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(continued)
Driving along Revolución tonight, I can see little of what made this street so infamous. Even during the day, the shops lining the street selling the ceramic Bart Simpsons and Velvet Elvises are closing, going out of business; the zebra-painted donkeys, the Tijuana tourist icon, hang their heads, asleep. The hawkers and hucksters have abandoned their famous hard sell. These days, they practically plead for business. The other day, one beseeched me, “Quit just walking, have a margarita, buy something!”
It’s because the tourists and the teenagers, the American drinkers and hard-up sailors just aren’t coming to Tijuana any longer. The stories of the violence in the city keep them away. A procession of bullet-riddled bodies, headless bodies, bodies dissolved in drums of acid, gruesome images of horrific brutality flicker across living room T.V.’s every night. Daily headlines scream “A Dozen Dead Dumped near a School Yard,” or “Couple Executed” or “Man Killed in Crossfire.” The effect on the partiers and revelers is obvious: they just stay home.
The murder rate in Tijuana has crescendoed, with more than 600 people killed so far this year, but this extreme of violence is only now reaching the level of American cities like New Orleans or Philadelphia or Dallas. And like those American cities, the danger to tourists is really very low. The mayhem making the headlines here in Tijuana isn’t directed at tourists or even the average Tijuana citizen--this is gangland-style turf war with gun battles between rival gangs and police. But here, unlike the violent cities in the U.S., there are no “bad neighborhoods,” no particular areas you know to avoid. In Tijuana, most of the murders occur in middle- and upper- class parts of town. Gunbattles can break out anywhere, at any time of day or night. The violence strikes like lightning and while those who live in the city know that the odds of being hit by an errant bullet are astronomically remote, you feel those odds whittle away, pared down every time you go out—the odds were a million to one, then a million to two, then three, then four, until over the weeks and months you begin to feel the odds tipping away from you and you change your behavior, you stay home, you worry.
The thing is, for the people who live here, there’s more than just the fear of being shot in gangster crossfire. The risk of kidnapping, being snatched out of a restaurant or from your car and beaten, starved and tortured for a few thousand bucks, haunts the average middle- or upper- class Tijuanan. Stories abound today of banditos bursting into upscale restaurant, or nightclubs, or theaters, and grabbing a convenient victim. So many people simply refuse to go out; they are imprisoned by fear in their homes. At the Antigua Bodega de Papel, the restaurant where we had dinner earlier, we’d easily gotten a table on a Friday night. Antigua Bodega anchors the southern end of Revolución and salsa maestro El Gume used to pack the place on weekends with crowds of dancers and partiers from all over the city. El Gume still comes, but the people don’t. In fact, all the restaurants I visited, often bustling during the day, sat largely empty at night. Many affluent Mexicans have simply left town, moving across the border to the San Diego suburbs. Areas like Eastlake in southern San Diego County have become little ghettos of wealthy Tijuanans with shops and restaurants imported whole and intact from across the border. Some Tijuana restaurants, like Romesco, have cloned and relocated themselves a few miles north of the line. On the night I ate at Romesco in San Diego, mine was the only table speaking English. At the other tables, jacket-and-tie-wearing men and formally dressed women murmured Spanish under the soft strum of a musician’s guitar. Mexican nationals all, I’m sure; exiles, many of whom, no doubt, commute to jobs in Tijuana by day and return to the relative safety of San Diego by night.
That the restaurants sit empty is no insignificant thing. These restaurants were the pride of Tijuana. Its Baja Cuisine movement, fresh local seafood, beef--lots of beef--quail and pheasant, the crocodile tacos and corn fungus enchiladas, agave worms and Chapultepec--grasshoppers—put Tijuana on the world culinary map But while the high-end restaurants suffer, the mom-and pop-taco shops, torta stands, and hot dog carts catering to a more diverse clientele still plod along. You feel a little safer eating on a street corner, I guess, out in the open, as counter-intuitive as it sounds. There, you eat on your feet, obscured at least partially by the thick wafts of charcoal smoke, escaping the eye of would-be kidnappers. There’s something comforting about the dark of night, too; step back from the light of the cart and you disappear into darkness. The hot dog carts are a late night experience anyway, materializing in front of bars and night clubs in the wee hours, the cook’s disembodied face floating in the green glow of his propane lamp.
(conclusion on page 4) |
