A large number of Mexicans deported from the U.S. end up staying in Tijuana. Here’s a fascinating article from National Geographic that presents the statistics in human terms. It’s a timely issue… There are also some great photos in the article.
Here’s the link:
My rating: 4 1/2 stars
Hilario Peña’s Tijuana is a place where danger lurks around every corner, corruption is rampant, relationships are complex and often secret, loyalty is a rare commodity, and love conquers all.
Tomás Peralta is older and wiser than the tough kid who was chased out of Sinaloa a few years ago in Peña’s earlier novel Malasuerte en Tijuana. He has established himself as a private detective, and he needs all of his experience, instinct and luck to handle the cases he takes on in Juan Tres Dieciséis.
Juan Tres Dieciséis is a rising boxing superstar who has the good, or perhaps bad, fortune to be named after the bible verse John 3:16. His wife was recently murdered, and he is the prime suspect. It looks like an open-and-shut case for the police, but he hires Tomás to find the real murderer. There are many distractions along the way, though, that take Tomás from the highest to the lowest levels of Tijuana society. There are murderers, conniving women, revolutionaries, corrupt government officials and doctors with questionable ethics. Lorena Guzmán, the eponymous Mujer de los Hermanos Reyna, Peña’s terrific earlier novel, makes a memorable appearance. She has done well for herself, and is still unrelentingly sexy, and profoundly corrupt.
Peña never gives me what I expect, and that’s why I always enjoy his books. What started out to be a routine genre novel detoured into a skillfully written memoir of an up-and-coming young boxer, with some of the most riveting action sequences I’ve ever read. The author clearly loves the sport. From there, the book returns to the detective story, but it’s far from routine. The plot complexities and character development are laid on layer by layer, and build to a truly unexpected climax.
Juan Tres Dieciséis is a gripping noir novel, liberally laced with laugh-out-loud humor and that cynicism tempered with hope and optimism that is so unique to the Mexican sensibility.
I had a great time reading it.
My rating: 4 1/2 Stars
Rodrigo is trigger man for a big-time Tijuana gangster, but he’s going through a career crisis. When he realizes his boss has manipulated him into one last job in a backwater town in his native Sinaloa, Rodrigo’s career crisis blossoms into a full-blown identity crisis. After displaying his prodigious criminal talents while reclaiming his hijacked SUV from the young prince of a local crime family, Rodrigo is ready to ride off into the sunset. But the town makes him an unexpected offer… to become the local sheriff.
That’s the call to action in Hilario Peña’s “narco-western,” Chinola Kid. It’s a wonderfully observed tribute to the traditional western novel, and classic Hollywood westerns such as High Noon.
Devastated by the ongoing turf battle between the families that hold the local heroin and marijuana franchises, Rodrigo sees an opportunity to embrace his inner good-guy, and clean up the town. Deadly earnest, he posts the new rules, starting with a 100 peso fine for spitting in the street, another for using bad language in the presence of women, and so on through an escalating list of offenses. His is a zero tolerance system of enforcement.
As we explore Rodrigo’s successes and challenges as the local law man, Peña gives us a cast of vivid characters, and makes them real through extensive use of colorful dialog.
Enforcing black and white rules in a gray world is not destined to last forever, despite Rodrigo’s refusal to be discouraged by betrayal, or to grasp opportunities for corruption. The climactic showdown becomes inevitable, but Peña uses it as an opportunity to ponder the very nature of power. I came away with the observation that nobody is ever really the boss, because every boss in turn has his own boss.
A well-constructed fun read, filled with memorable characters.
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Desde Amazon:
“¡Vaqueros vs. narcos!”
Los habitantes del Tecolote apenas pueden creer el cambio que ha sufrido su pueblo en los últimos meses, el cual pasó de ser la población con más asesinatos por metro cuadrado en el mundo, a convertirse en un verdadero ejemplo de bonanza económica para el país. Uno de los factores que contribuyeron a este nuevo estado de las cosas podría ser la determinación de un comisario elegido democráticamente por sus gobernados para hacer cumplir su ley, que no admite transgresiones de ningún tipo.
Rodrigo Barajas es su nombre y la primera impresión que uno se lleva al mirarlo es la de encontrarse frente a uno de esos alguaciles del Viejo Oeste, de pocas palabras y mucha acción, con su bigote a lo Wyatt Earp, su sombrero Stetson, y esa mirada serena, reflexiva y sabia que pertenece a una especie de hombre en peligro de extinción.
Apreciable lector, en sus manos sostiene un auténtico narcowestern, una “vieja historia del Nuevo Oeste” en deuda con las películas de Kurosawa, Howard Hawks y el libro vaquero; construida sobre valores perdidos como el honor, la valentía y la decencia, ideales para combatir el cinismo de los días que corren.
They’re building a bridge from San Diego directly to the Tijuana airport. It will make a huge difference in cost and convenience for travellers.
Here’s the New York Times article:
I just saw this wonderful photo of Tijuana on the great Facebook page Actitud Tijuana.
Yes, there’s a border between the U.S. and Mexico. And yes, there’s a fence along that border. Here’s what it looks like a couple of hours out of Tijuana.
I don’t know what made the sky that color, but it certainly gave Avenida Constitución an interesting look.
Heading east by bus.
My rating: 4 1/2 stars
As I read Hilario Peña’s delightful novel, I felt as if I were solving one of those big, beautiful jig saw puzzles I used to solve with father on summer vacations. Covering a 40-year time span, it’s gradually revealed to be the saga of a loosely-knit family’s move from a dying town in Sinaloa to a position of power in the thriving city of Tijuana.
A story that shows what can be accomplished with ambition, brains and a faulty moral compass, the themes are constant reinvention, constant betrayal, and the importance of family – even wildly dysfunctional family. There’s lots of action. The book features a murder mystery, a gang war, police and political corruption, drug trafficking, the use of religion and sex as tools for personal and financial gain, and an allegorical escape of wild animals from the zoo.
There’s a huge cast of vividly-written characters, but the story revolves around three principal players. Roberto Reyna is a scheming womanizer with a surprising weakness. He has a distant, but strong tie to his half-brother, Nicolás, a seeming innocent who nevertheless has no problem capitalizing on the outrageous situations that present themselves. Most interesting of all is the mysterious Lorena “La Morena.” While she struggles for control over her own life, there’s no doubt that she has control over everyone she comes into contact with. Every time I thought we were finished with a character, he would come back to fill in another piece of the puzzle.
There were a large number of pieces in this puzzle, but I trusted the author to pull them all together, which he did, providing a truly satisfying and engaging reading experience.
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The author’s description of his book, and the thought process that went into its creation:
La mujer de los hermanos Reyna narra las vivencias de un grupo de estafadores de poca monta entre los que se encuentran un comisario holgazán, su medio hermano y una despampanante mujer fatal apodada la Morena, quienes, con sus actos, llevarán a la ruina a un pueblo sinaloense llamado Estación Naranjo, antes de huir hacia la ciudad de Tijuana, donde cada uno se reinventará a sí mismo, superando su condición de desheredados por medio de complejas estafas, la única manera de subsistir en el mundo en el que viven, donde nada se les dio gratis.
Con esta obra me propuse crear un nuevo género al que llamo Melodrama Policiaco, el cual se encuentra influenciado en partes iguales tanto por la novela negra norteamericana como por algunos culebrones del canal de las estrellas; estos melodramas épicos que en ocasiones llegan a abordar la vida de todo un pueblo y que regularmente terminan con la villana quemada, rapada, desfigurada y metida en un manicomio.
Se me ocurrió la idea de un don Juan sinaloense, con hijos regados por todo el estado. Me pregunté, ¿cómo sería la relación entre estos medios hermanos, separados no solo por kilómetros de distancia entre sí, sino también por rencores, celos y envidias? Enseguida coloqué a una mujer de carácter fuerte y actos sumamente sensuales en medio de ellos, agregué un poco de melodrama a la mezcla, lo metí todo dentro de una trama de género policiaco, y de pronto ya tenía el concepto bien cuajado. Ahora solo hacía falta escribirlo.
El tema de don Juan me llevó a otro que es común denominador de todas mis historias: el tema rulfiano de la búsqueda del padre (de manera descarada el inicio de esta novela parafrasea el inicio de Pedro Páramo). Al menos es lo que persiguen los protagonistas de mis últimos tres libros, una figura paterna que les enseñe a convertirse en hombres para dejar de cometer los errores y tropiezos que terminarán provocando en unos casos la risa y en otros la lástima de parte de los lectores.
A cada personaje lo mueve una motivación diferente, como es el caso de la Morena, quien es guiada por su irreprimible deseo de libertad que más tarde se transforma en ambición de poder. Al comisario Nicolás Reyna lo mueve su deseo por reencontrarse con su padre, mientras que todo lo que Roberto Reyna desea, a pesar de su inicial pose de macho mexicano, es retornar al útero materno, a aquel origen apacible e idílico que terminó abruptamente con el suicidio de su madre. Al secuaz de este trío, el maquiavélico Rigoberto Zamudio, lo mueve su vampírica obsesión por poseer a la Morena, a quien ve como la fuente de la eterna juventud.
Existe una nostalgia que impregna todo el libro, con personajes que miran siempre hacia su pasado con añoranza. Evelina Zamudio y la nostalgia por las tradiciones de su pueblo, la mayoría de ellas abolidas por los caprichos de un pastor evangélico; el subprocurador César Mayorga y su nostalgia por un sistema político tan autoritario como funcional. Margarita Lizárraga, la figura materna sobre la que se abalanza Roberto Reyna para dejar atrás su vida de pendencias. También están otros personajes, como Raquel Torres, esta empleada de una joyería a punto de ser asaltada, quien padece del complejo de Electra hasta que conoce a Leonardo Zamudio, alias el DiCaprio, uno de los asaltantes a los que se habrá de enfrentar en el clímax de la historia.
El humor es otro ingrediente importante en La mujer de los hermanos Reyna, sin embargo procuré que éste funcionara como parte del hilo conductor más que como fin en sí mismo. Una herramienta de la cual me valgo para que el lector siga conmigo y escuche el mensaje que lanza una vida como la de Lorena Guzmán. Un mensaje difícil de desentrañar, incluso para el autor, pero que definitivamente se encuentra ahí, hablándonos en todo momento.
Mi novela predilecta de cuantas he publicado. La considero la mejor.La recomiendo ampliamente.
I took a long taxi ride to the beach in Tijuana to try a restaurant that Anthony Bourdain featured on his show. Guess what? Terraza Vallarta isn’t there any more. $22 in cab rides later, at least I had a nice conversation with the cab driver… It was one of the less expensive little white cabs, so I probably made his night.
On Saturday night in Hermosillo, I took another long cab ride – not as long this time – to a Sinaloa style seafood restaurant called El Charco. Before the taxi could leave, a lovely young woman raced out to tell me that they closed at 7:00 pm. I’ve come across this with other seafood places in Mexico.I ended up at La Cobacha, a huge place with an extensive menu. I had a mixture of shrimp, scallops and avocado in a sweetish red sauce called Manjar de Neptuno… Finally got my seafood fix.
Bruce Critchley's Mexico Here and There 