Tijuana

I walked down the streets of this rejected city I was forced to call home for 18 years. It’s funny, in a way. I was so miserable here, but now I feel that if I leave this place forever my life would be so incomplete. These streets are unique. In this place, this city, everything is good, or its horrible. I’ve never heard streets cry as the wheels revved over them, until I took the time to listen to the metropolis around me. Every pot hole I could see one more tear of gravel chisel off. The air thick with smog and uneasiness.
The voices all around me speak in my primary language that I forgot to master as a child, but I still understood their hereditary vocals. In between all the buildings the force of one car would become the echo of the next one, and so on, and so on. The never ending cycle of murderous air. In this place I was tempted to become a speaker for the people, but I learned that here, if you work for the system you work for the corrupt, whether you like it or not. Corrupt politicians seem to “know” what’s best for us, but I see my people becoming poorer, weaker, and envious. Its at this point that I feel that I am responsible to make a difference. I look at this place, my home for years. The place I only know as Tijuana. My home, whether I like it or not. Everything here is the way it shouldn’t be. There’s a center for Alcoholics Anonymous, and next to it is a bar, where apparently beer is spelled bear. My dad is a politician here, but I fear for his life. I don’t think that my dad is part of the other crooked politicians, the ones he’s friends with. Or at least I haven’t seen it.
I keep walking down, thinking to myself about the essence of this place, and I wonder if the people that are here to protect the law have a damn soul. Here the poor and helpless are as thick as a toothpick, and the “law” is as thin as a 10 pound steak.
I’m listening to Hurt, the Cash version, originally by Trent Reznor. And I wonder to myself about all that is lost. Hurt is a song about loss, losing those who were someone, but your quest for “painless-ness” caused you to lose all that you had. Like the song says “what have I become my sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away in the end.” I look around, I see children laughing while crying, and some crying while laughing. This place I’m so used to calling home, it saddens me. This is the reason I chose to pick up a book and read, its why I chose my future already, its because I care for others more than myself that makes me cause fear to death.
I feel so fortunate to have what I do in this side. I have the gift of water that many don’t have, I have the gift of electricity that many don’t have, I have the gift of food, that many substitute with poisonous substances. Its better to be lost in a world where nothing is real, than to feel an empty stomach eat you alive. The slow implosion.
Every time I look around this place I remember the words my dad used to say. “It’s not what it used to be.” He explained to me a while ago why that is it. In his days, he was able to walk the streets and fear nothing. Now fear roams even throughout daylight. During the day is the cops and federal police, and at night the criminals dressed in black that wear a badge. This place that used to be so tainted with peace, is now delivered from tranquility, and born into fear.
The cynicism that people hold towards the government is well earned, and now, this once prosperous place is falling apart. People are finally realizing that they are not the governments, or the law’s, chew toy. In Mexico city cops are being killed by the people, the same people that they robbed before. How many lives will be lost in the anarchy that the government created and has never taken responsibility for it. The fear and oppression has become the maul and anvil that forged a sword and created anger and fury. One by one, people will keep dying.
I close my eyes sometimes and imagine this place without the law. It would probably be a safer place. A place like this, a miniature metropolis, is forced into abandoning its people and focus on the plague called tourists. Some people think this beautiful place is well off, but go a couple miles towards the mountains where the sun is the only light bulb. There you will see what our great nation has created. The place where God bent over and took a nice shit. No, not God, she isn’t that cruel. It’s the people that let themselves be raped and slapped around. Fear is the sign of a powerful dictatorship, well fear are the bullets in the cartridge that every “law enforcer” carries.
A good 50 miles away from the border towards the north, is another little city called El Florido. Its this place, the place where people let themselves be raped, that I see what I really have. I never thought I would see cardboard houses, I never thought I would see wells that are running dry, I never thought I would see the way things are really run.
Here in El Florido, take notice that it is still in Tijuana, is where the “law” is not ashamed of their corruption. Wear a badge, might as well work as a pimp or a drug dealer, all working for the drug lords. I saw with my two beady eyes a cop going into a drug house to pick up his daily salary. I saw it, and I still feel angry. The sun sets and the law is no longer the law, the law is the criminals, its those that make their living off the living of others.
In this place, where politics mean as much as throwing away the trash, you view what humanity really is. You see greed, injustice, and those few that try to stay legit are killed away slowly, and carefully.
When I’m finally home I sit and think. I remember those with crooked faces that need help, and I remember those with the crooked jobs, and think about the crooked faces they beat to a pulp. I think about all that I’m willing to lose just to help the masses, I would give it all up, even my soul just to see a child smile from a day a school, not because of the glue he just breathed.