Mexico border diary: Day One & Day Two

Mexico border diary: Day One
mexico border series By Adam Thomson in Tijuana

Published: September 3 2008 21:10 | Last updated: September 3 2008 21:10

It’s growing dark on Tijuana’s Avenida Revolución, the two-bit titty bars are starting to pump out their obnoxious mix of beats, and young Mexican girls in short skirts and high heels are looking for business from US tourists out for a wild weekend.

The problem is that there aren’t as many as there used to be. In fact, Tijuana, Mexico’s large and incredibly ugly border city on the Pacific coast, appears to be empty.

In between fending off small-time drug dealers and men dressed in shabby bow ties offering a free tequila once inside their table-dancing bars, I try to fish for an explanation. To my surprise, most people from Tijuana seem to think that the gringos are no longer coming because of the recession. “They’re having a tough time of it over there,â€

Financial Times FT.com
WorldCloseMexico border diary: Day Two
By Adam Thomson in Tijuana

Published: September 4 2008 17:48 | Last updated: September 4 2008 17:48

The sun is setting on the arid, slum-filled hills of Tijuana and I’ve just arrived at the lower middle-class neighbourhood of Postal to see Father Luiz Kendzierski, who has spent the past eight years providing temporary shelter for migrants at the Casa del Migrante.




The last time I spoke to him was back in 2006, and I was now eager to see whether he had noticed any changes in migration patterns – in particular the types and numbers of migrants who come to Tijuana and Baja California to cross illegally into the US.

While I waited in the internal courtyard of the Casa, a yellow and green building of about four storeys, I met Ignacio Aparicio Pérez. Ignacio is a 36-year-old Mexican who began to tell me that he had been caught several days before by the “migraâ€