tijuanagringo.com index.html indice verano summer 53 (2010)

Santa Cecilia's got a new dress shirt laid down by summer cement workers on top of ragged autumn pants until the diagonal block has become one enormous two-headed snake a swirling body with coatlicue feathers encrusted in cement drawn over all the pavement from one scruffy eagle serpent head pointing ex-palacio fangs toward the reborn beak of the municipal institute of art and culture at 2nd & Constitucion from where their newly bending body turns all the way down its pedestrian street inlaid with concrete skin twisting in curves along the narrow plaza block between restaurants bars stores and cantinas until the ultimate ear of corn or rattle tail its second separate head at the other end of this final street pointing out new mariachi stage beside monster aluminum arch towering over in xochitl tlalticpac Aztec world - flower with its four petals in red & yellow colored plaza cement where feathered dancers beat their drums every Sunday for tips and you gringo WHOA! HALT! stop poet hold the horses of your pen to strike your match & scribble a cigarette smoke this verse outside the cheap market on the corner of First street beneath its fake aqueduct in the shadow of Hotel Nelson home of the finest forbidden love under the enormous millennium arch raised like a parabola of thirteen stories in height the high and monstrous harp of those many winds tangled in cables who support its gigantic video scream hung-by-the-neck beaming municipal propaganda straight up Revolution Avenue and from here bent over new cement plaza what already looks old yellow-red paving stained by gum, spit, candy, butts, trash here you think of Pancho Morales' poems written on the skin of this city and you light this snake cancer taco smoke flash scratch struck fire @ five cents the booklet of matches German shepherd pastor aleman Relámpago brand dog grinning on his cardboard cover your one-in-six lightning border line poet matches your inspiration in the mouth of Santa Cecilia patron saint of art and music ai mi querida santa your mariachis wait in suits of black cotton shining with silver buttons waving their instruments at clients ranchero narco pickups or vans or only some guy with a good job taking his girl out for a serenade - who can tell the difference any more? - guitarron guitarra trompeta violin they are your inspiration poet your living muse men when you begin another night of bars and Mexican snacks smell your fresh tacos and spilt beer with Omar Khayam and Charles Bukowski at Tijuana cantina in spirit if not flesh stop wilderness singing beside and have a drink or three a loaf of bread with thee and me . and wilderness were paradise enough.

When I began putting these tijuanagringo pages online, in August 2000, this city was still the same hard-working party town full of factories and nightclubs, the same wild border city I had watched grow and explode since I was a baby boomer child.

But even as I began to publish these pages in the year zero and then the year one, the millennial seeds of violence in my newly adopted city had grown deep-rooted, transforming simple corruption into rank vines of murder and terror. Already the killings and kidnappings had begun their escalation. Already the new border fences had been a-building and bull-dozing, shifting the human tide east into the mountains. From government to criminal cartel, the two edged sword of Damocles Frontera, whose horrible future none of us can clearly perceive, was dangling from a single strand of hair.

Ten years later that delicate, bloody strand
still suspends above our heads.

But even then, in the year zero, there were hordes of tourists, at night and on the weekends.

The final curtain did not begin to fall until after the attacks against New York and Washington – you remember – in September of the Year One, when over 2,000 humans died in the towers, Pentagon, and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. Well, that was when more than one illusion of peace was shattered. The great golden goose of tourism upon this wild, mythic, California border, that goose who had laid the golden eggs ever since the dawn of the 20th century, finally began to drown in its own drunken vomit.

More and more United Statesians gave in to our fears, and stopped coming to Tijuana to party and shop, get our cars repainted or rebuilt or upholstery redone, catch a bullfight or flirt with STDs.

All those crowds from Los Angeles and San Diego began to melt away. Crowded sidewalks turned empty. Souvenir stores shut their doors. Bars went out of business.

After eight years of steady downturn, Revolution Avenue is now half ghost town, half lonely Calypso bull, wailing for its lost lover, Odysseus.

BUT I TELL YOU that now, more than ever, there is so much to see and do in Tijuana. Economical medical services. Good food. Shopping galore for souvenirs and crafts as well as in typical Mexican markets. Or catch half-price new Hollywood movies in supermodern shopping-mall multi-plexes.

Go to the beach and see the new wall of Berlin Prison China Amerika plunging into the sea. It is an awesome sight, the works of man lined up like iron sand castles beside the eternal ocean waves.

Hints about how to get here? Or when to cross the border? Or riding the busses and taxis. Check out tur.info pages.

Any AND All Feedback is Deeply Appreciated.
Email: tijuanagringo@yahoo.com

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