Douglas J. Buege--Various Articles

#8

VolunTouring Tijuana

Written for the Los Niños Newsletter, June 2005

Newly-trained architect Juan Carlos Ramos defends his adoptive home with passion, gesturing toward Tijuana’s walls of discarded tires propping up new construction projects. Native to Mexico City, Ramos voyaged to Mexico’s northern and westernmost outpost with no plans to stay. He believed many of the stereotypes he’d heard of the city. As his experiences eroded those deep-rooted misconceptions, he found himself oddly transfixed by a city he numbers among the eight cultural meccas today, alongside Capetown, South Africa, Marseille, France and Austin, Texas.

Eighteen of us occupy a bus fleeing San Diego to meet our own chaotic expectations of Tijuana, home to a perpetual spring break where sex and alcohol rule on world-renowned Revolucion Street. This collection of Americans, including an English professor, one judge, both a doctor and a dentist, and several educators, begins the VolunTour. We’re a group of relative strangers, many alumni of UCLA, bound for new adventure.

Juan Carlos hopes participants will abandon their varied stereotypes of Mexico and its denizens. He also wants fellow Tijuanans to glean new respect for their northern neighbors, many whom may help border communities address their social, economic, and environmental challenges.

Our intrusion into Mexico happens quickly, the immigration official waving us in following a few words with our driver. The busiest border crossing in the world, the gates hold back a northbound queue of overheating vehicles working to endure a wait of hours. It’s our first glimpse of the US’s magnetic draw.

Peremptorily examining Revolucion Street from behind bus glass, we journey forth into the city Juan Carlos boasts grows eight city blocks per day. The wealthy stake their claims in architectural non-conformities gracing hills close to downtown. State-of-the-art colleges, hospitals and office buildings zoom by. As we drift westward, the urbanity flows past, local stores selling all the amenities of home, with a focus on pharmaceuticals. Rebar protrudes from the roofs of one- and two-story dwellings, awaiting the day the family has time and money to add another concrete level to their abode.

Our first stop in Mexico, a visit to the spacious historical museum, sitting behind a giant bowling ball that houses an IMAX theatre, provides a context for our trip. Despite its proximity to the States, Mexico’s history remains a mystery to many. Baja California, Mexico’s most recently established state, feels the impact of many cultures, not the least coming from our American lifestyle evident just across the border.

In the evening, we drive to a small house hidden down a narrow alley way. Several promotoras prepare a feast for more than twenty to celebrate our arrival. These women, and occasional men, enroll in Los Niños’ classes to help build their communities. First learning about family, health and nutrition—the foundation in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, promotoras advance to work to build family and community financial security. Eventually, they may become leaders, well-spoken educators who spread their knowledge to peers.

The women serving our meal—beans, rice, soy protein fillets, guacamole, carrot cake and a delectable parsley-lemon drink, all costing less than $30!—explain how they have revived academic careers that languished since they dropped out of middle school. Now these women, some in their 50s, are making up for lost childhood years. They’re learning how to take their communities in healthier directions. Los Niños’ ambitious programs help these women stand tall and speak with confidence, pride and wisdom. The feast allows all to gain a basic understanding of Los Niños’ mission and to begin to know one another.

Tijuana’s aridity results from more than mere climate. The mushrooming population’s thirst for water absorbs enough of the limited resource to parch the landscape so that only a few weedy species populate the small patches of dirt separating buildings. But one six hectare plot avoids this fate, one of the few green patches visible within the city.

Friday’s excursion begins with several hours at that lone lush escape in the valley, the ecoparque. By diverting and treating a fraction of sewage from uphill communities, activists have sculpted an island oasis where native species flourish. Without using any chemicals, a gravity-fed system eliminates solid waste from the water to provide gray water, non-potable but readily used by plants. Lizards, amphibians, birds, and butterflies flock to the hillside plot, as do numerous school groups. Children less familiar with the biotic world gaze wide-eyed at the relative richness of species, some inspired to become biologists, others to return with families to share the beauty.

Hopefully, this park will simply be the first of many. Ecologists have devised a model that should work elsewhere in the desert region. Funding seems to be the limiting factor in establishing other oases for plants, animals, and people.

Joining us for the service aspect of our visit are promotoras from Mexicali, representatives of a women’s beekeeping cooperative who will lead a beehive building workshop.

Spokesman Gabriel Alarcon, an agronomist working with Los Niños’ Mexicali branch, describes how the women formed their collective while participating in Los Niños’ workshops. One of the organizations’ members donated two starter hives and equipment to the women in 1999. By 2004, the group had expanded to 220 hives, spread over three apiaries, with a volunteer-constructed extraction house where honey is processed.

Now schoolchildren enjoy nutritional honey instead of processed sugar in the promotoras’ project to improve childhood nutrition. Profits also raise standards of living, allowing the women to minimize or eliminate the need to work maquiladoras.

Beehive construction proves confusing for novices, particularly with a language barrier complicated by the technical vocabulary of apiculture. A beekeeper myself, I join the fray and get teams applying hammers to nails to build two hives (colmenas) complete with plastic foundation frames that can withstand the desert’s 110 degree temperatures. Visiting promotoras Brigida Esther Ochoa, Felicitas Castañeda, and Raquel Morales Rodriguez will take these hives home to Mexicali, three hours’ drive east.

We are treated to a late lunch featuring a tasty ceviche. Customarily, seafood fuels ceviche, with the acidity of lime cooking the raw fish, scallops, or whatever. Today s’ vegetarian meal, though, relies on soy chunks reconstituted in boiling water, combined with shredded veggies. Once again operating well within a modest budget, the cooks create a repast that finds me looking for the Spanish word for “recipe” so I can learn how to make this dish and eat it all summer long. Elisa Sabatini, Los Niños’ director, assured me she’d email the recipe.

Considering our time with ecoparque staff and the visiting promotoras, I realized our group had successfully exploded the so-called tourist bubble many visitors occupy while on tours abroad. Instead of occupying a beach drinking alcoholic libations, we met local people in an environment well beyond the scope of many visiting gringos. Rather than viewing these natives as servants paid to secure our comfort, to pamper us so we feel paradoxically at home in a strange land, we dared to place ourselves in roles of learners, volunteers, and incipient friends. By escaping the prescribed tourist routes, we gained access to cultural knowledge that helps us understand the border region, knowledge that may improve the lives of Tijuanans if we share and act on this information.

From the park, we bussed downtown to a market to pick up veggies for dinner. We then traveled to the most challenging aspect of the trip for me and many others. Euphemistically called an “institution,” as if softened terminology might improve the conditions for inhabitants, the white concrete walls on top of a dusty hillside comprise what most northerners would call an orphanage.

A flood of children escaped a wrought-iron gate to confront us, one little girl zeroing in on Charlotte Winer and assuming ownership of her hand. Boys employed kung fu grips on others, eager for adult attention. Recovering from a cold proved a sufficient reason for my avoiding the room where babies rested; I doubted my ability to leave after seeing dispossessed infants.

Some of our crew colonized the kitchen to prepare dinner for the more than thirty children; others joined games and activity on the sloping courtyard fronting the separate bunkrooms for boys and girls or in the dirty lot hosting equipment that would rate too dangerous for playgrounds back home.

On departure, the bus remained quiet as we contemplated the fates of the loving children housed in the institution. Someone remarked that some kids had not finished their meager meals of beans, rice, guacamole, and tortillas. I thought about one boy’s 15 minutes of screaming as the two women on staff labored to get children to sleep.

That night, my dreams featured visits from several of the children, all thanking me for coming and asking me to return soon.

Saturday began more hopefully with a visit to a small panadería offering a wide selection of pastries and donuts. Once satiated, we ascended the hills to ply our skills in helping build a high school.

San Diegan artist James Hubbell, along with architect son Drew, has peppered the southwest coast with his fairy-tale constructions featuring stained glass and mosaics. Native New Yorker Christine Brady enlisted Hubbell in designing a grade and middle school for the kids of Colonia Esperanza, a neighborhood of immigrants to Tijuana. She runs the school and its many programs.

Colonias, distinct social structures, arise as groups of squatters pool their resources to occupy new lands, expanding Tijuana’s borders daily. The government requires occupants to pay for amenities—sewer, water, electric—before taking over property. Collectively, people can meet these otherwise prohibitive costs.

The school itself is a modest architectural beauty. Kids congregate under flowing concrete arches in an organically-shaped schoolhouse far removed from the rectilinear fabrications I had attended in childhood. Bright colors of mosaics and mirrors excite the eye, helping the 260 students fortunate enough to attend feel special and enthused. Amazingly, this architectural source of joy went up for a mere $23 per square foot.

After offering us a quick tour of the developing high school, the latest addition to the project, Christine takes little time to divide us into crews to tackle projects in the bathroom and radio complex. Upstairs, laborers mix up adhesive for those laying tile. Smashed plates and tiles provide the pieces to fit into the growing mosaics that our crew will add to. Below, I join medical doctor Ron Chez and retired teacher Jay Kules in building doorways for the future radio studio that will transmit to the neighborhood.

Once we begin to hit our stride, having secured working electrical cords and adequate 2x6s, our work day ends, interrupted by de rigueur attendance at a ballet performance of the school’s students. All kids in the school study ballet whether they like it or not. Christine brought in Russian professionals Valeri and Tatiana Tchekachev 5 years ago, with one year’s worth of salary provided by grants. The couple remains, surviving by undisclosed means, building their program which has gained international notoriety. The children perform various moves before offering us a flavor of their full-length performance, “Alladin.” Excitement courses through the young performers, eager to share their talents.

A year’s tuition at the school runs roughly $500 per student. Almost all the kids receive partial scholarships or better. Brady hustles to secure funding so no one is turned away for financial reasons. Tickets for ballet performances bring in a bit of money each year.

Once again, school staff treat us to an outstanding luncheon punctuated by tastes from Baja California’s wines, similar to drier Spanish and Portuguese vintages. Though we’ve only been together less than two days, the group of voluntourists begins to gel, perhaps a product of our shared labors.

Our exodus from the school, all too hasty, is fueled by need to visit a government office before proceeding to the maquiladora we plan to tour. I look forward to our scheduled debate over NAFTA, eager to hear others’ perspectives. Unfortunately, this discussion, for which the US State Department supplied printed outlines of a PowerPoint presentation, never materializes. Someone directed us to the wrong office for visas and we sacrifice an hour searching out the correct office. Finally, we find the right location and a bureaucrat nonchalantly stamps our documents for which Medtronic covered the $22 per person cost.

Any visitors expecting a dingy, cacophonous warehouse filled with pasty-faced workers chained to work tables would be disappointed by Medtronic’s silent sterility. As makers of pacemakers and other medical hardware, Minneapolis-based Medtronic requires dust- and microbe-free environs in which laborers wear sanitized clothing and hairnets. This maquiladora simply fails to meet some of my stereotypes.

Los Niños and Medtronic have forged a unique relationship. The company’s middle management frequently partake in Los Niños’ workshops, striving to gain and develop a working knowledge of conditions for local people. They also allow us access to their facility. An open-door policy is rare for these border-dwelling factories that employ Mexicans at roughly $4 per day. We are fortunate to get inside.

Despite a plethora of questions deftly fielded by our tour guide, the VolunTourists glean very different impressions from the factory visit, many that remain unvoiced until our final breakfast Sunday morning which erupts with near-argument as US citizens contemplate their responsibilities for these low-wage dens of labor. Some worry that closing the maquiladoras will lead to even lower wages, while others argue that the entire economic system upholding the factories needs to go. Some believe the words of our guide while others feel the tour was a well-designed public relations venture.

Our final evening requires another feast. We walk the few blocks from the hotel to Cien Años, a fine restaurant that features dishes from the past century’s regional cuisine. I delve into my cactus salad, intrigued by new flavors unheard of back home in Wisconsin. The conversation remains festive though some mention the visit to Medtronic, questioning the reasons for such minimal wages. With only a few hours left in our visit, we continue to develop bonds that may survive the distances that will soon separate us again. I marvel at the ability to meet and enjoy the company of people I never knew existed.

In the morning, we depart our lodgings and take a tour of the border itself, the fabricated walls that separate the United States of Mexico and America. Graffiti denounces the 3,000 deaths of Mexicans crossing to the US in the past decade. Judge Tony Mohr asks me to photograph the family gathering at the border, torn apart by the metal fence through which small items pass from the grandmother to the kids. Juan Carlos remarks on the stretch of concrete walls where openings allow smaller creatures to pass without restriction as if spiders and rodents deserved greater freedom of movement. It’s a sobering drive to customs, though the images of Bush and Cheney, each with their looks of power glaring down upon us as we walk into the States, bring me an odd moment of levity.

Though few of us offer any solutions to the problems we’ve witnessed over the three days, all have gained access to information we’ll need to address these issues. Tijuana has become more than a fictionalized party-grounds for college wastrels. The burgeoning metropolis is a haven for innovative music, a home for dispossessed children, a land of environmental potential, a hideout for the wealthy, and the end of the road for people turned away at the border. I leave realizing that I have just begun to learn about a city that will continue to develop in novel ways.

As our group dissolves, each of us considers how a mere three days can change one’s perspective. The VolunTour proves a powerful experience, more than a vacation from our daily lives. It offers a true opportunity for growth as a global citizen. I respect the connections I’ve made with fellow Americans and with the people of Mexicali and Tijuana and look forward to building upon them.

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