, many of the managers, boosters and
beneficiaries of the maquiladoras are members of Tijuana's long-established aristocracy,
such as Alejandro Bustamante and Monique Estudillo.
Meanwhile, as he pointed out, most of the people who work at the
Levimex plant (owned by an American maker of electrical equipment) "have no
electricity in their homes."
All in all, the viewer is left wondering how much life has changed for
most residents of Tijuana, despite the glimmerings of new prosperity, the shiny face lift
given Avenida de la Revolucion (Tijuana's main street) and the recent election of
opposition politicians, such as Baja California Gov. Ernesto Ruffo, and Catalino Zavala,
elected to the state Legislature.
Asked whether the fortunes of Tijuana citizens have really improved,
Espinosa answered cautiously, "In a word, I would say yes -- but with a lot of
qualifiers. People feel that life in Tijuana is better than life was in the places they
left. They're enthusiastic about the promise life holds for them.
"They feel very optimistic about the prospects for getting
ahead."
Historically, he pointed out, "people have used Tijuana as a
jumping-off place" on their way to the United States. Now they arrive with plans to
stay.
An American evaluating progress in Tijuana, he said, has "to take
off the glasses you're used to looking through. San Diego is a relatively affluent
community in general. You cross the border and you're in a different world.
"There's no question there's a lot of poverty. But people who live
in conditions we feel are primitive feel their lives are improving.
"Tijuana is the recipient of an economic boom. The bottom line is
that jobs go begging all the time. If you want to work in a maquliadora, you can work in a
maquliadora. Every month, some new company is relocating."
Between tourism and the maquiladoras, Tijuana is bringing in American
currency to help Mexico pay off its foreign debt, Espinosa said. "Tijuana is in the
forefront of change in Mexico. What you see happening in Tijuana today is potentially what
could happen in all of Mexico in the next five or 10 years."