Marc Lacey: The Mexican Border’s Lost World
[Marc Lacey, who joined The Times in 1999, opened the newspaper's first-ever Phoenix Bureau in the summer of 2010. As Phoenix bureau chief, Marc covers the immigration debate, border issues and other events in Arizona and the Southwest United States.]
...The modern story [of the Mexican border] begins with Prohibition, when Mexico became the place for thirsty Americans to go for a cheap, legal drink. Over the years, the lure of cheap booze gave way to quickie divorces, dog races, strip shows, slot machines and brothels where fathers sometimes brought their sons when they hit 16. Through it all, there were plenty of drugs — medicinal (cut rates with no prescriptions) as well as illegal (marijuana, cocaine, heroin).
“The spice of danger adds a zest to the pleasure of thousands who visit them from this side of the frontier,” The Times wrote of the towns of Tijuana and Agua Caliente, in a feature article describing the raging drinking and gambling scene there. The year was 1930.
Name it and one could find it in the back alleys of Tijuana or Juárez back then, The Times wrote of Ciudad Juárez in 1925: “Juarez gambles spasmodically; peddles dope; obsequiously caters to the pennies which the terpsichorean neckers recklessly fling to the kitty; sells rotten whisky and green beer at exorbitant prices and maintains a street gloriously called Calle Diablo (street of the devil), where thoughtless men can go and, at a base price, acquire bitter regrets.”
World War II only boosted the market for a generation of soldiers on leave, and for postwar adventurers seeking music and thrills and sex....
longtime lovers of the border fear most for the back-and-forth itself — for the interchange, even if asymmetrical and exploitive, of poorer Mexicans and free-spending Americans that over the generations has, to some degree, fostered understanding between the two countries.
“The relationship that once existed between the two sides is broken,” lamented Luis Ituarte, who splits his time between Los Angeles, where he promotes the arts, and Tijuana, where he runs a cultural center....
Read entire article at NYT
...The modern story [of the Mexican border] begins with Prohibition, when Mexico became the place for thirsty Americans to go for a cheap, legal drink. Over the years, the lure of cheap booze gave way to quickie divorces, dog races, strip shows, slot machines and brothels where fathers sometimes brought their sons when they hit 16. Through it all, there were plenty of drugs — medicinal (cut rates with no prescriptions) as well as illegal (marijuana, cocaine, heroin).
“The spice of danger adds a zest to the pleasure of thousands who visit them from this side of the frontier,” The Times wrote of the towns of Tijuana and Agua Caliente, in a feature article describing the raging drinking and gambling scene there. The year was 1930.
Name it and one could find it in the back alleys of Tijuana or Juárez back then, The Times wrote of Ciudad Juárez in 1925: “Juarez gambles spasmodically; peddles dope; obsequiously caters to the pennies which the terpsichorean neckers recklessly fling to the kitty; sells rotten whisky and green beer at exorbitant prices and maintains a street gloriously called Calle Diablo (street of the devil), where thoughtless men can go and, at a base price, acquire bitter regrets.”
World War II only boosted the market for a generation of soldiers on leave, and for postwar adventurers seeking music and thrills and sex....
longtime lovers of the border fear most for the back-and-forth itself — for the interchange, even if asymmetrical and exploitive, of poorer Mexicans and free-spending Americans that over the generations has, to some degree, fostered understanding between the two countries.
“The relationship that once existed between the two sides is broken,” lamented Luis Ituarte, who splits his time between Los Angeles, where he promotes the arts, and Tijuana, where he runs a cultural center....