The beauty of Son Jarocho

Photo courtesty of Eduardo Garcia

It was at a gallery show — photos I think — at a cultural center in Tijuana.  After the perusing and wine drinking was done, a group of musicians took the stage and started stomping, playing miniature guitars, singing story-like songs in turn and keeping rhythm with what looked like a jawbone.

It was love at first listen.

I later learned that the style of music was called Son Jarocho, traditional music from Veracruz, Mex, and I’ve only had the chance to listen to the music one more time after that first experience, so let’s just say I was more than a little excited when I heard about the second annual Encuentro de Jaraneros event happening in this week: Sept. 4-6, in various locations throughout San Diego.  The official press releases are below, in both Spanish and English:

Violence in Chiapas?

This just came from the Schools for Chiapas camp, a nonprofit based in San Diego that helps build schools in rural southern Mexico:

“Violent Escalation Raises Fears in Chiapas
On August 29 and 30, 2008 Zapatista small farming families once again faced a serious escalation in the disturbing pattern of violence which has swept Chiapas in recent months. The latest attack by armed paramilitary forces occurred in the autonomous municipality of Olga Isabel and resulted in the wounding of 43 year old peasant Mariano Pérez Guzmán. Click here to read the Spanish language denunciation published by Zapatista officials in the caracol of Morelia.”

I’ve heard  the scene in Chiapas described as surreal:  Peaceful indigenous farmers living and working in villages below while armed military men watch over them from the surrounding hilltops. Why? Will indigenous people ever be left alone?  We here in the United States made sure we destroyed  our native people’s so-called rebellious spirit by putting them on crappy reservations and cramming limitless wealth into their pockets via casinos and legal gambling. Ug.  I’m not sure which scenario is worse: The one in Chiapas and Oaxaca or the one right down the road at Viajas or Barona.

Camping, dead bulls and bowling

“Streaking” by Kinsee Morlan

Ah, Labor Day.  What was once supposed to be a highly charged political day meant to commemorate the historic struggle of the working class has become a day of laziness and lethargy (the real Labor Day, of course, is May Day, but Congress wanted the U.S. collective memory to forget about all that history and never, ever protest working conditions or poor economic situations again; so instead, they gave us Labor Day, a meaningless day off).

But rather then lament the lost sense of proletariat camaraderie, I went camping. And watched my first and last-ever bullfight at the only remaining bullring in Tijuana. And went bowling at Mundo Divertido. And played dominoes while sampling things like burnt-milk, avocado and horchata-flavored ice cream at a Tijuana spot called Tepoznieves.

Now I’m nice and tanned dark brown, relaxed and ready to start the rat race anew. This weekend, I was reminded of the mysteries and secrets of northern Baja California.  And the wonders — holy moly — the wonders included a man who’d built himself a garage full of strange flying contraptions.  Take a look:

The flying thing became one of our favorite pastimes as we enjoyed the beaches of La Fonda. Another form of entertainment came when the sun set Saturday night and the pop-pop-pop of firecracker after firework began.

It’s funny; not only can you still drink down here, you can zip around on your ATV, light off a few Black Cats and sip on a Tecate on most Mexican playas.  And the U.S. is supposed to be the home of the free?  How many of you had to sneak your beer to the PB or Mission Beach this weekend?

Suckers.

The vendors do get a tad intrusive — you can only say “no, gracias” so many times before your feigned cordiality turns to lightly veiled annoyance — and one t-shirt may or may not have been stolen while my friends and I frolicked in the ocean, but all in all, I’d have to say that Mexico is about a gillion times better in terms of being the perfect backdrop for a stress-free, beach-camping getaway.

And guess what, scaredy-cat gringos?  Not one of my friends was raped, beheaded or fucked with by the federalis. Amazing, huh?

Not really.

Your fears of Mexico are unfounded if — and I feel like a freakin’ broken record while typing this — if you aren’t connected to the drug cartels in any way.

You see, even the most gangsta of Mexican ganstas these days seems to want to do his part in getting tourism back on track. One of my friends — a journalist who’s heading off for an Iraqi embed in the next few days — assured me that a few of his sources who know how the cartel operates said if they find a U.S. I.D. on someone, they back off, partly because they don’t want to deal with the DEA and partly because they want the tourist economy to go on smoothly like it did 10 years ago. That way, they can operate below the flow like they did back in the glory days.

After camping, it was off to the bullfight where my adrenaline started pumping hard and fast before I even stepped foot inside the ring — some asshole Americans tried to cut in the long ticket line, and if there’s anything that pisses me off it’s that bigoted sense of entitlement.

“A la fila, la fila, la fila,” the crowd would yell in unison to the swarm of stinky buttholes who kept trying to creep their way into the line. “Culero, culero, culero!”

But one guy was pretty big and from the U.S., so he ignored the people’s taunting and tried to con a guy wearing a “Bigg Nigg” Oakland Raiders jersey to buy him and his buddies some tickets so they didn’t have to wait in the long line.

“Why don’t you wait like the rest of us?” I asked, tapping him on his pudgy shoulder.

“What?  I’ll even buy you a ticket if you want,” he said, annoyed, “just chill out.”

I didn’t chill out.  Instead, I made sure the rest of the line saw what he was trying to get away with, and a few yells and yanks later, the jerk was gone.

So, yeah, my adrenaline was pumping while my bf and I climbed our way to the top of the sun section inside the ring, near the corner so our flesh didn’t completely burn off our faces (seats in the sun were 2×1: A deal that’s not easy to resist). The first fight was already in progress — we walked in right as the picadores came out on their horses ready to stab the poor bull in the neck so the matador would have even a chance of winning.

The crowd booed.  I gasped. The bull got stabbed repeatedly in the neck.

I’d love to go into all the quirky and strange traditions that I learned about that day, but the long and the short of it is this: Bullfighting is a vicious sport steeped in cultural traditions that, once upon a time, meant a whole lot.  Now — aside from those who actually take the time to learn about the traditions — it’s a spectacle watched by Bros who say things like, “that dude needs a bigger sword” or “nice pink socks” while slamming Sol and cheering wildly anytime anything — the bull, the matador, the picador or the picador’s horse — gets injured.

Six bulls were slaughtered on Sunday, by the way.  But the guy sitting next to us in the bullring told us we had nothing to worry about.

“They send the meat to the Tijuana jail,” he said.  “It’s gross and tough because of all the adrenaline in the meat, but they send it to the Tijuana jails and the prisoners eat it.”

Huh.  Interesting, but for some reason, it didn’t make the slaughtering or the constant teasing and harrassing of the bull any easier to handle.  I think I’ll stick with bowling:

Again. Really?

This time, the Reader’s cover story isn’t about violence in Tijuana, it’s about drugs.  There are no official stats in the story, just a book and an author who assumes tons and tons of people are crossing the border to buy pentobarbital, a drug used to commit suicide.

The journalist did go to two pharmacies, so it must be a trend worth writing about, right?

Sept. 27 — put the date in your calendar

Inside La Casa del Tunel

As an official member of the media, I’m not supposed to get personally involved with things that are going on in the city.  Thank Jebus I don’t work for one of those old-school dinosaur papers who don’t understand!  On my weekends, I’ve been meeting with COFAC discussing the opening of a new art center in my old ‘hood, Colonia Federal.

The official public discourse is below.  Please plan on coming to the public opening on Saturday, Sept. 27!

COFAC Opens La Casa del Tunel: Art Center Sept. 26-28 in Tijuana, Mex.

From Sept. 26-28, 2008, Consejo Fronterizo de Arte y Cultura (COFAC) will open La Casa del Tunel: Art Center, an international community center dedicated to promoting and facilitating borderless arts, culture and environmental investigation and awareness. The Center is located 75 feet from the U.S./Mexico Border with a panoramic view of Tijuana and San Ysidro.

The diesel drone

Saturday night, at around 8 p.m., the streets of downtown Tijuana were taken over by a parade of semi trucks protesting the high cost of diesel fuel.

The wailing horns of the trucks could be heard across the city.  It was so loud and constant that, at first, I thought it was a train.  An hour later, I realized that even the longest train in the world doesn’t have a whistle that lasts that long.

In many of the trucks I passed, the truck driver’s family was riding along — the small children had huge smiles on their faces because, finally, they were allowed to pull the good ol’ diesel horn. The drivers, however, were not smiling, likely because they’re worried about feeding those kids while diesel prices soar to $2.50 a gallon.  They blame the government, which owns and operates PEMEX, the only petroleum company in the country.

The deisel convoys are happening in cities across the world.  Just last month, there was a protest in Melbourne.

Tijuana dumps

Sister Teresa is a nun who works at a preschool and women-run community center in a recently closed municipal dump in Tijuana.  She just got back from my hometown of Durango, Colo. where she spoke to a packed room about her life’s work and how people can get involved.

When I talked to Sister T for a story I did about the Tijuana landfills, one of the most memorable things I took with me was her advice to the many ministry groups who pay the dumps annual visits:  Give money, give your personal time, but DO NOT bring bags filled with old clothes, toys and candy.  The kids can find that crap in the dumps.

Fuck you, too, Reader

Talk about the ultimate fake-out.  When I first saw the cover of last week’s San Diego Reader, I got excited.

“Wow, are those assholes over at the Reader actually going to do something positive on my city?” I wondered.

Alas, it was a false alarm.  As I should have expected, Michael Hemmingson played the roll of laptop journalist and simply rounded up old reports about Tijuana’s history of violence.  Good job, Hemmingson, way to be completely unoriginal, lazy and predictable.  Did you even step foot in the city before you published this piece?  In fact, have you EVER been to Tijuana?  Who, cares, right?  You weren’t really going for truth here, you were looking for the ole’ shock-and-awe factor, quoting pro-Mintuemen websites in your lead graphs, quoting other people’s year-old journalism ( From Hemmingson’s third paragraph: “What affects one side affects the other,” Mayor Jerry Sanders tells USA Today on February 5, 2007. “We’re literally one region with a fence down the middle.”) and ultimately presenting a portrait of Tijuana that could be a portrait of any other city in the United States if you were bored enough to round up every reported case of violence since 1994.

So, from my friends in Tijuana to Hemmingson and the Reader for publishing 30-something pages of diarrhea, here’s a resounding “fuck you.”  Learn how to do some real journalism, jerk, and give us a call or ask for a tour next time you decide to write about our city.

And for those of you as offended by Hemmingson’s attempt at journalism as I am, write his editor at sdredit@nethere.com.

Federales raid farmacias on Revolucion

I just went down to my farmacia on Revolution in downtown Tijuana to get some burn cream and was met by at least 100 federales in full riot gear. They had closed Third Avenue down and were raiding farmacias, making sure they had their papers in order.  My guy, of course, was in the middle of being investigated, so needless to say, I didn’t get the burn cream. Instead, I got suspicious looks from the young officers who undoubtedly thought I was there to buy Ritalin or Vicodin.

Gringos still come down to Tijuana en mass to buy illegal drugs.  The number one seller?  My drug man says Viagra is still coming in at a strong first.  He says college kids looking for Ritalin (the perfect study drug) are his No. 2 customers.

UPDATE: Here’s a piece by fellow Tijuana-living journalist Sandra Dibble, which came out a day after this little post.

Tijuana en YouTube

I never did post the winner of the Happy Birthday Tijuana YouTube vidoe contest, did I?  Her ’tis: