To get into the grandstand at Agua a person is expected to buy a free pass from touts who vend a so-called betting guide.

Photo by Rick Geary

Next to the donkey show, Agua Caliente Race Track is probably Tijuana’s most world famous attraction. Purists contend Agua is to Del Mar what marijuana is to hashish, but the play is the same. Call to the Post signals charge to racegoers everywhere. And when you’re addicted you just want to get high. In Saigon during Tet, 1968 gamblers ran a gamut of mortars, artillery, and heavy machine gun fire to reach the betting windows. Saigonese have never forgiven the warring parties for the liberation (i.e.destruction) of Saigon Downs.

The perversity of Vietnam made a racecourse into a battlefield. My father always told me a race track was the kindest, most decent place in the world, and that racegoers were too busy visualizing a better way to be anything but compassionate and fair. He also told me nuns wore those long dresses because their bodies were covered all over with sores.

Agua Caliente Race Track is the safest zone in the martial law Baja California state. As a post-Operation Intercept veteran of open-air Mexican jails where long haired Americans are subjected to extortion or held for ransom, I automatically hesitate at the border, and clean out my car ashtray. Mexico, Sunday morning, the border guard nods me into his country with the sardonic manner of a Spanish grandee, he who understands the needs of the Sunday racegoer. I knew I wouldn’t be hassled by la policia. Immediately across the border road signs point right for Downtown and Ensenada. Directly opposite, in the left lane, a series of Agua Caliente signs direct the eager gambler into the world’s longest driveway, ably staffed by traffic police and indigenous Hare Krishna. It’s no coincidence that the U.S. Consulate is right next door to Agua Caliente; business follows the flag, and vice versa. Agua is the only minor league track in the world with a Stock Exchange office on the grounds. The Mexicans know how to treat riff-raff with money.

After parking, free, in a very convenient lot (point one for Agua over Del Mar), I headed for the grandstand. My father, himself an aficionado of cheap race tracks, always advised me to sit in the grandstand. It’s cheaper, the show is better, the races are all that count anyway, and you don’t have to wear a tie.

To get into the grandstand at Agua a person is expected to buy a free pass from touts who also vend a so-called betting guide. I watched several free pass-tip sheet packages sell for fifty cents, then walked up to a nasty specimen, laid a dollar on him (I had no coins), and spent the next two minutes trying to get my change. His greed was finally broken by a vicious “give me my dollar back!” I stalked off.

My parting shot, “ripoff pukes, I’m going to the clubhouse,” was delivered with classic ugly American style.

The next tout, twenty yards down, sold me a pass to the clubhouse and a pass to the grandstand for fifty cents. Clubhouse admission is $2.00.

I felt vindicated, superior, and ready to win money as I walked up the steps to the clubhouse. A sign at the entrance noted that the last 1000 complimentary margaritas had been given away at 12:15 p.m. I had missed the first race but at Agua the daily double is contested in the second and third. In case you get held up at the border.

Money plus a race track can equal intoxication to the compulsive gambler. For those who cannot wait until race time, beer costs eighty cents and cocktails go for $ 1.25.

The 'Racing Form is printed in English. The clubhouse crowd is middle-class Mexican, Black, and White, lumped together in the shaded stands. Racial integration works at the track. Greed is an excellent leveler. Two minutes before post time there was plenty of room at the finish line. The heat was excessive. No one wore a tie. I unbuttoned my shirt and walked past an usher without being challenged (point two for Agua over Del Mar). Agua is a comfortable track;both the horses and the clubhouse crowd are slower and less beautiful than at Del Mar.

The races feel reasonably honest; short prices indicate a high percentage of winning favorites. Class pays. Horses regularly cross the border from Del Mar to become odds-on winners at Agua. The betting audience is minor league sophisticated. In an early race an odds-on favorite paid more to place than to win. This did not happen again.

Between the Agua clubhouse and grandstand is the internationally renowned Agua Caliente Foreign Book, where a patron may bet the Kentucky Derby in January. The winter book odds are a leading Mexican export to this country. So are addictive drugs and jumping beans. Next door to the foreign book is the Agua Caliente grandstand wearing the unfinished look peculiar to Mexican state-supported architecture. The physical plant is newly built yet somehow reminiscent of pictures of the old Juarez Race Track. The Juarez track was founded by Pancho Villa, famous cucaracha of the Mexican Revolution.

Pancho used to cross the border to rob gringo banks, and run circles around Pershing’s 11th Cavalry. His cavalry irregulars used to sing a song that went something like this:

• La cucaracha, la cucaracha
• ya no puede caminar
• porque no tiene, porque le falta
• marijuana que fumar
• Viva Pancho Villa, Viva Mexico.

Agua is a one-mile track, Totalisator, starting gate, and photo finish apparatus are all standard U.S. models. Racing is Saturdays and Sundays, apparently year round. Post time: 1:00 p.m. PDT more or less. I called city transit to see if a bus route to Agua is available. Their phone has been busy for over a week. Agua has 5-10 betting on the fifth to tenth race inclusive; quinella on the first and eleventh races, and exacta betting in the sixth, eighth, and tenth. The track offers combinations to ignite the passions and stir the juices of the most jaded gambler.

My Sunday in TJ ended early. Betrayed and haunted by the tip sheet I had purchased with my free pass package, I busted after the seventh race. Beat the traffic crossing the border. Wearing the dazed, short-circuited look of the beaten gambler, racing form and program in my lap, I was quickly passed through the checkpoint by a Border Patrol professional.