A Rare Chance to Look Up to Mexico
Written: Nov 23 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Surprisingly secluded for San Diego, unless you look through the fence
Cons: --
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| Urbanist's Full Review: Border Field State Park |
Perhaps it jumps out at you on the map. A state park right on the beach, right at the Mexican border. The southernmost point in California. What would it be like?
Well, it's like the rural third world, except that you're still in the USA.
Take the exit off I-5 (Dairy Mart Road) and make your way west. You thought you were in San Diego, but in a moment, you're out in the country, on a road that rapidly falls apart. To your right are flat expanses of wetland -- the Tijuana river estuary, gradually being restored. To your left, brush, eucalypts, the occasional shack vaguely suggesting squatters or a not-very-prosperous agricultural concern. Very old cars and trucks parked here and there.
Then, the park entrance. No fee. The road becomes dirt, turns left, and heads straight toward the border.
You are down on the tideflats, at sea level. Look ahead, and way up! A brown, metallic wall marches heedlessly across your view, carefully following the straight line casually slashed across some map more than two centuries ago. The wall marches up and down the front of steep hills. Behind it, packed in tight, is a city, Tijuana.
As dense as the terrain allows, Tijuana looks to be solid apartments, but the look is a prosperous one. They seem well kept, hardly screaming with poverty. A major highway runs just beyond the fence, and you may wish you were on it, as your rutted dirt road turns to the right just short of the border and lumbers along to the west, toward the sea.
Look up at Tijuana again. Bustling life. Construction. Happy noise. Look around you. Shacks. Garbage-strewn shrubs. People living in floodplains because they're poor. Yes, you are in an impoverished, neglected backwater, looking up at (relative) prosperity. For a moment, you may wonder which side of the border you're on.
Trundle on west on the dirt road toward the Pacific. Tijuana briefly out of view, you could be in any estuarine park in California, though this one is more betrashed than most. Suddenly a paved road built to official State Park standards invites you to the left. Up you go to a little hill, topped with a huge parking lot. Perhaps you have it to yourself, except for the Border Patrol -- a few guys in a jeep watching to see that nobody tries to swim around the border.
Here, parts of the border are fenced in a lattice style, so you can see through. A huge stadium sits just on the other side, right next to the ramshackle but lively waterfront. The beach, just below, is nearly empty on the US side, where it's at the end of a long road. On the Mexican side, of course, you can take a bus there, and on a sunny day, it looks like Coney Island. Just a few feet from you, people are selling cold drinks and ice cream to the beach-and-stadium throngs. Perhaps a cold splash on the throat would feel good right now, but no. Those people are in a prosperous and friendly Mexico. You are shut out, in a lonely corner of the USA. Exuberant Tijuana is in your face, while San Diego feels like another planet right now.
Watch people deal with the border, and all it represents. Americans walk up to it, peer through, puzzle. So much over there, so little over here. Mexicans do the same, perhaps thinking the same thought. Some Mexicans seem to drive to the overlook on their side of the border and just sit in their cars -- young couples or families -- staring into the US as though nobody were looking back.
You can see through, but people seem to agree to act as though they can't. In an hour at the Border Fields, I never saw a cross-border conversation, though the design of the fence makes them easy to have. Something about this gash draws people and then makes them hold back. Nobody knows quite what to do.
Don't miss this far corner of the USA. It's yet another fine estuary and vista, but here, the vista is international, and you -- scratching your head, trying to figure out just how you feel about this giant straight line that seems so arbitrary and so consequential -- you are part of the show.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Urbanist
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Location: San Francisco
Reviews written: 78
Trusted by: 72 members
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Streetwise, academically credentialed gay renaissance man. For real bio, click "more" in profile.
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