Many who come to San Diego take advantage of the opportunity to throw in a short, convenient visit to a foreign country. Because of its unique location perched on the U.S.-Mexico border, the city cannot be understood as such without taking into account its “other half,” Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico (21.1 miles, by trolley). In fact, Tijuana and San Diego together form what has been aptly termed a metroplex, but one made up in this case of two metropolitan areas of different countries, one a first-world, the other a developing nation.
To really understand this dimension of San Diego entails acknowledging the “Mexicanness” (la mexicanidad) of Tijuana and its residents together with the “Americanness” of San Diegans. Tijuanans take their identity in part from their cultural ties to Mexico at large, a complicated matter given that Mexican identity was a frank cultural creation put in place following the Mexican Revolution, when it was recognized there was political value to creating a sense of national identity transcending people’s more local identifications with the many indigenous cultures comprising the country. Of course, the U.S. has gone through a roughly similar process of fashioning such an identity but earlier and, as in Mexico, with varying degrees of success.
With a population approaching 2 million, Tijuana is one of the fastest growing cities in Mexico, absorbing wave after wave of hopeful migrants seeking to improve their lives next to the giant to the north, the U.S. Many come to take jobs in the twin-assembly plant industries, or maquiladores, spread out all along the border to eastern Texas. With some 50 million border crossings annually, the San Ysidro Port of Entry is the busiest in the world. People cross to work, go to school, shop, and visit family and friends. Tijuana has become a center for cultural innovation in music, dance, and the visual arts, among others, its museums and galleries attracting a steady stream of visitors from San Diego and around the world. Tijuana counts among its institutions of higher education the following: Instituto Tecnológico de Tijuana,
Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC), Universidad Humanitas, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, CETYS Universidad, Universidad Xochicalco, and Universidad de Tijuana.
The vast human complexity of the metroplex has led to societal advancements and political conflict as people from different cultures rub up against one another in their pursuit of their financial, social, and personal goals. San Diego has become a conduit through which many thousands pass annually on their way to Los Angeles, the Central Valley farming communities, and points further north and east. At the same time, many Mexicans frequently return to their home villages, farms, and cities to visit family and friends, thereby making the border, despite its “hardening” with barbed wire, chain link, and motorized and horse-mounted border patrolmen, a semi-permeable membrane permitting selective passage of humans, commodities, and contraband of every stripe.
Currently thousands of Central Americans seeking refugee status are crowded up against the fence, further politicizing this already turbo-charged zone. Because of the international nature of this border, decisions as to its regulation are made by legislators who are geographically distant from the daily lives of borderland residents, often leading to rancor and misunderstanding that then color people’s opinions of “the other side.”
Cultural/ethnic hegemony across the region does not exist, either for Mexican-identified or Mexican-American-identified groups, including Chicanos. Understanding the “border” as a symbol helps to grasp some of the unique qualities of life experience in these parts. “The border” or “the line” exists to be crossed. Crossing the line reifies national identity, at gunpoint: “May I see your passport, please?” means if you can’t identify yourself as a bona fide member of one country, you can’t enter another. By contrast, the electronic media don’t respect the border but transcend it, just as air and water pollution go where their physics dictate. Human emotions rooted in the social environment as well as in biology are challenged by the border with its arbitrary bifurcation of families, communities, business processes, and the natural surround.
“Welcome to our Country. Enjoy your stay.”