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"Oh, are you a surfer?"
"Yah dude, I'm headed out to La Playas right now."
How did he know? Well I was looking at the Quicksilver Surf shop over there. So he figured it out. Everyone in Tijauna is an assumptive maketing specialist. Attempting to cajole you into ANYTHING they can possibly drum up for sale. That is the most common form of income. Besides offering me a woman, and some 'Mota', and some 'cocaheen', his electroplated silver on pot metaljewelry... This cat told me he had been there since the old days. He had once been a civil garbage guy. There is mucho more money in the con. Besides his wife left him in 78', she headed north for some agriculture work. Then he married a 15 year old. You know a woman "who can do as she is told".
Besides four Social Security numbers in San Diego county, and four P.O. Box's for the welfare office, and your American bought/insured car got "stolen" in Mexico there really is only THE SHAKEDOWN on which to get by.
If you go to "El Norte" on the up and up you gotta pay taxes...etc..etc... you know the drill.
Living in TJ can get you a nest egg for the future. Sure scam competition is stiff, but Americano's ees dum. And heh if you live long enough... you can move back down to southern Mexico a wealthy man.
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See, your kids are not pleased by tradition or culture, they watch MTV just like Americano kids. There IS no tradition in TJ, it's like LA/SF/NY. Image is everything, so breaking the law to maintain status is the economy.
When ones culture is measured by western icons of friviolity (Pooh $35) and Spanish imported Christianity (last supper pot metal $30) what would your kids, or even you, believe in?
That's right: money.
After all it IS the only thing that can give you status.
When your president, elected under NAFTA campaign promises, leaves your country because of investigation by Swiss bankers... and has a foreign policy consisting of "invitations to dinners for billionaires through Mexico's ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), at which guests are asked to contribute $25 million each. " the whole system is "a legacy of corruption . . . based on the belief that a single political party will dominate the country."
Heck, "Salinas has a doctorate in economics from Harvard", why wouldn't he dine with millionaires? More over, ex-president in exile Salinas' brother just got his sentence for murder cut in half from fifty to only twenty years. His AMERICAN lawyers, who cost BUCKS, did it for free, I'm sure. The 84 million in ONE swiss bank account alone tells me Salinas couldn't have possibly helped pay for that.
Mexicos indigenous culture was beaten into submission by the spanish conquerers, then WE re-educated them into the monetary religion.
The situation conveyed in our (US) press of Mexico is most entertaining. "All this courruption". Is corruption not capitalisim? Here we have a multitude of networked Ivy League-educated men competing like mad for money.
In a 2nd world country there are few with grand educations, and so they take advantage of the opportunities available; graft, embezzlement, etc.
Do you reallythink that those in our market would not do the same as those abroad if not for the many competitors in there own field? The liberalist school crying about poor peasants could give a look in the mirror. To have a liberal view comes from having the free time to think about flowers. A realist works all day; they are too tired to have dreams of everyone getting along.
It is too bad our Gores/Buchanans don't advertise next to Beer billboards. It would decide the race alot quicker.
Now if you play it smart you can own a house about 5000 square feet total. Of course if one enjoys a view of Americano law enforcement I guess it is OK.
The prosperity of TJ never makes it to this neighborhood. There are alot of people in those large buildings, not much vehicular traffic though. I wonder if those buildings coud be a staging area for jumping at nite. Mmmmm... It is too surreal for me actually.
You spend all your family has saved for a couple of years to get here and when you arrive you see underage Americanos' drunk, buying Rohypnol to date rape their classmates back in San Diego, and shopping for the gaudiest excuse for leather craftsmanship on Revolucion St.
You get brought to this great house where you camp for a couple of days till the 'coyotes' tell you to go for it. You jump the fence and you get caught after about 30 yards. The patrol officers stay within about100 yard of each other for 6 miles of "The Fence". They have motion sensors, infrared, the works. The average "price to come across is about $800," and last year "450,00 illegal immigrants were caught" attempting to cross. ATTEMPTING to cross. The smuggler/coyote revenue for 1998 is guestimated at $900 million, that is twice the budget for the Border Patrol.[Phoenix Sun Archive] More on that soon.
Oh the Fence. The monument before you is inscribed with the date the 'peaceful' border line was drawn, 1848 to commemorate the Treaty of Hidalgo, the end of the Mexican-American war. It is somewhat chipped at, and of course tagged with spray paint.
A monument to the ethnocentristic view of wannabee-British, colonial bastards. Measuring others against your own culture.
Some peace, huh? A border to keep Mexicans out of America. Mexicans who support California's agricultural business. No white boy is gonna go into a strawberry field and bend over all day for two bucks a crate. Mexicans do it.
It is pretty simple, no Mex=no Agribiz, no Agribiz=no support for the rest of this lagging country's economy. Yah, Silicon Valley is a major contributor to our economic position in the world.
Yah, we still have some of the best nuclear capabilities around.
BUT...
It would be more than overly optimistic to assume that without immigrant labor we could even get our milk in the a.m.
We are now four blocks from Revolucion ST. I have passed two billion churches. Screw church and state --- I like church and pharmaceutical grade narcotics. You can get anything, ANYTHING from these guys.
Well of course it costs a bit of the green, but who cares, no cop will check you for getting HIGH. Then you can go right next door and get forgiveness for abusing your own temple, i.e. your body. (or a minors body, up to you.)
Liberalist: Is the greatest challenge world society faces today to prevent the widening of the gap between the global North and South?
Realist: Is the greatest challenge today to watch your 3/8 point decline in stock and read USA Today's Nascar results? 
I can hardly wait for the UFO's driven by Christ, navigated by Allah & engineered by Buddha to show up on Dec. 31, 23:59 GMT. Then I won't have to have guys like the one I met in TJ [Tijuana] offer me their daughter.
No my friend TJ ain't cheap. All the prices are 'Exactamundo' like San Diego proper. Being in TJ takes as much as Calif to live. If you live here and your daughter needs a wedding dress from across the street - $XXX - and your socially required Catholic donation to the priest for services - $XXX (frikken' Vatican) - and you gotta set'em up with a respectable place to live - $XXX - and gifts...oh man it doesn't stop!
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Yah, you are right my friend, it DOES look like the East Berlin side of the wall before 1989. A fence to keep people in not out.
Funny cause California had the 4th largest GNP in the world for 3 straight years. During that same period Continental America came in 31st. That says nothing about Mexican immigrant farm laborers importance to our natianl economy. NooOOHHH.
FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.
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