Driving Through an Empty Tijuana in the Midst of the Swine Flu

By Mike Davis, Tomdispatch.com. Posted May 6, 2009.

The old city dump is closed, the new one too far away, so like most Tijuaneses, ERRE uses the services of the informal economy. Moreover, in the midst of an unprecedented NAFTA recession, a horror-ridden narco-war, and now a much-hyped pandemic, any act that circulates a few pesos amongst "el pueblo" seems conscientious.

We fishtail out of the dirt alley and return to a paved avenue of restaurants, beauty salons, and car-alarm dealers. Schools and public buildings are closed, morning masses have been suspended, and sports events have been cancelled, but stores and street markets remain open and desperate for business. Customers are sparse, though. Half the population seems to have disappeared. Few people, apart from municipal employees and office cleaners, wear surgical masks, but no one seems to begrudge those that do.

"Looks like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers," I say.

"You should have seen Mexico City," ERRE replies. "I was down there for the Zona Maco Art Fair when the flu pandemonium started. At first it was just a big joke. Everyone was decorating their face masks with Salvador Dali mustaches or big teeth like Bugs Bunny. On mine, I wrote 'Ay cabrón, qué gripón traigo!' ['Oh shit, what a terrible flu I've got!']

"Then the famous archeologist Felipe Solis suddenly died. He was the director of the National Anthropology Museum and the previous week had given Obama a tour of Aztec treasures. There were rumors that he had swine flu. [This was subsequently denied by medical authorities.] That chilled the whole scene. People didn't know what to expect. It was like the Camus novel [The Plague]. Best friends were afraid to give each other an abrazo or a kiss on the cheek.

"What scared me was simply the idea of being sick and helpless so far from my family. Here together, familia Ramirez is almost invincible. You can bury my bones in Tijuana."

We turn eastward, crossing the legendary Avenida Revolución, past the curio stores, discos, and long bars -- remnants of the raunchy Tijuana invented by gringo bootleggers and gamblers during the early decades of the twentieth century.

There are no tourists. Nada. Although the only confirmed swine flu cases locally are across the border in San Diego, Tijuana as usual bears the stigma -- the growing fear of all things Mexican even when they originate, like the demand for drugs or the industrialized livestock from which this new flu probably sprung, in the United States.

"Feel lonely, gringo?" ERRE laughs.

To console me, he points out that there are no cops on the streets either.

Three days earlier, drug-cartel gunmen launched simultaneous attacks on police across the city, killing seven in half an hour, one of them in the small station just up the block from the Ramirez family home. Using decoders to break into the police radio frequency, the killers daily taunt the cops, blasting loud narcocorridos and boasting of future assassinations.

"Today all the police are either at the funeral for their comrades or in hiding. The narcos have threatened to raise the death toll to 30 in the next week."

"Why are they so pissed off at the cops?" I ask.

"I think the police confiscated a huge drug cache," younger brother Omar interjects.

We stop at a light. Some desperate squeegee guys without water bottles scuffle over ERRE's windshield. Two soldiers on the corner of Paseo de los Heroes observe the melee with indifference. Masked by black bandanas, they cradle new made-in-Mexico FX-05 assault rifles in their arms.

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Mike Davis is the author most recently of In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire (Haymarket Books, 2008) and Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (Verso, 2007). He is currently working on a book about cities, poverty, and global change.

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