The city changes and I feel
nostalgia, I am starting to understand why it becomes such a big thing when one
grows up and sees everything slowly change or go away, Tijuana is changing at a
fast rate, there are medium sized buildings showing up everywhere around the
west side of the city, the place where I grew up has most houses building a
second floor or fixing it to a more modern standard, the old fad of imported
cars is almost gone, people are driving newer cars but the streets are becoming
full, even the highway is starting to look too packed for a city that was never
intended to grow this big, downtown is also changing fast, the old 90’s
downtown of two dollars for one beer is going out, most buildings have mysteriously burnt down and being
replaced by larger buildings that can take up half a block, Plaza Rio is
getting a five story parking section when twenty five years ago you would not half
of the original floor parking full at any given time.
One thing that has not
changed, even if newspapers don’t talk too much about it, are the violent crimes
in this city, from the late 80’s to this date it has been a common occurrence, the
level of gore and explicit sadism became something that headlined newspapers
during one of the most violent waves of crime from 2008 to 2010.
Why all of this? Because
the city, this country and Mexican culture have shown me that death is an
everyday thing and I have become somewhat desensitized.
The first time I saw
someone die was in 2004, I was going to work and dropped near Plaza Rio, when I
was about to cross from one side of the avenue to the other a man ran, all of a
sudden a Honda crashes with him as the man is running through the other side of
the avenue, the man flew a couple of meters, his shoes came flying out, I just
remembered that back in the 90’s I saw a lot of shoes hanging from wires around
the place where I lived and school, not sure why. So the person flew, shoes
off, he dropped and cracked his head wide open, I was about to run to drag him
but when I saw this I stood there, staring at the corpse, it didn’t take long
for an ambulance to come over and declare him dead on the spot, the man driving
the car had stopped and was horrified at what had happened, probably out of
shame, fear or any other reason but he remained there until they took the
corpse away and then the police took him away, I was late to work for about an
hour but I gave no explanation.
Some time later I was
going back from work, probably somewhere around 2008 or 2009, and I was walking
close to a taco stand that has been there since the beginning of time, the place
was empty, the street, everything was quiet, the guy serving was alone and
looked nervous, I asked him what was wrong and he said someone had been gunned
down just half a block away where a mechanics shop was, I asked him if someone
had called the police, he wasn’t sure and he wasn’t about to start doing so, I
asked for some tacos and walked to the place, metal doors had been shot through,
at least forty bullet holes, I could make a silhouette of what looked like a
body and what looked like bullets holes in the bricks at the end, I got back to
the taco stand and called the police from a payphone next to it, I didn’t give
my name, police came a couple of minutes later and were doing their thing, I
was eating tacos.
During that same period
I was working at a factory that was doing medical devices, I was in the IT
department and sometimes I would stay late to fix something that could
definitely not be fixed during normal hours, that day I was with a co-worker
who was finishing something else and we lingered for a while until we noticed
it being far too late, we moved out and found a group of production engineers
outside the plant who were having a smoke and coffee while chatting about some
pending items, we joined them for a while, then we heard it, rapid firing from
a couple of blocks away and a truck speeding away hauling ass, we also hauled ass
but for whatever reason we walked down to the main boulevard and there it was,
a police blockade and three police pickup trucks lined one against the other,
we had to go around and once we did we were in front of the police trucks, by
chance the blockade ended there and we were staring at eight corpses of police
officers, the gruesome scenario shocked us both, I can still remember one of
the police officers missing half of his head with everything splattered on what
was left of the back window, another officer was leaning against his door
trying to pickup something, probably his rifle, and was twisted in the most disheartening
way, I can still see the image in my head clearly, these people were living
human beings and regardless of who their were, their profession, if they were
clean or not, they were dead and had been left as terrifying sculptures to
prove it.
In another instance we
were returning to work from lunch, as we were going up hill from the same
street where we had previously seen the dead officers we saw a car crashed
against a light pole, the person inside was leaning on the steering wheel, the
person was obviously gone and it was not the crash, someone had got to this
person and crashing there had been the end result.
On the rare occasion when
I was at my desk someone noticed that there was a military truck down on some
of the houses below the industrial park, at first the military had done nothing,
some police officers were in the scene but were also waiting for something,
after a while the military went into a house in the middle of relatively empty
lot, we assumed that they were rescuing someone from inside the house, it took
them some time to get back out, once they did they came out with corpses
covered in white sheets, a lot of corpses, all being loaded into the military
truck, we never saw any hostages.
Another co-worker back
then was hanging with the wrong crowd, he was a good person though, recently
married, had bought a new motorcycle and was visiting this guy at his mechanic
shop, this guy in particular had worked with narcs and supposedly he was out of
it, but everyone knows that you can’t go out of this without paying a hefty
price, so our co-worker had gone with this person at the end of his shift on a Friday,
other co-workers were to join him but for one reason or the other they never
got there, from what we understand the person in question was not at the shop
that day, only his assistant, and our co-worker, some henchmen went into the
shop and started asking for the owner, the mechanic, and something about drugs
that were owned to their boss, long story short the assistant was burnt on the
backyard of the shop and our co-worker was shot thirteen times in the face, when
we were informed of his death and eventual funeral we thought it to be a joke
only to find him on the coffin a couple of days before Christmas.
A
friend, I knew him briefly, who made the original iron front logo for a metal
bar, El Divan de Alivia, that does not exist anymore, only in our hearts, but
this person had a heart of gold, this man would help anyone he could, a true
friend but a person with problems, with debts, his choice was eventually to go
do the wrong thing, apparently he was successful in his task but was shot in
the back of the head at the end of the heist, the owner of the bar knew
something was up but did not suspect that something like this was to happen, when
the funeral was done I did not attend because I felt I did not know him well
enough to be there, a lot of people went though, that’s just me.
