Devising Fronteras Desviadas: The Creative Process

 In 2004, Mujeres en Ritual sought to explore these issues from multiple points of view, to arrive at a more complex perception of the experiences of women on both sides of the national and cultural borders that join/divide México and the United States. Our goal was to create new work that deconstructs dominant images of the women of Tijuana, to stage representations that were not condescending, illustrative, simplistic, stereotypical, or didactic. We began with research and site visits to uncover the history and conditions of the region (most of which were very familiar to me, but previously unknown to Assaf). When we first conceived of the project, we began with the theme of “women’s bodies at the border,” not knowing where it might lead us. We knew we wanted to investigate the maquiladoras, and the Ciudad Industrial where most of the factories are located. Our first step was to participate in an Environmental Justice Tour¹⁰ of communities affected by the pollution from the maquiladoras, and to investigate the inhumane conditions for women workers. As we journeyed deeper into our research, however, the connections to, and immensity of, the sexual tourism industry began to overwhelm our thoughts.

Amidst an ocean of information in Border Studies, news and media archives in Tijuana and San Diego, and in the internet, we found a particularly valuable resource in Tijuana La Horrible: Entre la historia y el mito, by Mexican writer Humberto Félix Berumen. He exposes the founding of Tijuana by Americans in 1916 as an adult entertainment center for US tourists, and the creation of its border as a state apparatus to regulate the flow of US citizens in to México in the era of Prohibition. He describes in detail how the association of Tijuana with sex, drugs, “deviance” and illegality (the “Leyenda Negra” as it’s called in México) was not only constructed in the US imagination, but also promoted by American casino owners to attract their own people as consumers. Félix Berumen further explains how this legend persists:

People have a stigmatized image of Tijuana, as it can be perceived through radio, literature, film, written press, television, songs and many other discourses (oral, visual and written). That image is a social creation and a collective image formed by the syncretic amalgamation of platitudes, legends, stereotypes, prejudices, sociograms and clichés . . . Tijuana is a city-symbol, the emblem, by definition, of perversion and vice. A myth that has been revealed with a great capacity to renew itself continually.¹¹

But rarely is there an acknowledgement of US responsibility in creating the political and economic conditions that make this image, and the markets it relies upon, flourish; rarely is there any accountability for the exploitation and violence that accompanies these markets. The Zona Norte, the commercial sex zone of Tijuana, continues from its American origins as the most active “red zone” in México—a country in which sex work is officially illegal, except for “zones of tolerance” where tourism is valued above even the “morality” laws (under which individuals exhibiting “homosexual behavior” can still be arrested, in states such as Baja California). Poverty, lack of opportunity and trafficking force thousands of women, children and transgendered people into sex work. As José Esteban Muñoz described in Disidentifications:

Late capitalism represents the dwindling of possibilities for the racialized working class. Under such hegemony, women of color compete over low-wage positions within the shrinking service economy. Individuals who reject this constrained field of possibility often choose to survive by entering alternative economies involving sex work or the drug trade . . . [This] move into the illicit coliseum represents a dystopic vision of what the continuation of late capitalism will mean for Latinas and other people of color.¹²