Memories: April 16th, 2014

Back in 2012 or 2013 I was working at NAP, a company dedicated to Taiwanese replacement parts for cars that were cheaper and of the same quality to whatever you found on the market, and it was during one of my late arrivals to the company that while in a taxi I had the chance of speaking with one of the taxistas libres which brought up and interesting yet disturbing story.

There is a difference here with how tax drivers work as we have two types. The first type is the route taxi which travels through a designated path, why or how they designed it the way they did is still unknown to me, which you pay a fixed amount for a specific distance; the second type is what I would call a free roamer, it can go wherever it wants as long as you pay up an amount that the driver and the passenger come to negotiate before starting the journey, why is that, because of how easy it is to alter the taximeter for it to overcharge you. This became an issue back somewhere in 2007 when Jorge Hank Rhon, then the municipal president of Tijuana, ordered a certain percentage of all taxi routes to change plates to free taxi which in turn came to be because of the ordinance delivered to all unions in Tijuana to change the old taxis to something inside the range of the 2000s, the photo below should explain why and yes, I did go into several of these back until they changed the units and I paid somewhere around forty American cents to get to school then another forty to get back where nowadays I pay a full dollar for each round but at least we travel in aerostars now...

Anyway, so it turns out I started a conversation with this guy somewhere in the early morning in which we started with the common subject which is if he has enough money to pay the rent, not his house rent but the taxi and this goes the same as well for all route taxis which have to pay a fixed amount of twenty to thirty American dollars per day or one twenty a week which may not seem as much but take note that the union does not pay for gasoline and in some very specific cases will they fix the taxi for them, depending if it is a formal union or only one patron, same thing for any fines and the like.

After that he comes up with an interesting conversation about this woman that he had picked up somewhere last week, that is last week from when I was speaking with him, and he told me that she was somewhere on her mid or late thirties but said, respectfully, that she was a beautiful woman which he in turn told to her while giving her a ride, this brought up a peculiar rant where she admitted hearing this not too often anymore putting into note that real men don't exist anymore. He said something along the lines of, yes, you are right, respect, meaningful relation, the whole nine yards, then she says, what, no, that's what is wrong with men nowadays, they want a relation where things are split in equal measure and equal opportunities, those are fags, real men don't come and ask you with can I or by pleading something, they come and demand things and you do it because there is a division between a woman and a man, each has different tasks, women stay in the kitchen and home while men do the hard work and bring money home, also let me tell you that when I started working I gave him all the money and if he came home drunk at three in the morning demanding to have something to eat right away and I didn't have it you can bet he would beat me up because it was his right as my husband, I never complained and I loved him but unfortunately he died a couple of years ago... I miss him and haven't found anyone like him since then.

Back then it stroke me as odd and alarming but a month ago, that is recently, I spoke with one of my professors who told me that Tijuana and Baja California in general is considered to be a reactionary state, if it is considered amoral because of all the bars, alcohol, prostitution and gambling then it should be put into question as to why it was really brought in, it was just a thing of the moment and it brought cash in when there was none but there was a problem as most of these, back in the early century, were controlled by Americans and had unions that would only allow Americans to work in such places because they wanted to avoid cultural shock with American patrons. Hard to believe that in a place like this, in which I always thought we were liberal, is actually quite the contrary and PAN, Partido Accion Nacional or National Action Party, which is a right wing catholic party that has been in control of Baja California since 1989 may be more than proof enough of this even if people would come to say that they rather have them and change something instead of keeping with the old party and their corruption... needless to say I am doubtful of their claims and to put even more the thing about Tijuana being amoral I remembered something really important, this state, Baja California, is one of the few states where we don't have riot police and that would be because we've almost never had any problems with protesters or rallies unlike the center or south of the country where there is at least one protest in Mexico City every single day.

Memories: April 12th, 2014

The last three days have been hectic, this “Encounter of Students” has drained me off and my health has been going up and down since the beginning of the week. While I enjoyed several of the subjects and met interesting people I had more time to reminiscence more about my past.

One of the things that came through was while we were talking about the culture here in Tijuana, a strange mix of the idea of the “American Way of Life” with the national project of “Mexican Ultra nationalism”. The peculiar thing about this is that I've heard stories about the first and second half of the 20th century here in Tijuana and some of the most important things to pop into mind are the Casino Aguacaliente, made by none other that Al Capone; the dollar as a common currency and the peso as an unknown device which was looked upon with indifference; the musical stage was invaded by sounds coming from LA and ideas from down south, another peculiar mixture that could have only happened here. A more personal experience happened to me back when I was 5 watching TV, there in the screen was the American flag and I kept wondering why this why on the TV and not here in our backyards or somewhere else, so I asked my Dad and he looks puzzled then checks the TV and sighs while explaining me that I was looking at Fox 6, an American channel which was on the other side of the border and that I should ignore this as it was not from our country, he also explained to me what our flag looked like and why it was bad to salute a flag that wasn't yours while at the same time respecting them for who they are and what they think. No, English didn't seem to bother me at that point and even if I didn't understand it fully back then I could switch back through both languages with ease even if I didn't quite get every word.

I continuously asked myself why, why was this wrong in the end, as I grew up I lived in a Mexican influenced home, because both my parents had lived for more than forty years in central and south Mexico, thus it was odd for them to watch me use slang belonging to Tijuana and speaking in English for absolutely no reason, my Dad never had an issue but my Mom made fun of me and said that I should stop fucking around and do things the right way, which also reminds me the time she almost beat me to unconsciousness because I couldn't understand how to write a couple of letters or because I was a slow learner at school, I may still have a scar or two from those days.

From a different perspective now I understand why decentralization in Mexico is such a big thing and also why people from Tijuana and Baja California identify themselves with the region they live in and not the country, hell most of us would rather be American citizens if the US intervened and took over Baja California, not only we wouldn't mind losing our Mexican nationality but we also wouldn't mind joining them in putting some order back to where there is nothing but the effort of those who dared travel into the region, the peninsula of Baja California. A note of interest, that puts more into the idea of what I'm talking about, is that Tijuana is the city that is the furthest away from the capital, that is Mexico City, so it doesn't strike me as odd to feel like this now that I understand all those little details I just couldn't figure out when I was younger.

Well pity, my identity is skewered and my idea of nationality had been fixed at one point and then completely destroyed as soon as I joined my career, my understanding of culture is confusing and if someone ever asked me what is it like to be a Mexican I would tell them I wouldn't know because I have not a single clue and neither could I tell them what makes a Tijuanense a Tijuanense even after living almost 25 years in this city.

Memories: April 6th, 2014

I am feeling very nostalgic today, how nostalgic, very nostalgic, bands that don't exist anymore whose members I once saw live at a gig or two some five or ten years, maybe even twenty, then looking at pictures and quizzes that bring up mostly bad memories... I hate going back that far in time but the nostalgia even though it brings pain and sorrow it also brings back curious afterthoughts.

One of those examples that comes real quick is that old Trojan Horse at the San Ysidro International Border. The thing was built out of wood, which kind I don't know, with enough open spaces in between every carved piece of wood to be able to look inside the horse in case people tried to play funny with the thing and hide something inside of it like a bomb although more “official” sources would come to say that this is because of the transparency on the exchange between the two nations. This horse, with wheels, was parked exactly in the middle of the delimitation of both countries with one head looking towards the US and the other head looking towards Mexico. Figured it out yet? Yeah, the thing had two heads which I think meant something about the continuous interconnectivity we had and the duality we face in this specific region, the dualism face here has built a whole different concept which is foreign to the outsiders and in turn is chauvinistic in its existence trying to justify itself. This horse was there from the late 90s up until the early 2000s I believe. I do wonder where the horse is though...

 

 

What about crossing the border? Meh, once you do it once and get through the whole rush of going to a different country it gets old and tedious. Important fact about this is that the San Ysidro International Border is the most used border in the world, Wikipedia would go on to state that annually 350 million people cross it, so you can get a slight idea of how boring it is to be there for up to four hours, sometimes even more, during a slow day and at best one hour while back in the early 90s you could cross mostly relatively easy but yet again thirty minutes was the average wait time back in the day. Speaking of that I remembered being part of a group that ICBC, that is the Institute of Culture of Baja California, that let people borrow books while they were crossing the border which the idea of giving them something to do, something that would educate and nurture them the intellectual way, and it worked like a charm yet again because you are sitting for hours while waiting to cross and I recall people coming out of their cars, which is pretty common too, to get another book or asks us if we could sell them the book, no, no we couldn't because they weren't ours but it was still mighty fine of them to tell us this as it meant that the project was working fine.