New park turns attention from a forbidding border fence to a welcoming ocean
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20050821-9999-lz...
By Ann Jarmusch
August 21, 2005
TIJUANA ? The churning ocean and the rigid border fence mark the extreme northwest corner of this sprawling city and its western suburb, Playas de
Tijuana.
This dusty, windswept place above a popular sandy beach also occupies the far northwest corner of all of Mexico, Central America and Latin America.
Such significance led artist Thomas Glassford and landscape architect Jos? Parral "to dignify and celebrate this corner" with inSITE's first permanent
project.
Since the early 1990s, when the nonprofit inSITE began sponsoring temporary art installations created for specific sites in San Diego and Tijuana,
artists have responded to this confounding spot with provocative works rife with political and social commentary.
How could they resist? Here we find one of the world's oddest, most brazen culture clashes: a small, jaunty seaside haven forced to terminate against
the steel U.S. border fence, which plunges like a knife across both countries'public beaches and into the ocean.
When inSITE serves its latest binational, mixed-media feast beginning Friday, visitors will find Mexico's northwest corner transformed, and the icons
of Playas de Tijuana ? a lighthouse, a historic border marker, a monumental bullring ? highlighted. At least through Nov. 13, when inSITE05 ends, the
area's two streets will be blocked off, allowing residents and tourists to meander freely through a new park called La Esquina/Jardines Las Playas de
Tijuana (The Corner/Playas Gardens).
Native and tropical plants will blanket slopes that only two weeks ago were barren. Wide, curvaceous new concrete walkways and bridges will allow
people of all ages to traverse what had been eroded, unstable ground.
An ocean-view "blufftop" ? created over time by rubbish dumped by Mexicans disgusted by the 10-foot-high fence ? is now smoothed and sealed by a
large, round concrete pad. Battered public restrooms have been replaced by facilities tucked into a circular structure. Its flat roof serves as a
second viewing platform.
This urban renewal project has been in the works for two years. Carmen Cuenca, inSITE's executive director for Mexico, has met with at least 20 groups
and government agencies ? from Playas neighborhood leaders to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ? to muster support and approval for La
Esquina/Jardines on both sides of the border. Key cooperation is ongoing from staff at the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve in
Imperial Beach, because the park is partly a restoration and reclamation project, and nature knows no political boundaries.
Businesses have donated materials, such as native plants, and citizens groups have offered to help maintain the park. Both the lighthouse keeper and
the coconut vendor, fixtures on this corner throughout inSITE's history, have embraced the improvements, Cuenca said.
"This park would cost $250,000 (in Mexico, if paid for in full). We did it for $40,000," said Michael Krichman, inSITE's U.S. executive director.
"That's a lot of people giving."
Glassford and Parral have even bigger ambitions for this park, such as extending it into Border Field State Park, on the opposite side of the fence.
(Cuenca hopes to resume negotiations with U.S. agencies after November.) They also envision building a pier over the ocean, something Tijuana lacks,
and installing webcams so people in Mexico can watch the U.S. Border Patrol close up and in action.
Cuenca, a Tijuana native, and others, pushed for inSITE's board to agree to tackle this site with lasting improvements. "We don't feel ourselves as
(living in) a coastal city. Tijuana is a northern city; it looks north, facing the fence," she said. "This (park) refocuses attention on the ocean.
(Glassford and Parral) are reorganizing the urban plan to connect with the ocean."
Glassford, a Laredo, Texas, native who has lived in Mexico City for 15 years, and Parral, a native San Diegan who as a child visited his grandmother
in Tijuana, didn't know each other before they were invited to design and build the park. It was inSITE05 curator Osvaldo S?nchez's idea to arrange
what Parral good-naturedly calls "a shotgun wedding."
Glassford, 42, and Parral, 33, hit it off, but at first Glassford resisted making the western tip of a raw, resented border barricade the backdrop for
their collaboration. Having grown up across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo, the artist said by phone from his parents' house in Laredo, he felt
using such a politically charged site would be exploiting a huge problem, like "picking at the scab of the border itself."
He soon changed his mind. "I came to think of it as community renewal, a way to solidify and celebrate this corner. It's one of the most expressive
areas of the border, and one of the first places people, especially those from Mexico's interior, want to see in Tijuana. They remember the migrants
who have lost their lives (while trying to cross illegally into the United States) when they see the ocean, and the absurd wall made of (steel
matting) salvaged from the Gulf War, and the Border Patrol."
Parral crosses the border more often now than he did while growing up, partly because he has friends and colleagues who live in Tijuana. He worked for
the San Diego firm Spurlock Poirier Landscape Architecture on the Getty Garden, designed by artist Robert Irwin at the Brentwood art museum, and the
landscape design of Petco Park.
Parral spends long work days at La Esquina/Jardines, his first project to be designed and built independent of a design firm. He said he doesn't mind
the effort required, because he's learning so much from everyone involved, from the contractor's foreman and the crew that gave the lighthouse a new
coat of paint to the native-plant aficionado.
"Things are always changing here. The real boundary (the ocean) is always fluctuating, while this one," Parral said, pointing to the steel fence being
replaced by the U.S. military, "is static." The ocean draws you into what seems like an infinitely serene space, while the fence stops you cold.
"So how can we incorporate that (in the park)?" One way was to offer a series of smooth and sometimes concentric connections between park attractions.
Both Glassford and Parral were initially concerned about seeming to impose their vision of a border park on the people of Playas and Tijuana. Though
they conferred with grass-roots groups, getting this ambitious project off the drawing board was extremely difficult, the team and Cuenca said.
But just a few weeks ago, after construction was under way, donations started to materialize and support inSITE had cultivated began to blossom.
"We're trying to offer something that didn't exist before," said Glassford. "The park belongs to the community. They'll take it over and change it as
they wish. We just hope we're restoring pride in this corner, instead of having people turn their backs on it."
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