Lured by the promise of US prosperity, trapped by Tijuana's violence and poverty
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1356486...
In a city awash with social problems, Grupo M?xico appears to be on the mend. But the area is still pitifully poor, its inhabitants scarred by drugs,
guns and sexual violence
Dan Glaister
November 22, 2004
Hortensia Bracken shields her eyes from the sun and nods up at a pair of high-heeled shoes dangling from the electricity cables slung haphazardly
across the street.
"You know what that means, those shoes hanging there?" she asks. It is something that might be seen in many cities, perhaps the result of a child's
prank. But in the downtrodden neighbourhood of Grupo M?xico in Tijuana, a poor city just a few miles from the wealth of San Diego, the shoes have a
different significance. "It means there's drug dealing nearby, that this is a drug dealing spot," she says.
In a city awash with social problems, Grupo M?xico appears to be on the mend. The mud tracks are now paved, the armed guards who used to control the
two entry points to the neighbourhood are gone, and the gangs only make their presence felt at night. But the area is still pitifully poor, its
inhabitants scarred by drugs, guns and sexual violence.
"That girl over there," says Ms Bracken, gesturing at a young woman grappling with a small child, "her daughter was raped and killed. Then her other
girl was raped."
"That boy was badly burned. His mother is 23 years old. She has six children and is pregnant again."
Ms Bracken knows these stories because she lives with the families. During the day she works with Spectrum Ministries, a San Diego-based group which
runs several orphanages and does outreach work with children in Tijuana. But unlike many missionary groups, Spectrum does not arrive, bash the Bible
and then vanish: many members of its staff live in Tijuana.
Today, Ms Bracken is in Grupo M?xico for one of the group's regular bathdays. Children line up from early in the morning to have a shower. Once they
have been washed they choose new clothes and are given some fruit. If they are lucky they might win a toy.
The children chat together with almost uncontainable excitement as they wait for their numbers to be called, occasionally risking a clip around the
ear to peek through the door of the rough and ready bathhouse.
The former gang members who make up most of Spectrum's Mexican helpers for the day - and who themselves have been through the bathhouse regime -
police the children with good-humoured ease. The children range from four years old to 13. Girls line up outside one building, boys outside another.
"Eighty per cent of them will be on drugs, many on crystal meth, and most of them will be in a gang," says Pastor Von, the founder of Spectrum.
Von, as everyone knows him, has been working with children in Tijuana for 30 years. His status is reflected by the enthusiasm with which he is greeted
by everyone, from the widest-eyed children to the macho youths with the hardest stares. "I don't preach much any more," he says. "You've got to have
people living this stuff, not preaching it. I decided to come down here and in my last years work with people who nobody wanted to work with. I was an
air gunner in the Korean war, and I must have shot more Chinese kids than I have worked with here."
Ms Bracken grew up in the city's dump. "I was raised in Cartonlandia," she says. "That's what they call the dump - because of the cardboard boxes."
One of 12 siblings, she was adopted at the age of five and taken to live in the US. In her mid-teens, she returned to Mexico. She pauses in her
description of the people around her to talk about her own family.
"My son, he was 22, was shot in one of the neighbourhoods here four months ago. The 37-year-old man who did it said it was a mistake, that it was
meant for some other youngsters who stole some drugs."
Although she knows the identity of the killer, the police have shown little interest. "I had to move from the place where I was living because my
house got shot up," she says matter-of-factly. "Threats were pushed under my door saying, 'You have more kids, just leave it alone.'"
Another of her children is a six-year-old boy, who is HIV-positive. "I adopted him when his parents died of Aids when he was a baby." He should be at
school, but, she says, "here in Mexico they don't accept kids with HIV, so he's going to have school at home".
In Tijuana, HIV rates are epidemic, possibly as high as 60% of the adult population. There are few treatment facilities for the city's population of
around 1.5 million, the majority of whom are between the ages of 16 and 30. Stories abound of hospitals turning HIV-positive patients away, and of
doctors refusing to touch them.
Eduardo M?ndez, director of the Emmanuel Orphanage in the city, says: "Tijuana is one of the main frontier cities. The problem is that it is the
frontier with one of the most powerful states in the world, California. People want to cross the border through Tijuana, but they arrive here without
money and live in the street. They arrive with their families, but often the families become divided as some members manage to cross the border and
others fail. And then some children arrive here with the promise of a job or passage across the border, but they are tricked into working as
prostitutes."
Back at the bathhouse, Jorge, 11, does not bother to bathe. Crisply turned out in grey trousers and brown shirt, he has already been to work today,
odd-jobbing on a building site.
A dignified, upright figure, he provides for a family of seven. "I do any work I can get," he says. If Jorge is lucky he might earn $50-$70 (?27-?38)
a week, less than the average daily wage in San Diego. Other than his sense of responsibility to his family, there is little to keep Jorge south of
the border - which is where Pastor Von comes in.
"We work with the deserving poor, the poor with dignity," he says. "I've been criticised by evangelical fundamentalists, that we don't have proper
preaching, but these kids don't care if it is Mormon, Evangelical, whatever. We can't do everything, but we can try to do something."
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