From the archives

In and out of Baja –always an adventure

Sentri pass, border slang, cartels in Tijuana, smuggling cheese, paving over of Rio Alamar

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“My grandparents used to fish here.” (Leticia Ayala)
The Tijuana police officer told me that the passport carried no significance in Mexico.

  • Worldwide Spanish Slang

  • Spanish slang connoisseur Roxana Fitch grew up in Tijuana, birthplace of some of the most distinctive slang words — or jergas — in the entire Spanish-speaking world. The proximity of Tijuana, and of Mexico's entire border region, to the United States has spawned such English-influenced expressions as llamar pa' tras. "It's a literal translation of the English 'to call back,' which in Spanish makes absolutely no sense, but people say it anyway."
  • By Ernie Grimm, Aug. 6, 2008
Tijuana students. "The word guey [pronounced way] used to refer to men, when I left Tijuana, never to women. Now, women say it to each other."

  • Greetings from Tijuana

  • A mile east of the Tijuana International Airport is an area police call El Fin del Mundo, the End of the World, where drug-cartel assassins dump their victims. Both Mexican and American citizens have been found there. On December 18, 2004, according to Sergeant Tom Bulow of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, San Marcos resident Noé Chávez García was lured to Tijuana by two acquaintances who shot him several times and left him in this corpse-disposal zone.
  • By Michael Hemmingson, Aug. 6, 2008
September 24, 2007 — "Gunmen fire automatic weapons from several vehicles, attacking a post manned by federales in the Francisco Villa neighborhood. The metal fence of a nearby school is destroyed by the storm of bullets." (Oscar A. Martinez for Frontera)

  • Showdown on the Rio Alamar

  • We park near the adobe bullring. The breeze picks up a little, here on the outskirts of Colonia Chilpancingo, a neighborhood in Tijuana. Nearby, a woman washes clothes in a concrete sink with water from a yard hose. Chickens scratch in the dirt around her earthen-walled home. She does not stop, nor does she look up as we pass.
  • By Dave Good, Sept. 5, 2012
A steel and concrete channel will replace the Rio Alamar’s open space. (Leticia Ayala)

  • We went to Mexico to get ahead. We smuggled cheese to get back.

  • One night, over frozen pot-pie dinners, I suggested something I was sure she would reject out of hand. “Let’s move to Tijuana.” Maria replied without pause, “I was thinking the same thing.” Maybe the cheap rent and cost of living south of the border would give us some room to breathe, along with a chance of putting money back in our pockets.
  • By Steven Strasser, Dec. 19, 2012
“If you bought this at the market, why are there people’s names on them?” (Howie Rosen)
From jail, Félix hired a Venezuelan man to seduce Palma’s wife, take her to Venezuela, decapitate her, and send her head back to Palma in Mexico.

  • Mexican Drug Cartels: You Want Silver or Lead?

  • The Tijuana cartel as we know it today has its roots in the Mexican states of Sinaloa on the southeast side of the Gulf of California and Jalisco in central Mexico. A former Mexican Judicial Federal Police officer and bodyguard to Sinaloan governor Leopoldo Sánchez, Miguel Félix was among the first Mexican drug lords to make connections with Colombian cartels in the mid-’70s thanks to his Honduran liaison Juan Matta.
  • By Chad Deal, Sept. 22, 2010
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