my trip to Tijuana

I went to Tijuana this past Monday, and I can honestly say it has changed me.

I've been to T.J. before as a child, but I guess I was too young to realize how bad it was there. This time, I went with a fellow student to visit her uncle who had recently moved there. I decided to accompany her, just for the experience. I never knew that it would affect me as much as it did.

I noticed a few things after I crossed the border. I noticed that the turnstiles leading into T.J. were easier to cross than those leading into a theme park. Right after we crossed the border, there were people vying for our attention (i.e., our money). Adults and children tried to sell almost anything they could to us; they sold grains of rice, candy, hairbraiding services, etc. It was interesting to see how most T.J. citizens depended on tourism. I also noticed that beer is amazingly cheap there; a beer was as little as 99 cents over there and is sold almost everywhere. In a place where people have hardly anything to look forward to but work, alcohol seems to be an inexpensive escape from the tedium of life. Crossing the border gave me a glimpse into the culture of T.J., which can be summed up as "survival of the fittest."

However, it got worse on our way to see my friend's uncle. He lived in a part of T.J. called Pedegral. We piled ourselves into this rundown taxicab and took a bunch of dirt roads to his house. On the way up to his house, I noticed that most of the houses were just pieces of wood precariously held together with nails. The "fancier" houses were made of some cement, and the "upscale" ones could afford to be painted, but such houses were rare. The side of the road was adorned with trash and things you'd find in a junkyard. The air was thick with pollution. I didn't see a stitch of grass or hardly any trees when I went there. All I saw were shacks, dirt, and trash.

When we got to his house, I was not surprised to see that it was nothing more than planks of wood fashioned into 3 small rooms. The house was no larger than the size of the average American living room. The house had a restroom, which was nothing more than a toilet in the ground. To take a shower, the uncle told us that he has to go to the back of his house and hose himself down with water (because it's too cold to do that during this time of the year, he said that nowadays he goes weeks without showering). He had a kitchen with a gas stove. He had a bedroom with a mattress large enough to accomdate 5 people (which he often did). There was only one small window in the house. The walls were so thin that I could hear everything that was happening in other rooms in the house and everything that was going on outside of the house. I could see the dirt underneath the house through the floorboards. There was one hanging lightbulb that was supposed to provide light for the whole house. It was unbearably cold in that house, and I could see water stains in the wood planks where water must have leaked into the house during heavy rains. In fact, the uncle lived right in front of a mountain that has seen more than its fair share of landslides. But as usual, I tried to look on the bright side and was thankful that he at least has running water, gas, and electricity -- which may be more than other people have in that town.

I was in his house for a few hours, and I thought to myself, "What do people do to survive living in such impoverished and squalid conditions?" Have sex, which is probably why I saw many large families there. Get drunk, which may explain why there was a liquor store at practically every corner. Work. Get into trouble. Look at the view of the mountains, which are usually blanketed with trash. Plan to illegally cross the border to pursue a life that involves more than working and coming home to a shack full of starving children.

Before this trip, I partially understood why people like my mother illegally crossed the border. I knew that it was bad in Mexico, and that it was better than the United States. But I didn't realize how bad it really was until I took this trip. If I lived there, I would most likely sacrifice my life to escape to anything better. It seems like people who are born as Mexican citizens are stuck there unless they scrape their way to America. I am thankful that my mother sacrificed her life to come to this country because if she hadn't, I may have become just another Mexican with 15 children selling my own body just to survive. I may have simply been another statistic.

It frustrates me that we are trying to fix the governments of other countries (i.e., Iraq) when we are complaining about illegal immigrants from Mexico flooding America. If we really want to solve the "problem" of illegal immigration, perhaps we should try to fix the government of Mexico before we build higher and higher walls across the border. Because if you lived in such squalor, the highest walls would not keep you from trying to escape to a better life.

Needless to say, I came home very depressed. I still think about that trip every day. I feel like there is something I should do, but I am not sure what. I feel a bit helpless about the whole situation over there, and that is one of the worst feelings to have in the world -- especially for a social worker.