Unexpected American influence in Tijuana

Baseball, school, journalism, rehab

Author

By Various Authors

Publish Date

Nov. 11, 2018

When you walk into the patio of the lower school on Calle Pedregal, you can almost feel the potential of all of the students’ power. (Sandy Huffaker, Jr.)

The Betty Ford Clinic it is not. (Sandy Huffaker, Jr.)

Baja's tough-love drug rehab

I’ve heard there are Americans down here kicking drugs the tough Mexican way, because the more coddling, more expensive American clinics didn’t work. As soon as you got out, you went back to your drug of choice. Medications didn’t do it, because they confronted your chemical problem, but not you.

“Are you coming in?” Mrs. S. said, half-inquiring, half-inviting. “Not under your conditions,” I said. (Sandy Huffaker, Jr.)

By Bill Manson, March 28, 1996 Read full article

Tacos and manna

Maestro Salas led the first handful of Tijuana residents desiring to convert to Judaism up to Los Angeles where they sat before a rabbinical tribunal at the University of Judaism. Rabbi Edward M. Tenenbaum, said of the applicants that they “were reasonably well-prepared.

Where were you born? Where you going?

Customs averages about one drug seizure an hour. Here comes a car. The dog picked it out of the line of traffic stacked up at the Primary Inspection booths. Driver out. Inspectors pore over it, with Sonja in the lead. Someone pops the hood. Bricks of marijuana carelessly stuffed along the engine block. K-9 officer lets out whoops of joy, encouraging the dog.

By Alan Cheuse, June 11, 1998 Read full article

Teacher Rafael Enriquez (center): “I like to work with the difficult ones, the ones who make trouble." (Sandy Huffaker, Jr.)

The sun is hot. The sun is yellow. The sun is in the sky.

It’s been a long day for Jovanna Venegas, starting out as she did so early in her room in the house in Bonita, sitting in her upper-school class all morning and on into the early afternoon, but now, as usual, the assistant from her father’s photography studio has driven over to Playas to pick her up and drive her to the San Ysidro port of entry.

By Alan Cheuse, Sept. 9, 1999 Read full article

Ron Jensen: "They had never seen anything come out so strong.” (Vittorio Comisso)

The short, unhappy life of the Baja Times

Jensen says Torres didn’t then order a halt to the controversial stories, but he began talking about wanting a front page which would more likely attract tourism. And Jensen says he and managing editor Wagner went along with the idea, only it was too late to change the upcoming third edition.

By Jeannette DeWyze, Feb. 8, 1979 Read full article

Mark Wiley: "The pay down here isn’t bad." (Jim Coit)

Gringos who play for Tijuana's Potros

“If you play down here you have to realize you’re going to get sick,” he told me. "First you’re gonna have the stomach, then you’re gonna have diarrhea and then the flu.” He sniffed. “I’ve had these sniffles and a little fever for three weeks now, but if I told the coaches I couldn't play because of that, man. I'd never play.”

By Gordon Smith, Jan. 25, 1979 Read full article