Tijuana is a city that should never have occurred. Based against San Diego on the American border in the far northwest of Mexico, the city is riddled with mountains and canyons. However, it has become the second largest city on the west coast of North America after Los Angeles, with a population of more than 2 million inhabitants. Limited growth towards the north and west by the border and the ocean, it spread south to Playas de Rosarito (Rosarito beach) and east to Tecate, with a award -winning wine country either.
His relationship with San Diego, his northern neighbor, has always been complicated by a border that follows no natural path but was drawn as a straight line after the war between Mexico and the United States. San Diego was neat and ordered with a large sea port and the advantages of being part of the richest American state and the most prosperous nation in the world. Tijuana was messy, dirty and was part of a nation with the civil war.
What should Tijuana do? He began to exploit vices not available north of the border and adapt his economy to American demand. Ironically, what was considered bad in Tijuana would become pleasant and good when he was finally adopted by San Diego and in the United States.
In the 1920s, temperance became the law of the country in the United States. The bars were closed and alcohol sales were prohibited. But the bars and salons were wide open in Tijuana.
These are the glamorous days when Tijuana was happy to sell alcohol to thirsty Americans, like the bronfmans of Canada and bootleggers and speakeasies in the United States. The Hollywood ensemble and others flock to Tijuana to be thirsty. The restaurant of César opened its doors in 1924 on the main street of the city, Avenida Revolución, and invented the Caesar salad to serve hungry drinkers.
But the day the 18th amendment was repealed in 1933, Tijuana quickly became a ghost city.
What to do? Tijuana reinvented himself. Casinos were legal in Mexico in the 1930s, but they were not in California. The Casino of Agua Caliente was built and held by the same people who created Las Vegas – Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Segal of Los Angeles. Following The prosperity of the game led to Tijuana International Airport, named Rodriguez, as well as a monument built in his honor.
The casino and the spa obtained an almost mythical status, with Hollywood stars and gangsters who fly to play – often with ladies who were not their wives (or husbands). Musical Nightclub Productions was broadcast on the radio. Margarita Cancino was discovered here, becoming the legendary Rita Hayworth.
But in 1935, the newly elected president Lazaro Cárdenas decreed the end of the games of chance and the casinos in Baja California, and the Agua Caliente complex, then closed. Tijuana has once again become a ghost town.
Then Japan attacked the United States’s fleet in Pearl Harbor, and millions of young sailors from the navy across the United States arrived in San Diego. For young men, San Diego was considered “pretty” but really, really boring.
It was then that Tijuana – in particular her bars along the Avenida Revolucion – became the destination of choice for the pleasure for many of these soldiers. And the notorious “Zona Norte” of Tijuana “Zona Norte” provided alcohols and ladies for the best Americans. The corridia lent “sophistication” and excitement for the young American who found that they too “were no longer in Kansas”.
Then the war ended and, once again, Tijuana languished. American tourists have always flocked to Tijuana, looking for what they could not obtain in the conservative era of Eisenhower in their own country.
Instant weddings were instant marriages and rapid divorces. Ready abortions prospered for American women with unhappy or unwanted pregnancies in Tijuana, despite the illegality of abortion throughout Mexico. Naked breast programs with notorious Blue Fox Bar, where the ladies have done things with their anatomy which was surprised and titled, often with the participation of the public.
Then came the 1960s and the sexual revolution in the United States. Tijuana fell again in difficult times.
In the 1960s, Tijuana discovered a new way of doing business with Americans – free trade areas, where goods around the world could be bought for the northern border. Without taxes, many beautiful stores have opened in Tijuana, notably Sara, Dorordans, Maxim Imports and Endless Beauty Supply Stores and Fashion Outlets.
Tijuana stores have transported perfumes and excellent goods from Asia and Europe that attracted customers from the United States and Mexico long before these articles were available in the local San Diego stores.
Then after the passage of Mexico of the national industrialization program of the borders of 1964 and that Tijuana tamed the Tijuana river, subject to the floods of low parts of the city – Tijuana found another sustainable means of provoking prosperity in its people. The “Maquiladora” program saw the raw materials sent to Tijuana for assembly, then returned to the United States as finished goods.
Since then, the Maquiladora program has created a prosperous city which now exports nearly $ 200 million in sophisticated goods every day. Tijuana has become the world leader in television production, heart stimulators, heart valves, orthopedic products, aerospace parts and trucks. It is now the largest center for manufacturing medical devices.
International companies with world -renowned names have started to manufacture in Tijuana. Societies such as Kyocera, Toyota, Hyundai, Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, Djo Global, Cubic Corporation, Solar Turbines / Caterpilar, Bose Speakers, Sharp and Welch Alllyn opened Maquiladoras.
The next time you have your blood pressure, look at the equipment. There is a good chance that this will indicate in Mexico by Welch Allyn – in Tijuana. There is plantronic (now poly), where the helmets used by astronauts are made. More flat -screen TVs are made in Tijuana than everywhere else in the world.
In recent decades, Tijuana aerospace employment has almost doubled its size, reaching a pool of talents of more than 11,690 highly qualified employees. Mexico now gets more engineers than the United States, a country more than double its size. Many are universities of Tijuana such as UABC, CETYS and TECNM. Local universities and technical schools have developed advanced and specialized engineering programs to support the growth of the sector.
More than 37 level 1 companies and industry suppliers are now operating in the city. This cluster represents the largest concentration of companies and the employment of the aerospace and defense industry in Mexico.
The city offers a manufacturing ecosystem with a unique combination of competitive factors such as 30 years of manufacturing experience, world class quality, competitive labor costs and a local supply chain. Tijuana today has more than 50 advanced industrial parks.
Prosperous pharmacies sell medicines from the same international companies as in the United States, but at much lower prices. Many pharmaceutical products that require a prescription in the United States can be bought over the counter in Tijuana, making it one of the reasons why American tourists come to the city.
Then there are real estate. Along the magnificent Littoral of Tijuana and the neighboring beach of Rosarito, foreigners can buy apartments and houses a third of the price just north of the County of San Diego. In the center of Tijuana, more than a dozen co -ownership developments have become popular with American buyers, some of whom join the 70,000 daily shuttlers who cross the north of the border to work.
They choose to live in Tijuana for three main reasons: the lower cost of living, a different dynamic culture and family connections.
The American navy recognizes Tijuana as the favorite residence for many of its civilian workers who use the world’s world entry / feeling system to easily cross the border to their work daily, avoiding high housing costs in San Diego.
These commuters are among the more than 120,000 Americans living in the Baja peninsula in California. Their needs are served by oDo not the biggest American consulates in the worldBased, of course, in Tijuana.
Tijuana, who formerly prospered by offering Americans the opportunity to be bad, now prosperous as one of the industrial powers of Mexico.
James Clark written for Mexico News Daily
