Border Battles on “On the Media”

"Miss Lucy" by Kinsee Morlan

I was happy to hear the voice of KPBS border reporter Amy Isackson and Tijuanapress.com reporter Vicente Calderon on one of my favorite NPR shows, On the Media, last week. They deserve some recognition for the map of the recent murders and the coverage they’ve done on Tijuana’s drug wars. But again, I have to offer my unsolicited opinions and advice because the pat on the back is partly congratulatory but mostly an encouragement to keep going and to go deeper and possibly  in a different direction:

1. Advertise Tijuanapress.com to the people of Tijuana. No one knows about its existence.  Is it for the people of Tijuana or what?

2. Focus on stories that would bring about a solution.  The guns are coming from the U.S. right?  Let’s focus on that.  The demand is coming from the U.S., right?  Let’s talk about how U.S. policies toward drug use need to change. Let’s talk legalization. Let’s talk change.

3. The people want the violence to stop. They even mentioned a pact with one of the drug cartels.  Let’s talk about that. What are the options, however strange and unconventional those may be?

Asshole Americans

"Hussong's Mariachi Man" by Kinsee Morlan

I just had to delete a comment that said this:  “No one cares about Tijuana. Fuck you.”  Sadly, this is a sentiment I sometimes feel 90 percent of the United States population would agree with.

An insignificant percentage of people who do care, though, came down for my birthday this weekend.  We bought kitschy gifts for friends, had a wonderful lunch at Cafe La Especial on Revolucion and saw some art shows at Lui Velazquez and La Casa Del Tunel.

Here’s some of the visual  highlights:

The velvet curtain

"The Taco-shop Eco-dome" by Kinsee Morlan

I wake up every morning, drag myself out of bed, pull back my velvet curtain, part the venetian blinds and smash my face up against the glass so my blind eyes can see the outline of my green Honda Civic in the street in front of my Tijuana apartment.

My heart is always a little high up in my chest until I see the car. I’ve had my car broken into (San Francisco) and stolen twice (once in San Diego and once in Tijuana), so I pretty much never know what to expect and I’m always sorta shocked and relieved when I see my car still parked right where I left it.  My Club, I’ve been told, offers about as much protection as a security blanket.

With my heart sunken back down to its normal place in my chest, I continue my day like anyone else in any other city in any other country. I eat breakfast. Orally inject coffee. Say ‘buenos dias‘ to my neighbors if we happen to see each other in the entryway.

It starts getting a little different once I get into my car. I drive through the chaos and the mazes that are Tijuana’s streets and crazy roundabouts. I try to keep myself from laying on the horn for too long, ’cause as my neighbor has pointed out, “people are killing people in Tijuana.” If I don’t want to be killed, I should probably keep myself from crossing as many paths as possible.  I should remain a faceless piece of the city. Who’s to say that asshole in the red Jetta who just cut me off isn’t a hit man for the Sinoloan drug cartel anyway?

Then I get in line, and again, I try to keep myself from honking or yelling at the assholes who cut in line, but sometimes I can’t help myself. I try to keep myself entertained by watching the myriad of Mexican women applying 17 coats of mascara, magically, while steering with their knees and keeping one eye in the mirror and one eye on the road.

The border agents are usually pretty nice. Sometimes they forget whether they should be speaking English or Spanish. I like it best when they speak Spanish.

At night, the roads are always cleared by the time I’m heading back home from my job in San Diego. There’s hardly ever a wait at the border getting back in. Lately, there’s the Federalis to the left and the typical Tijuana police to the right. The soldiers look so young and the guns look so big. They search cars on both sides, but I almost always get waved through.  It pays to be a mujer in a machismo culture. I’ve said that before and I’ll say it again.

The potholes in Tijuana are probably bigger than the potholes in San Diego. There’s about 100 taco shops for every one in San Diego. There’s also about 200 farmacies for every one in San Diego. But other than that, and a few other things that I clump into the “more city life and culture” category (Tijuana’s smells, both good and bad, Tijuana’s vendors selling everything from flowers to nopales, and Tijuana’s colors, which are bolder and brighter than anything allowed in the U.S.) the city is just like any other city in the U.S.  Nobody tries to kill me on my drive home.

My fiance and I cook dinner. We eat dinner. Sometimes we listen to podcasts, sometimes we don’t.  Sometimes we read, listen to music, watch movies, and sometimes we don’t.  Maybe we’d go out more if we lived in a safer city, but something inside tells me that’s a lie.  I don’t think we’re informed enough to be that scared. We’re stil convinced we’re invinsible as long as we stay out of the drug war’s way.

I go to bed then wake up again, reaching for the velvet curtain.

The Federales take over the port of entry

"Nada que declarar"

I wish I had a better picture for you, but I don’t think the 18-year-old holding a gun nearly as big as him and barely able to see due to the creepy scarf wrapped around his face would appreciate me pointing a camera at him. In fact, there’s a good chance he’d mistake it for a weapon and that finger of his, which sits on the trigger of his ridiculously big gun, might twitch and mistakenly shoot me with a bullet while I was simply trying to shoot him with my digi cam.

The Tijuana police officers still control the San Ysidro port of entry to a certain extent — they’re still the ones stopping and searching people for the most part — but the federal military has stepped in and set up a little checkpoint where they do more detailed searches of cars.  Here’s a piece in El Mexicano detailing the change.

Crossing the border is a lot more nerve-wracking than it used to be. The federales make their presence known, and from what I can tell so far, they mainly pull over cars filled with Mexican men.  Women and whities seem to be off limits.

Water back, sorta, after two days of no water in hundreds of Tijuana colonias

Yeah, this morning I finally got to take a shower after two days of no water in 200 of Tijuana’s neighborhoods. Problem is, the pressure was about as forceful as a heavy trickle. Where the heck has all the water gone?

Border Battles

"The Dead" by Kinsee Morlan

KPBS, in partnership with Tijuanapress.com, just got done talking about their reporting project,” Border Battles,”  on this morning’s These Days episode.  While I commend their reporting and the impressive interactive maps showing  trends and locations of the recent Tijuana murders and violence, I can’t help but wonder; is this doing anyone any good?

Back when I worked at the local NBC affiliate, they informed me of a policy that said we were not to cover any murders or violence that could possibly be the work of gangs.  They said that when gang’s fight amongst each other, they often use the media as a tool to send messages to other gangs.  At one point, gangs even used the media for initiation practices (to be in a gang, you had to get your act of violence on the 5 O’clock news).

I had qualms with the policy because it seemed to me that almost any murder involving Blacks or Mexicans got ignored, due to a slight chance it might be gang related.  Basically, the policy is racist and results in media only reporting on deaths involving white folks.

But I can’t help but think of this policy when listening to reporters like Amy Isackson, KPBS’s border reporter, describe the dead bodies, decapitated, with their pants down.

That’s a message one cartel is trying to send to another, and media are broadcasting that message and playing right into the hands of the cartel.

The wider effect the media’s coverage is having on the city is broadcasting fear to the people of Tijuana, getting us to stay indoors and out of the way of the cartel. It’s also turning us into paranoid psychos. Tourism, too,  is down because of the violence, but it’s dropped to a ridiculous all-time low because that violence is being broadcast across the world.

I am a journalist, so I’m playing the part of the devil’s advocate a bit because I do think knowledge is power and knowing is ultimately much better than not knowing, but when cartel members do things like cut off tongues and heads and put bodies in barrels, they’re partly doing these things because they know their acts will be reported and delivered directly to their enemies, who will then retaliate in the same way or worse.

I don’t want reporters to stop reporting on the violence, I guess I’m just asking them to be careful and responsible. If five dead bodies of known cartel members are found, don’t waste an entire 500-word article or 15-second piece on it. Just tell us where, when, how many and move on.  Yes, it’ll be less interesting and sexy and it won’t sell as many papers or garner as many listeners, but it will tell people exactly what they need to know without broadcasting the messages cartel members are sending.  If innocents are killed, spend more time on that story.  Tell us how and why it happened and how we who live in Tijuana can possibly avoid it ourselves.

Another question my boyfriend and I have is this: How many innocents have been killed in the drug war?  The question was asked at the end of the episode and the Tijuana Press editor said at least nine, but probably more like 15.  But he then went on  to say that many of them have been family of cartel members, which, yes, technically, they’re innocent and it’s extremely sad an unfortunate, but it doesn’t help me or possible Tijuana tourists decide whether the violence is too dangerous to walk the Tijuana streets since those killings are obviously intentional and targeted.

I’m just frustrated.  I think we all are.

Adapta Project vs. SEZIO.org: Round 3

Jorge Tellaeche's newest work

The next Adapta vs. Sezio art show is opening at Cream, 4496 Park Blvd. in University Heights this Thursday, Dec. 11, from 6 to 10 p.m. Joel P. West is set to perform.

Tijuana children living in dumps

Fausto Gonzalez by Kinsee Morlan

*LETTERS FROM COLONIA FAUSTO GONZALEZ at UNA San Diego, 2171 Pan American Plaza, Balboa Park. The San Diego Young Professionals for International Cooperation reads letters from the children living in the Tijuana trash dumps at this holiday fundraising event. See website for details. At 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 9. 619-233-3970, www.responsibilityonline.org.
More from David Lynch (not the crazy director; the founder of Responsibility, a nonprofit that runs a school in the old TJ dump) below:

Tijuana Night @ Bluefoot Bar

Lux Boreal

The 4×4 experimental dance series at Bluefoot Bar & Lounge, 3404 30th St. in North park, continues next Tuesday, Dec. 9, at 8 p.m. with a night featuring Tijuanense dancers including Lux Boreal, Catelejo, Pendulo Cero, Beta Lab and others.

The series happens every first Tuesday of the month and asks performers to do a four-minute piece on a four-foot stage in the middle of a neighborhood bar.

La Bufadora versus the 37 dead in Tijuana

"On the Walk to La Bufadora" by Kinsee Morlan

What do you do when the city you live in is in total disarray and violent chaos?  Do you hide inside? Do you put padlocks on your door?  Do you buy a bat or a gun and hope you’ll never have to use them?  And even if you don’t really believe in God, do you pray that the week’s reported dead won’t be you or anyone you know?

While 37 adults and children, both guilty and innocent players in the drug war, were killed over the weekend, I was in Punta Banda, a tiny farm and fishing town located about 30 minutes south of Ensenada, at a beautiful house on a private stretch of beach that seemed to go on forever.  While the rain poured down, my visiting family, my new fiance, my Tijuana neighbors and I gathered around a table inside, played stupid board games, ate entirely too much food (my fiance and I provided the mole and poblano chile sweet potato enchiladas, the recipe of which I’ll post soon since they were such a hit!) and laughed, sometimes, like when my own lovely mother revealed her surprisingly sick sense of humor in a board game called “Bubble Brain,” until we cried and gasped to get air between chuckles.

The day trip to La Bufadora, which sits at the end of the penisula, proved to be fun, but the Bufadora itself isn’t as grand as the tourism ads would lead one to believe. In fact, I liked walking through the Mexican market and being harrassed by the vendors more than I liked watching the water spurt out from between the rocks.

The walk to La Bufadora is a fun one.

The mariachi guitar player who was hanging out at the overlook at La Bufadora was a nice touch, but I had envisioned a huge geyser rather than just the modest squirt we saw last week.

As the spray from La Bufadora rains down, a mariachi guitar player makes pretty music.

Drinking the magical margaritas at Hussong’s, the actual birthplace of the margarita, led to a fun night in Ensenada that ended with dancing at some kid’s birthday party in the wreck of a room that is the famed Papas & Beer bar.  Shopping in Ensenada the next day was fun, too — my dad found a nice leather vest and my sister bought a $5 Mexican blanket — but when the store owners found out I lived in Tijuana, their responses were annoyingly all the same.

“Ug,” they’d say.  “Tijuana is dirty and dangerous.”

I always argue when I get this response, so I kept up the routine and tried to convince them otherwise. How was I to know 7-year-olds were being shot while I was convincing people’s of Tijuana’s worth and looking through cheap silver rings?

Anyway, I haven’t read all the news reports yet because that’s all they are: reports.  Nothing I’ve seen so far offers any sort of explanation as to why the nephew of Baja California’s tourism secretary was shot.  Is the secretary involved with the drug cartel?  Is he involved with the police who are fighting the drug cartel?   Is the drug cartel trying to send the world-at-large a message, meaning, do they want us to completely stop all tourism??

And on that note, the six college kids who were shot at the Bar Utopia in Otay Mesa, were they meant to be killed: Reports say they were lined up before they were shot, which would make it seem as though they were the intended targets, is that the case?  If not, is the bar a known drug-cartel hot spot?  Were the kids family members of cops or cartel members?  Was this some sort of message?  Should we stop going out altogether?

This morning, I heard from a neighbor that the shooting at the Cinemax Plaza in Otay Mesa wasn’t actually related to the drug wars at all.  He said the guy who was killed was a known pedophile and the killer used the city’s violence as an excuse to walk into a public movie screening and shoot the guy, execution style, point blank in the head.  Is that true?  I have no idea, because no one is giving us any explanations for the violence.  We’re just left to assume that every death in TJ these days is somehow related to the drug cartel turf battle.

In the meantime, I suppose I’ll just go on doing what I’m doing.  Next post will be about the wonderful time my sister, fiance and I had wine tasting in the Guadalupe Valley. I feel somewhat senseless, heartless and straight-up silly for saying so, but, really, what else can I do?