Once in Tijuana, the sidewalk led us to a lot where a host of junked up taxis were parked, the drivers gesturing at us aggressively. Amigo, I know where the party is; I know where the women are. We’re not here to party, we explained, clicking away with the digital SLR at dilapidated hovels and broken streets and swaggering men in cowboy boots and hats. We told the driver to take us to Revolución, Tijuana’s main tourist artery, thronged, even midday, with empty clubs bumping American hip-hop; florescent lit pharmacies offering cheap Viagra; McDonald’s, Burger King, Carl’s Jr.; and narrow shops stuffed with kitschy Mexican dolls, blankets and leather. Schools of hustlers, always swimming, as though they’d die if they stopped, gesture and call out amigo, free tequila shots, women, in here, come in. Then, pounded by the pitiless sun and bad luck, a donkey, striped with black paint and harnessed to a garish stage, stood listlessly, eyes flickering their final embers, awaiting, like the decrepit taxis, tourists willing to thumb their wallets and bargain down the price of a memory.
Women—or girls, it’s difficult to tell—blur in the block long showcase, advertising legs smooth and in your choice of brown, bracketed in hip-clutching skirts and chintzy high-heels or platforms. They’ve come from somewhere South. Or so we’re told by our taxi driver, a disarmingly friendly, pock-faced youth, whose tendency to stoop over the steering wheel adds a flourish of wisdom to his bearing. He seems to know the women personally—at least he wants it to seem that way —and he tells us how he “uses them every now and then.” I wonder if locals get discounts.
Noticing our interest, he begins to open up. Third world exploitation has a smell, he tells us, and it’s always hot. You can go anywhere, and with your eyes closed you’ll know where you’ve landed. It smells like gasoline and street food and too much perfume on hookers. And money: US dollars, of course. It makes them hungry, you know? Sprinkle blood in the water and sharks attack it, right? The dollar is Tijuana’s blood. In TJ, even love is a commodity. Or if we’re talking about a body, it’s an organ, like a liver, right? using blood and creating it. He scans us for recognition, to see that we’re paying attention. Then he continues: That woman there, he points out a hooker, legs crossed, leaning against a cracked wall, she’ll sell you love. It’s what most people come here for: they lack love and they’re looking to fill the void with physical things and sensual pleasures. The best of those girls makes you forget you’re buying it, you shoot your dollars into their mouth. You feel like mierda afterwards, but when you’re lonely, amigo, you look forward to those twenty minutes.
Where’d you learn English, I ask him. American TV, he says and winks, as though there’s something funny about that. I guess there is. He pulls to the curb to let us out. Ten dollars. A grin squishes his pock-marks. We’re all whores, he says.
Exploitation flavors the air and water, and, as with any major influence in an environment, permeates the culture. Since people tend to cultivate what they know, what they’re good at, the entire city is ripe with it. Just as the mariachi’s child will grow up singing his father’s music, the children of Tijuana grow up hustling. Even the girls on the streets (the regular girls, not the whores) can’t escape Tijuana’s salty flavor. They grow up swishing their hips and highlighting the most attractive curves on their bodies. They learn to sell themselves without asking for cash.
People don’t always recognize that exploitation is reciprocal.
The blurred showcase of women, they choose to sell their bodies. It may not be their ideal occupation, but it’s work and they’ve chosen it instead of bagging groceries or shucking oysters or waitressing at a bar. The children cruising the tourist strips learn to beg and hustle before they learn their names. They run beside you with boxes of chiclets and sad looks that lance you with guilt. Give to one, though, and a horde will assail you, remorselessly, the entirety of their will focused on exploiting your weakness. They smell the blood and go in for the kill. I wonder to myself how money and material overtook people in importance. You give and, in turn, they lose respect for you. To them the soft heart is weak. Strength is measured in how far you’ve pushed yourself from humanity.
Passing a bus stop reminds me that Tijuana has normal residents and mundanity. Their day occurs much as anyone else’s: going to work or school, taking their kids to soccer, buying groceries for breakfast and dinner, taking shits, watching television.
After the gaudy bass-thumping palaces, under the arch, a massive white accretion rising out of the end of tourist Tijuana, mariachis in full regalia—clothes black and white and buttons gold and silver—gather to socialize and to perform. The worst play only for dollars, the best with voices and rhythms mixing forgetful elation and throat-clenching sorrow. They appear comfortable in either world: that of dance and fiesta or that of loss and squelched hope.
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