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Published by Rene on March 8, 2013

Este Blog Cumple 10 Anios  – A celebrar con mi texto que se publico en el Libro del 30 aniversario del Centro Cultural Tijuana.

La historia de una Bola
René Peralta Ramírez
¿Qué es la imagen o cómo se construye un símbolo arquitectónico? La arquitectura es parte de un imaginario común que crea vínculos entre el espacio social y físico. La producción de los símbolos es una labor muy diferente a la producción del objeto tectónico situado en el espacio de la ciudad. Los arquitectos producen objetos concretos basados en lógicas cartesianas, sin embargo, la producción de símbolos urbanos no es sólo producto del arquitecto. El espacio social de la ciudad se produce por medio de la interrelación de ideas, vivencias y experiencias de los ciudadanos, que con el tiempo producen e identifican los símbolos dentro de la misma; sin embargo, el quehacer de la arquitectura se considera un acto político que produce obras dentro del espacio físico de la ciudad (o absoluto, como dijera David Harvey). Estas obras están basadas en ideologías abstractas de la forma (teorías), dentro de la disciplina o de una visión idealista del mundo en que vivimos: simetría bilateral, ejes, órdenes clásicos o superficies.
Históricamente, la producción de la arquitectura como símbolo, invariablemente ha estado ligada con percepciones cualitativas: los caminos, los cerros, montañas o el cosmos; vinculadas con acontecimientos cíclicos: tormentas, producción agrícola, eclipses, etcétera; y después connotada por medio de la representación abstracta de la geometría arquitectónica. Fue en el siglo xx cuando se promovió la disolución de la carga simbólica en la arquitectura por ideologías de nuevos flujos e intercambios sociales que produjeron las economías de un mundo universal e industrial, y que al final originó una arquitectura racional. Como explica Manfredo Tafuri, a principios del siglo xxse inició el proceso de formación del arquitecto como el ideólogo de una nueva sociedad universal y antihistórica.[1]
El Centro Cultural Tijuana (Cecut) está compuesto de varios volúmenes que configuran un híbrido entre forma modernista (lógica cartesiana) y símbolo neoclásico (lo subliminal de Boulle), visiones paradójicas de la arquitectura en el siglo xx. Es un edificio contradictorio y complejo, como dijera Robert Venturi.
Su arquitecto, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, en colaboración con Manuel Rosen Morrison, reitera en su monografía publicada en 1989 que sus obras y uso de la materialidad están basadas en los principios urbanos y tectónicos de las culturas prehispánicas, relacionándose también con los espacios públicos/privados de la época colonial.[2]Su obra es nacionalista y posmoderna a la vez, por la integración de los significados apropiados de diferentes épocas de la cultura mexicana, utilizando en ocasiones un tercer discurso, el racionalista, importado de Europa y de Estados Unidos a México a principios del siglo xx.
La arquitectura del Cecut fue tan insólita para los tijuanenses como lo fue el estilo mudéjar del casino Agua Caliente, diseñado por Wayne McAllister en 1928. Los estilos de la arquitectura de la ciudad fueron siempre eclécticos, construcciones de madera y algunos edificios seudomodernistas.[3]En Tijuana, lo más cerca que estuvimos de la arquitectura mexicana fue en el Instituto Salk de Louis Kahn en La Jolla, California, donde el arquitecto jalisciense Luis Barragán le propuso a Kahn mantener la plaza principal sin vegetación, creando así uno de los espacios más sublimes en Norteamérica.
Teo-Tijuana
Pedro Ramírez Vázquez se inspiró en construcciones de nuestros antepasados en donde se brinda culto a los dioses de la lluvia, la luna, el sol, etcétera. La pirámide de Mesoamérica es la estructura que apunta hacia el cosmos en ofrenda por la sobrevivencia de una cultura.
El Cecut lo utiliza como un símbolo reciclado ‒¡un remix teotihuacano en la frontera!‒. “La Bola” al centro del proyecto es una ofrenda tectónica donde se simula el cosmos por medio de un sofisticado sistema de proyección. A Tijuana no sólo la mexicanizaron sino también le adaptaron una cultura precolombina, ‒¡el Aztlán del siglo xx, ese!
El Centro Cultural y Turístico de Tijuana (su razón social) fue el toque final de una propuesta nacional para la recomposición urbana de la ciudad. El proyecto urbano impulsado por el gobierno federal y trazado por el arquitecto Pedro Moctezuma fue el intento por mexicanizar Tijuana, ya que por ubicación geográfica y desde su concepción Tijuana sufría de una falta de mexicanidad, como bien lo resaltó el escritor Raymond Chandler en su novela The Last Goodbye: “Tijuana is not Mexico”.
Actualmente vemos que la traza urbana de lo que hoy conocemos como la Zona del Río fue un eje importante para la colocación de héroes nacionales en glorietas semejantes a las del Paseo de la Reforma en la capital de país. Tijuana por fin reconoció su mexicanidad. Junto con el canal de concreto más grande construido en el país, Tijuana ahora lucía lista para su modernización, su imagen era impulsada por visiones centralistas y una arquitectura de Estado, como explica el investigador Tito Alegría:
La virtud de Ramírez Vázquez consiste en haber reutilizado formas y principios surgidos en las batallas anti-historicistas, amalgamados con conceptos de origen prehispánicos, para darle a la arquitectura del poder el consenso necesario para que la gente sienta solucionada su necesidad expresiva y el Estado ejecute presencia en el territorio a través de la arquitectura, es decir, una finalidad aún histórica.[4]
La Bola cosmo-política
Revestido en concreto y organizado en simples volúmenes, ¡el Cecut pesa! Su materialidad se impone sobre la historia arquitectónica de la ciudad, después del casino Agua Caliente, es una de las inversiones más importantes que se han dado en la ciudad.
El museo y la sala de espectáculos configuran una “l”, que forma una plaza donde se ubica La Bola, que funge como sala de proyección omnimax en forma esférica. La Bola, como la bautizaron los ciudadanos, muchas veces se ha relacionado con la obra de Étienne-Louis Boullée y su proyecto para el Cenotafio a Newton. Comparativamente con la obra de Boulle, el omnimaxproyecta el cosmos sin representar los ideales neoclásicos del arquitecto francés (lo sublime), La Bola, en tanto, tiene más parecido a una obra de Béton brut, parte del movimiento arquitectónico que decribió el crítico inglés Rayner Banham como brutalista. La Bolahace referencia a su funcionalidad y en conjunto es ubicada al centro de la plaza limitando la congregación interrumpida de los usuarios como en los zócalos tradicionales, La Bola es, pues, el elemento ordenador del Cecut, todo lo demás es un intersticio.
Las caras de la Bola
El Cecut se ha convertido en la plataforma artística local, representado la contrariedad entre lo nacional y lo fronterizo, donde las visiones de una realidad urbana y una imagen nacional han discutido su convivencia. En 1994 el artista tijuanense Marcos Ramírez erre participó en el evento artístico binacional InSite, con la obra de instalación titulada Century 21, consistente en una casa construida con material reciclado y residuos provenientes de Estados Unidos, como las miles de viviendas que se encuentran en la periferia de la ciudad; viviendas para trabajadores de maquilas que ganan sólo lo suficiente para construir una casa de madera. La obra de erre se contrapone a la visión centralista (externa) e institucional con la realidad de los procesos de crecimiento informal de la ciudad y de la memoria del forzoso desalojo de Cartolandia, favela instalada sobre el Río Tijuana antes de su canalización. En el catálogo más reciente del artista se describe la obra de esta forma:
La instalación fue colocada en la explanada principal de Centro Cultural Tijuana (Cecut) creando una yuxtaposición entre la monumentalidad y solidez de la arquitectura institucional mexicana y la fragilidad entre una estructura nómada, simbólica de un insurgente y flexible urbanismo.[5]
No sólo los artistas locales, sino también los extranjeros han utilizado al Cecut como referente de la contradicción representada por la imagen urbana de Tijuana, una realidad inevitable de reconocer. En otra edición de InSite, en el año 2000, el artista polaco Krzysztof Wodisczko proyectó sobre La Bola imágenes de los rostros de mujeres trabajadoras de la industria maquiladora que narraban en vivo su testimonio sobre su condición familiar, abusos laborales, entre otras realidades que viven cientos de trabajadoras que ensamblan todo tipo de productos para el mundo; por una noche La Bola obtuvo rostro pero no fue el de un diosa mexica o de algún revolucionario, sino el de los ciudadanos que viven en la periferias pobres de Tijuana, más alejados geográficamente del Cecut.
¿Dónde quedó La Bola?
Desde su fundación hace treinta años, el Cecut ha estado trasformando su significado, primero se construyó como un bastión de la mexicanidad, después lo adoptaron como lugar donde la cultura fronteriza legitima sus procesos locales por medio de confrontaciones con la curaduría y con el edificio mismo. Finalmente, intenta por medio de un cambio arquitectónico ‒con la construcción de El Cubo y la cineteca Sala “Carlos Monsiváis”‒ construir un nuevo diálogo con la cultura local.
Para el ciudadano común todavía es una incógnita lo que pasa o puede pasar en el Cecut. Una encuesta llevada a cabo en 2012 por un semanario local (una muestra de 400 entrevistas), indica que 45.5% de los ciudadanos encuestados no visitan el CECUT porque no les llama la atención y sólo el 47.5% supo que había dentro de “la Bola”.(7)  La incógnita de los tijuanenses es un sentimiento común en la crisis de la institución del museo a nivel global. El efecto Bilbao de la década de los años 90 intentó presentar la arquitectura del museo como parte de la rehabilitación urbana de la ciudad post-industrial. En muchas otras ciudades del mundo se inicia una confianza en la imagen de la arquitectura estelar, ya sean museos, estadios o bibliotecas, produciendo en muchas ocasiones la incongruencia del deseo de la construcción de la modernidad por encima de tejido urbano social desprotegido.
La función de los museos del México moderno era conservar y recontextualizar el patrimonio histórico a través de una política de Estado, como menciona el sociólogo Néstor García Canclini: “Los museos en México tuvieron la tarea de proponer una monumentalización y ritualización nacional de la cultura”.[6]El Cecut se encuentra en tiempo de transformarse en una institución abierta que promueva la cultura local, que de alguna forma ya es parte de la actividad nacional, aquí en Tijuana se han formado no sólo artistas sino también promotores culturales que han llevado su conocimiento a otras partes del país y de América Latina. El edificio tiene sus límites, su espacio absoluto; su desarrollo debe ser tecnológico y ubicuo, nuestras instituciones tendrán que descentralizarse y dejar de ser sólo el lugar de la élite ‒el lugar para ser visto como en la gran escalera de la ópera de Garnier‒ y extenderse por la ciudad de forma virtual creando un fuerte lazo entre las comunidades que le falta por convencer.
Fuentes
Alegría, Tito, “El Centro Cultural Tijuana: Crítica de arquitectura”, Esquina Baja, Tijuana, México, Asociación Cultural Río Rita, núm. 2, 1987.
Galas, Miguel, Ramírez Vázquez, México, García Valadez Editores, 1989.
García Canclini, Néstor, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Minneapolis, mn, E.U.A., University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Piñera Ramírez, David, Historia de Tijuana. Semblanza general, Tijuana, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, 1985.
Sanromán, Lucía, y César García, Marcos Ramírez erre, México, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2011.
Sánchez, Osvaldo (ed.), Fugitive Sites: InSite 2000-2001, San Diego, ca, E.U.A., Installation Gallery, 2002.
Tafuri, Manfredo, Architecture and Utopia, Boston, mit Press, 1976.

[1] Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, Boston, mit Press, 1976.
[2] Miguel Galas, Ramírez Vázquez, México, García Valadez Editores, 1989.
[3] David Piñera Ramírez, Historia de Tijuana. Semblanza general, Tijuana, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, 1985.
[4] Tito Alegría, “El Centro Cultural Tijuana: Crítica de arquitectura”, Esquina Baja, Tijuana, México, Asociación Cultural Río Rita, núm. 2, 1987.
[5] Lucia Sanromán y César García, Marcos Ramírez erre, México, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2011.
[6] Néstor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Minneapolis, mn, E.U.A., University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Published by Rene on February 26, 2013

Aqui les dejo los tres cortos producidos en 3 dias en el taller de introduccion al cine en Woodbury University San Diego, impartido por L. Bernstien. / Here are the 3 short film realized during the 3 day film workshop at Woodbury University San Diego, taught by L. Bernstien

Published by Rene on February 22, 2013
Texto de Fiamma Montezemolo y fotografía de Rene Peralta para
“AULA 6: The New Mexico, edited by Geraldine Forbes Isais, Robert Gonzalez, and Rafael Longoria (Atrium Press, 2012).”

Published by Rene on February 22, 2013

Articulo de Enrique Gili para AEON Magazine sobre Tijuana y su renacimiento cultural, tuve el placer de ser el guia de Enrique en su visita!

A reputation for cross-border debauchery, desperate migrants and drug violence. Can the arts save this troubled city?

Bright mural adorn the boardwalk beside the Tijuana-San Diego frontier. Photo by Hernan Cazares

“‘We are all artists in Tijuana,’ the architect and educator René Peralta said half-jokingly, when we discussed the city’s multiple, shifting identities. A son of the city and my guide for the day, Peralta gave me some valuable background. Tijuana’s origins are a quirk of history: in 1848, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a line was drawn in the sand demarcating the US from Mexico. Only later did that dotted line on the map harden into an iron curtain.“

Published by Rene on February 18, 2013
Recien salio el Libro del 30 aniversario del Centro Cultural Tijuana con mi texto titulado”Historia de una Bola”  Just out the catalogue of the 30th anniversary of the Tijuana Cultural Center with my text titled “Historia de una Bola” On sale at CECUT.

Published by Rene on February 18, 2013

Ya va salir la edición de Domus dedicado al Norte incluyendo Tijuana y un texto mío sobre la obra de Cro studio en camino verde! Soon to come Domus dedicated to north of Mexico including Tijuana and a text I wrote about Cro studio project in Camino Verde.


Published by Rene on January 29, 2013

Here is my text published in the book Tijuana Dreaming by Josh Kun and Fiamma Montezemolo.

Illicit Acts of Urbanism
René Peralta
We have different legal systems, but the basic rules are the same
            -Tijuana Mayor Jesus Gonzalez Reyes (2001- 2004) on the Mexican  
                              laws that U.S. tourists break.
Tijuana is primarily a result of illegal or illicit acts.
Since its conception, illegality has been the driving force behind Tijuana’s dystopian condition, a prevalence of conflicting processes that have become the modus operandi of urban transformation. An illegality separated from morality and sometimes put into practice according to need or necessity – a way of survival.
In Tijuana, illegality produced a legendary saga, forming and reshaping the numerous mythical narratives of the contemporary city. A city conceived by conflict (Mexican American war) and endorsed by a shady deal (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo), events that became the symbolic impetus for the future evolution of its urban space.
Illegality has been the crux of a city caught in a dialectical tension between desire and condemnation.
Debunking Utopia
Following the Mexican-American war of 1846-48, Ricardo Orozco, a young engineer from Mexico City, was hired by the Argüello family to give order to the various ranches they had established in the Valley of Tijuana. The plan was part of an agreement to settle a land dispute between members of the Argüello and Olvera families, original settlers of the valley. Litigations ended in 1889, which became the adopted as the founding of the city. Orozco was trained at the famous Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City; an institution influenced by French concepts in urban design during an era described as belle époque, a style adopted in the late 19th century by emerging Latin American cities. Orozco laid out the plan along the U.S./Mexico border and adjacent to the Tijuana River Valley. The plan included a series of diagonal boulevards that connected parks and public spaces, as well as a diverse set of block types for residential and commercial functions. Positivism and a Haussmann sense of urban order were meant to replace the old colonial checker board grids, common in most Mexican cities, and negate the generic homogenous block plans of neighboring San Diego. As Antonio Padilla, Tijuana’s leading urban historian writes:
one of the prime relations between the map and the ideals of positivism influenced by Agusto Comte, was the rejection at the outset of a return to a historical tradition typified by the Hispano-Colonial model conformed by a grid with a center as the seat of religious and political power. The plan of Tijuana is part of a rational and philosophical order based on man’s liberty and not only subjected to rational logic.[1]
As soon as the beaux-arts plan was laid out and implemented, it went through radical changes. Topography interrupted the philosophical order and form, and the desire for greater profits became the stimulus for illegality. Forceful confrontations arose in places where the street diagonals touched a parcel. Landowners began to transgress the axial paths by building into them in order to increase their parcels area.  By 1921, the plan and its axial avenues had become a crippled desire of order and control, a failed plan to produce Cartesian logic. In contrast to the positivist ideals of Orozco, his new plan for Tijuana marked the beginning of the dystopic myth of the city.
Today, the only remnant piece of the plan’s diagonals is plaza Santa Cecilia, located on the verge of decency near the red light district of Zona Norte and the once “family” oriented Revolution Street.  There would be one more attempt in the 1970’s to bring order to the urban chaos from years of informal planning with the imposed plan of a new downtown area known as Zona Rio, an area that left a distinct scar in the organic fabric of contemporary Tijuana.
Bargain Basement of Sin
In 1915, while San Diego was organizing the San Diego Panama-California Exposition and constructing the pseudo-colonial buildings of Balboa Park, Tijuana came up with its own Mexican festivities and featured around the clock entertainment such as, cock fights, alcohol, gambling and many other venues for the prohibited desires of Californians. Corroborating once again that while San Diego was nostalgically looking for a past, Tijuana was the happiest place on earth. The Tijuana race track began construction during this time, a project mostly financed by Californians, and opened its doors in 1916. James “Sunny Jim” Coffroth, son of a California Senator and a boxing promoter, headed south from San Francisco and its moral climate looking for a profitable business deal south of the border in Old Mexico. He became a major investor in the construction of the racetrack.  The track became an unrivaled tourist attraction in the border region and many raced down to Tijuana once the bars were closed indefinitely in California.  San Diego closed its border at nine o’clock trying to stop the Anglo diaspora, yet tourists still got away through the famous hole in the fence, a secret breech that was well known by visitors, racetrack employees and the “twenties version of contemporary coyotes in reverse who shuttled visitors back and forth from north to south across the border.”[2] Tijuana during this time had a population of less than 2000 and there were probably more visitors to the track during the racing season than inhabitants of the city. In multiple occasions the track suffered damages by the torrent waters of the Tijuana River yet it was such a profitable business the track was rebuilt every time. This gambling venue alone sparked the economy and nightlife of downtown which for the next 50 years became the epitome of hedonistic gringo entertainment across the US/Mexico Border. David Jimenez Beltran, the track’s biographer said it best: “Without the racetrack Tijuana would have had a difficult time economically. The growth of the city can be traced to one word, hipodromo, or racetrack.”[3] Since then it has been part of a violent and unlawful history. Though horse racing no longer takes place in at the track, to this day it continues to be in the spotlight of various controversies.
During prohibition in the United States, Tijuana became an accomplice to bootlegging and drunkenness by becoming an oasis of bars and liquor stores that served Americans during the era of the Volstead Act of the 1920’s. It was then that many establishments—from La Ballena beer hall (considered to have the longest bar in the world) to a series of saloons, brothels and other illicit Edens– began to cater to tourists who came as far from the Hollywood Hills and as close by as San Diego. Baja California’s wine industry also took off to meet the intoxicating needs of the gringo. Today the wines of the Valley of Guadalupe are world renown all thanks to prohibition. Yet again, Tijuana took advantage of the disobedient actions of its neighbor and embraced the situation as a successful business enterprise.
In 1928, American entrepreneurs trying to strike a profit by making Tijuana the precursor to Las Vegas, founded the Agua Caliente Casino. The casino pampered Hollywood celebrities such as Buster Keaton, Bing Crosby, Rita Hayworth, along with mafia boss Al Capone. Wayne McAllister, a young 18 year old draftsman from San Diego, and his wife where given the task of designing Agua Caliente, a luxurious casino and resort second only to Monte Carlo. Designed with an eclectic palette of Spanish Mission architecture, art deco interiors and Moorish accents, Agua Caliente was a 10 million dollar investment that in today’s economy would sum a 2 billion dollar price tag.[4]Caliente became very lucrative and had daily jackpots in the thousands of dollars and its fame aided in the proliferation of many bars and hotels across the river into downtown. McAllister would later design the first major casino in Las Vegas, El Rancho (also known as the “Caliente of Nevada”) and his work continues to adorn the famous strip with casinos such as the Freemont and The Sands. In his last interview published in Spanish, McAllister remembers that Agua Caliente was such a profitable venture that it created enough tax revenue for the total budget of the Northern Territory of Baja California.[5]During the US depression, the casino expanded and the new commercial strip of downtown Tijuana flourished economically, yet all of this would come to an end in 1939 when by presidential decree, all gambling was prohibited in Mexico and Agua Caliente was converted into a school. Soon after, the money, glory and legend of sin city moved to its new home– Las Vegas.
Fluvial Tabula Rasa
During the Second World War, the US sent its young laboring men into the military service leaving the fields of California without hands to work the land. The Bracero program of 1942 became another incentive to immigrate to Tijuana and work in California. Immigration quadrupled the city’s’ population in a decade and originated the phenomena that still plagues it today: uncontrolled growth, informal development and illegal immigration. Even after the war, Americans felt obliged to hire illegal workforces in agriculture, construction and low paying service jobs. Many of these immigrants settled illegally in different parts of the city, but the most problematic settlement grew along the banks of the Tijuana River: cartolandiaor carton-land. The relocation of people from this area became a 20-year endeavor for city officials that ended with a violent act in 1979, which would launch the city of Tijuana into modernity, a malevolent plan concocted by the federal government in Mexico City. During that year, heavy rains came down upon the city and the Rodriguez Dam located on the city’s east-side had a significant amount of reserve that according to state officials needed to be released and without previous notice, the water swept away the carton made shacks. The Tijuana River Canal, a deep cut dividing the city in two, a voie troimphale of concrete and sewage, memorializes this event today.
The City of Tijuana has always turned its back on the only river that transects the city’s urban fabric from east to west. Since its conception, Tijuana has always gazed north toward the border and struggled with the frantic development along the Tijuana River until major federal efforts proposed its channelization. The Tijuana River Canal proved to be a mono-logical solution to control yearly flooding and informal developments along its edge. The concrete canal violently divided the urban fabric in two areas and created a no man’s land in its interior that today even police don’t dare to enter. The accelerated developments of the periphery, brought about by the installation of manufacturing parks, produced communities lacking basic urban services such as sewer infrastructure and had no alternative but to use the Tijuana River Canal as an outlet for sewage discharge, mixing with the toxic fluids from adjacent manufacturing plants.[6]The canal runs across the US/Mexico Border releasing this concoction of toxic waters into the Tijuana River Estuary Reserve in the U.S. and the Pacific Ocean.  This crisis, of environmental and bi-national consequence of the shared ecology between San Diego and Tijuana, prompted authorities to plan a series of sewage treatment plants, of which only two have been built and are currently operational. Only until recently has the Tijuana City government been able to install sewer infrastructure in the many squatter communities adjacent to the river. This has prompted the urgent task of rethinking the relationship between the canal, the river and its urban development. City officials, however, seem to think that more channelization is the answer to the problems encountered by the rapid growth along the banks of the river. In the last two years there have been alternative plans to restore part of the river: removing concrete in parts of the canal, using the river as a public space during the dry season and installing trains for public transportation on the shoulder of the canal. Many of these plans have failed or have not been studied in detail, leaving the future relationship of Tijuana and its river unresolved. 
Drag and Drop Urbanism
Modernization and progress are supposedly what foreign industries were to offer Tijuana. Maquiladoras are manufacturing plants that take advantage of cheap labor and relaxed environmental regulations that find the dumping of hazardous materials overlooked by the Mexican authorities.  Acids, solvents and other poisons spill into the canyons along the industrial parks of Tijuana and into nearby informal housing developments.[7]The Maquiladoras promoted jobs and security to an incoming population that settled rapidly in the eastern part of the city, an informal process that began through property invasion.
A reactionary antidote to the expedient squatter settlements was a government subsidized program for the acquirement of homes built by private developers. Today private developers are building, under the banner of social housing, serialized housing developments that even the UN has deemed unfit for dignified living. In comparison to these communities, the informal developments tend to improve with limited infrastructure as years pass and some have morphed into consolidated communities. In a 2000 study published by COLEF, Mexico’s border think tank, 50% of all housing stock in the city was found to have begun as an illegal settlement.[8] At the same time, the “legal” constructions of greedy developers are a product of faulty government zoning codes where loopholes become the main conduit of shady legality.
The informal settlements have woven themselves into multiple spaces, each with its distinct form of identity, which as of today has produced the most heterogeneous places within the city. Yet the conflict arises when these informal and rhizomatic systems of development are confronted with “planned” alternatives of serialized housing for hundreds of thousands of people, using methods of mass manufacturing that produce mono-logical containers, a homogenous archipelago, where the pursuit of diversity is an illicit endeavor.  These communities were part of a drag and drop urbanism that after twenty years only some have been successful in breaking away from the mold of top down urban planning and inflexible land use policy. The spatial differences between both informal and formal developments vary in that one is capable of absorbing and constructing out individual perceptions of what constitutes a partial yet autonomous right to the city.  Subsidized developments tend to produce a condition of entropy within serialized communities and as a result individual needs and wants have to be attained through forms of resistance against capsular sub-urbanization. Size, boundaries and the concept of ownership are part of the discrepancies found between both formal and informal models. A typical serialized development is made up numerous enclaves; for example, the oldest developments of this kind are composed of approximately eight sections, sometimes defined by walls and access control gates in the manner of upper middle class gated communities.  Their limits are defined, yet the concept of ownership is redefined by a new system of credit while failing to promote opportunities in community building. Meanwhile, in the informal communities, the city bureaucracy has not been able to completely “legalize” them because of their constant flux, leaving boundaries to be negotiated between each member of the community. Ownership is achieved through a system of channels of communication. Therefore, the boundaries within informal developments change due to the constant reorganization of the area. Most of these communities share a desire for a better future and organize strong political groups that can guarantee votes for city council seats.
These days, land is scarce and the waves of arriving settlers have fewer options in settling in especially if they don’t participate in the low-income housing market. As the city extends toward the east and topography limits access to buildable land, new informal communities tend to decrease. Yet, there is an increase in the second hand rental market in informal areas where small rooms and back houses are rented to incoming migrants. New extensive areas of informal settlements have decreased but existing ones have begun a process of densification. 
Hybrid Mutations
The new sectors of the city made up of a combination of informal (shanty towns) and formal (developer housing) developments have reached a critical mass. This eastern zone of the city was described a few years ago as La Nueva Tijuana, the New Tijuana.[9] It is where half of the population now resides, approximately one million people. It became a zone of immigrants from diverse socio economic levels and distinct regions of the country, with each bringing their own customs and traditions  into a mix of tastes and fantasies in the city epitomized by the famous Porfirio Diaz quote “so far from god and so close to the United States”. The first serialized housing developments created 20 years ago are no longer discernable. The need to transform both informal and formal developments has created an ambiguous urban space of improvised informal markets, multi family zones (once single family residences), internet cafes and countless incompatible programmatic assemblies based solely on consumer trends and needs.  “New Tijuana” became the poster child of informality, where academics, artists and social scientist catalogued, documented and photographed the creative methods of construction, resiliency and survival.  New Tijuana is made up of different delegaciones (boroughs) and its urban fabric moves across jurisdictional boundaries that fight for revenue against other more affluent areas of the city.
Public safety is compromised for this reason and these zones have become some of the most crime-ridden areas of the city. Recently they have been host to drug cartel groups that take advantage of the large rental housing stock used for operation centers, hostage detainment and armories—an estimated 40 thousand abandoned low income homes have been taken over by organized crime in the northern states of Mexico.[10]The infamous Arellano Felix cartel ex lieutenant who was operating with his own commandos, Teodoro Garica Pimentel “El Teo”, was said to have complete control of the east side of the city before his capture by federal police in early 2010. An area of the city once known for its self-styled architectural creativity (the recycling of garage doors, tires and many other surplus items from the US for incredible vernacular constructions) is now the government’s target against a large black market arms trade coming from bordering states in the US. The New Tijuana has been transformed from the laboratory of postmodernism to one of the nation’s most important battlegrounds of the war on drugs– nearly an independent state with its own culture, law and development strategy.
Recently, the rest of the city has suspended its fascination for the east side as a space of inspiration. New Tijuana has ceased to be “The Mother of Invention”.[11]The struggle of the working class from incomplete programs of urbanization and other top down planning policies is no longer looked upon as a rightful method to achieve an urban society. Even the categorization of the east side as a product of bottom up urbanism is no longer championed as the struggle of a disadvantaged class against neo capitalist and free market urbanism (manufacturing, free trade zones, private development).
From a cultural perspective, the New Tijuana begins to become irrelevant as a celebratory image of hybridity due to the impulsive autonomy that extended the appropriation of the city to all social groups including organized crime. The urban imaginary of the city has changed since it was baptized in the 1990s as a laboratory of postmodernity by the celebrated sociologist Nestor Garcia Canclini, which helped encourage the creation of academic and artistic events and symposia that brought together world renowned artist and thinkers.[12]One of the most successful art programs to build on the idea of Tijuana and the border region as hybrid and postmodern is InSITE, a bi-national in-situ art installation event and symposium where international artists and theorists came together every 3 years to research and discuss art practices in the public domain between the San Diego / Tijuana border region. Tijuana artist Marcos Ramirez ERRE illustrated the fractured essence of Tijuana urban and social space with his reconstruction of an informal house for InSITE 1994. He recreated a dwelling typical to the ones built in the informal settlements of the city on the esplanade of the Tijuana Cultural Center (Cecut). Designed in the late 70’s by the renown Mexican architects Pedro Ramirez Vazquez and Manuel Rosen Morrison, Cecut represents the institutional modernism of the PRI, the political party that ruled Mexico for more than 70 years. Century 21intended to de-contextualize both structures by making apparent and visible the formal and tempo-spatial tension inherent in the large context of the contemporary city.  During InSITE 2000 and within the same context of the Cecut, the polish born artist Krzystof Wodiczko projected images of women maquiladora workers on the exterior of the large spherical structure of the center’s Imax theater.  The work exposes the employment abuses of these women who work long hours in the maquiladoras and live in the precarious company towns near the industrial parks.  Wodiczko’s project, as with the Ramirez intervention, emphasizes the fractures between the global and local, and between nation state politics and the political realities of the border.[13]
Mea Culpa
In 2002 Newsweek magazine named Tijuana—alongside Cape Town and Kabul– as one of the top emerging cultural centers in the developing world, a so-called “World Cultural Mecca.”[14] By 2006, Tijuana’s cultural boom would begin to fade as its reputation shifted toward being one of the most dangerous urban areas in northern Mexico. Homicides, cartel shoot-outs and kidnappings became daily ordeals across the city from east to west; Tijuana had been subjugated to the reign of the AK-47. That same year the US Department of State warned its citizens of the violence and made an effort to restrain them from traveling to the city.[15]The warning was extended to many of the same academic institutions that had only recently established Tijuana as their Latin America petri dish.
By 2008, Tijuana was considered the third most violent city in the country.[16]The entire city was now dealing with the extreme rise of violence, and numerous cultural projects and curatorial efforts began to publicly question the validity of art and culture as a means of social activism.  In 2008, curators Lucia Sanroman and Ruth Estevez organized Proyecto Civico / Civic Project, which constructed an argument based on the theory of states of exception to critically present the need for society to become active participants, via cultural production, in the reformulation of the political and the city. According to the curators, “Tijuana has been historically established as a series of exclusions from the legal constitution of the country that have created conditions that closely parallel the concept of a state of exception as defined by Giorgio Agamben, a suspension of law that nevertheless ratifies the rule of law and the hierarchy of the sovereign”.[17]  Our continued tolerance of the illicit as a way of survival has crippled our participation in the construction of a democratic and integrated society. We are now, as a society, participants in the decay of our system of illicit acts.
This attitude was clearly evidenced in one of the works exhibited in Proyecto Civico / Civic Project by the artist Marcos Ramirez ERRE. Ramirez, the same artist known for his Century 21 project in the plaza of the Tijuana Cultural Center for InSite94, prepared a short video performance of an organized crime murder for hire. In the work titled Todos somos el mismo, (El bueno, el malo y el feo) / We Are All the Same One (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly), Ramirez impersonates a mafia hit man, known in the drug cartel world as a sicario, and in a second scene reappears as the murdered mystery man in a black Suburban and at the end of the performance plays the federal officer investigating the murder scene. In this short video performance Ramirez suggests that we as society are incriminating ourselves as participants in the dissolution of society’s values and construction of a destructive public consciousness. The enemy is among us. We have succumbed to a debilitating psychosis of our own hyper dystopia.
We are now experiencing the city not as a laboratory of postmodernism, but more as a state of exception. Our socio-cultural strategies are now geared toward healing the social fabric and if possible the reconstruction of our institutions as more democratic and heterogeneous points of interaction.  Based on the success in the mid 90’s of Bogota’s model of community building implemented by controversial mayor Antanas Mockus and later the restructuring of public space and institutions by his successor Enrique Peñalosa, a group of artists from Tijuana made public their desire for civic change in a proposal titled Plan de Cultura de Tijuana / Tijuana’s Plan for Culture 2010.[18] The group was formed by writers, painters, video artists, architects and representatives of various non-profit organizations, and the premise of the plan was to entice a new way of making cultural policy through various social groups with vested interests in the local community. This policy was then shared with political candidates from all parties running for the Tijuana mayor’s office in 2010.
The plan has five central core objectives. The first makes a strong effort to encourage the dispersing of cultural programs and institutions throughout the city, thereby decentralizing stare-run programs. The second objective argues for a “cultural healing of community and public space” which involves combating visual and auditory contamination and a cleansing of the city of discriminatory violent propaganda. Ironically, some of these same intolerant acts of urban life were celebrated by the advocates of the postmodern Tijuana less than a decade ago and left their influence on some aspects of cultural projects such as the Nortec Collective (who, for example, often incorporated images of Tijuana criminality in their live performance visuals). The plan is a draft that needs more concrete trajectories for its deployment, yet it is important to recognize that it considers the politics of exclusion as one of the conditions that has allowed organized crime to appropriate the social imaginary.
This new attitude toward Tijuana’s social fabric and public space has been a guiding factor in the evolution of a new urban imaginary with a decidedly self-critical point of view. After decades of external signifiers that have some way or another shaped the perception of the city, various social groups are interested in forging a new type of citizen with a critical and self-referential point of view. These include organizations that foster new social ties between policies and community, reclaim public space, and promote environmental practices that take care of our shared natural ecology.  The potential of the city lies in its innate state of expediency and resiliency that’s been honed over the 100 years of its history of surviving illicit acts of urbanism.  Its future is rooted in its ability to re-imagine itself from within, to believe that new cultural and social paradigms can be part of a new era of change.

[1] Padilla Corona, Antonio. “El centro histórico de Tijuana” In Tijuana Identidades y Nostalgias, ed. Fco. Manuel Acuña Borbolla y Mario Ortiz Villacorta Lacave, et al, 121-136. Tijuana: XVII Ayuntamiento de Tijuana. 2006. 121-136
[2]Miller Jim. “Just Another Day in Paradise?”. In Under The Perfect Sun, The San Diego Tourist Never See. Mike Davis, Kelly Mayhew and Jim Miller. New York: The New Press. 2005
[3]Beltran, Jimenez David. The Agua Caliente Story, Remembering Mexico’s Legendary Racetrack. Lexington, KY: Blood-Horse Publications. 2004
[4] Nichols, Chris. The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith Publisher. 2007
[5] Bransburg, Pablo. “Entrevista a Wayne McAllister”  In Tijuana Identidades y Nostalgias, ed. Fco. Manuel Acuña Borbolla y Mario Ortiz Villacorta Lacave, et al, 287-302. Tijuana: XVII Ayuntamiento de Tijuana. 2006
[6] “Tijuana River Pollution”  The Trade & Environment Database (TED). Jan 11, 1997. http://www1.american.edu/TED/tijuana.htm
[7] IBID
[8] Alegria, Tito. Legalizando La Ciudad Asentamientos Informales y Procesos de Regularización en Tijuana. Tijuana: El Colegio de La Frontera Norte, 2005.
[9] Montezemolo, Fiamma, Peralta, René and Heriberto Yepez. Here is Tijuana. London: Black Dog Publishing. 2006.
[10] Damian, Fernando.  “Se Apodero el Narco de 40 Mil Casas de Infonavit”  Milenio Online  Julio 20, 2010. http://impreso.milenio.com/node/8802605
[11] Peralta, Rene. “Tijuana: Mother of Invention” World View Cities Online Report, The Architectural League of New York. 2005. http://www.worldviewcities.org/tijuana/main.html
[12] Garcia Canclini, Nestor. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for entering and leaving modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press. 1995.
[13] Gonzalez, A. Roberto. “Ensalada Tijuana? Welcome to the Gritty Landscape of Globalization” in Cruelty and Utopia, Cities and Landscape of Latin America. New York. Princeton Architectural Press. 2003. 254-260
[14] Piore, Adam. Et al. The World’s New Cultural Meccas. Newsweek Magazine. Atlantic Edition. September 2, 2002. 56
[15] Unites States Department of Defense. “Travel Warning U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs” July 2010. http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_4755.html
[16] Castro, Mosso Rosario. Hernandez, Mendoza Enrique. “Ejecuciones Imparables” Zeta Online . Del 4 al 10 de Julio 2008. http://www.zetatijuana.com/html/Edicion1788/Principal.html
[17] Estevez, Ruth y Sanroman, Lucia. “Una Suposicion que se Desvanece” in Proyecto Civico / Civic Project. Tijuana, Conaculta/Cecut . 2008. 18-43
[18] “Plan de Cultura para Tijuana”. Junio 07, 2010. http://plandeculturatijuana.blogspot.com/2010/06/propuesta-de-cultura-para-una-nueva.html

La Primavera de Tijuana en el sector empresarial

Published by Rene on November 5, 2012

La Primavera de Tijuana en el sector empresarial


“Los pasajes son un potencial para el turismo cultural, un catalizador para una imagen distinta del centro de Tijuana, históricamente asociado con una leyenda oscura.” —Josué Beltrán, historiador de Tijuana

Los pasajes son corredores comerciales que abarcan varias cuadras del centro histórico de Tijuana. No se parecen al plano de ninguna otra ciudad mexicana, trazadas según la cuadrícula colonial española, con un zócalo en  en centro. La mayoría de los pasajes se popularizaron vendiendo a los turistas chácharas como sombreros de mariachi color rosa, retratos de Elvis Presley en terciopelo negro y demás parafernalia pseudo-mexicana perfecta para una celebración gringa del Cinco de Mayo.
                Las 56 cuadras que se consideran parte de la traza del centro histórico de Tijuana se definieron tras una disputa entre las familias Argüello y Olvera. Ya que se reconciliaron, el arquitecto Ricardo Orozco trazó en 1889 un plano al estilo Beaux Arts, aunque le tomó a la ciudad cuarenta años alcanzar el sueño cartesiano de Orozco. Para finales de la década de 1930, Tijuana comenzó a pasar de lo que parecía ser la escenografía de una película hollywoodense del Lejano Oeste a una ciudad del siglo XX. Los pasajes eran espacios auxiliares divididos en locales comerciales y con prolongaciones hacia los bares y grandes centros comerciales ubicados en el tramo principal de la avenida Revolución o La Revu. Aunque estaban a un costado de la vía principal, se convirtieron en un enorme éxito comercial durante la época de oro del turismo (antes del 9/11), con ingresos mensuales de hasta varios miles de dólares por un local de treinta metros cuadrados. Casi todos los que hacían dinero en Tijuana tenían algún tipo de vínculo con un negocio en esta parte de la ciudad, entre ellos los propietarios de locales, los vendedores en los puestos y los dueños de antros nudistas. Se rumoraba que por las mañanas se barrían los dólares del piso.
                Los acontecimientos del 9/11 alteraron la economía de la avenida Revolución y del centro de Tijuana. La intensa seguridad sobre la frontera, que aumentó el tiempo de espera en las garitas, y una nueva disposición que exigía a los ciudadanos estadounidenses presentar su pasaporte para reingresar a Estados Unidos sofocaron el turismo que había convertido a La Revu en la pasarela de deleites baratos que tanto añoraban los turistas. Para 2010, la avenida estaba cubierta de carteles de “se renta”: ochenta  por ciento de los negocios había quebrado.

“Las ciudades tienen la capacidad de ofrecerle a cada uno alguna cosa, simplemente porque –y sólo cuando– son creadas por todos.” — Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities



No fue sino hasta hace un par de años cuando un grupo de artistas jóvenes en busca de un espacio para producir y comercializar su obra decidió aprovechar los pasajes abandonados sobre avenida Revolución. Uno de estos jóvenes fue Francisco, arquitecto que trabajaba en un despacho de arquitectos de San Diego. Francisco decidió abrir un negocio que fuera a la vez galería y micro fábrica de cerveza, y el Pasaje Rodríguez resultó ser el lugar ideal para su proyecto. Estudio 2287 se ubica en un pasaje donde uno se puede sentar, disfrutar de la obra artística y beber una Teodora bien fría, de la producción propia de Francisco.
                Otros artistas y galeristas han abierto locales en este pasaje, entre ellos estudios fotográficos y tiendas de vinos, de libros usados y de ropa vintage: ¡todas las necesidades de un hipster resueltas de una vez! El éxito del Pasaje Rodríguez llamó la atención de Jaime Brambila y Miguel Buenrostro, ambos de veintitantos y emparentados con los dueños originales del Pasaje Gómez, un espacio techado de dos niveles ubicado cruzando la calle del Pasaje Rodríguez. Buenrostro creó una organización llamada Reactivando Espacios (www.reactivandoespacios.com), con la finalidad de documentar los espacios abandonados y aprovechar su potencial: es la chispa que podría encender una estrategia para volver a desarrollar el centro de Tijuana.
                Brambila está trabajando el Hotel Lafayette, propiedad de su familia y ubicado parcialmente sobre la avenida Revolución y en el pasaje donde operó el célebre restaurante La Especial durante más de cinco décadas, antes de cerrar sus puertas hace un par de años. Brambila está planeando reabrir La Especial, puesto que otros restaurantes están reabriendo en la Avenida Revolucion, como el Caesar’s, recién renovado. Esta colaboración y entusiasmo para regenerar el centro de Tijuana y sus pasajes históricos ha generado en los últimos años una demanda que agarró a los dueños por sorpresa. Muchos de ellos viven ahora en San Diego y no tenían esperanzas de reanimar la actividad económica en esta zona.
                A la fecha, de los 35 locales del Pasaje Gómez, todos salvo dos están operando como galerías de arte, librerías, cafés, boutiques de ropa e incluso una escuela de música. Hay galerías vinculadas a instituciones de San Diego, entre ellas La Tentación, una galería-estudio fotográfico dirigido por Josué Castro y afiliado al Museum of Photographic Arts, y un espacio de próxima inauguración que combina auditorio y espacio de exposición, afiliado al plantel San Diego de la Woodbury University School of Architecture. El último sábado de cada mes, el Pasaje Gómez organiza una actividad llamada Tijuana Art Walk, para recaudar fondos que permitan seguir renovando el espacio.
                El moméntum sigue aumentando, y no sólo en los pasajes: pequeñas plazas comerciales están rentando espacios a los artistas y otros grupos culturales. La Plaza Revolución, ubicada junto al Pasaje Gómez, estaba completamente rentada pocos mese después de anunciar su reapertura. Una de las historias exitosas de la Plaza Revolución es la de Galería 206, un espacio de arte contemporáneo operado por Yave Lobsang y las hermanas Mónica y Melisa Arreola. Buscando atraer a compradores de arte de ambos lados de la frontera, esta galería exhibe la obra de nuevos artistas locales a precios accesibles, con la esperanza de generar un mercado artístico más allá de los Bart Simpson de yeso y los retratos de Bob Marley que alguna vez se vendieron en esta zona.
                “Estamos creando espacios para que los artistas emergentes exhiban su obra, ya que nuestras instituciones culturales no les ofrecen esta oportunidad por ser muy jóvenes”, dice Mónica Arreola, una artista y curadora con mucha experiencia. Al igual que Galería 206, muchos estudios y proyectos están aprovechando las módicas rentas, que permiten a artistas jóvenes y entusiastas probar sus dotes empresariales.
                Lo encomiable de todo esto es que la regeneración de los pasajes en espacios culturales ha sido un proceso desde las bases iniciado por los ciudadanos, entre ellos los propietarios, artistas y otros defensores del centro de Tijuana. Han logrado arrancar el proceso de regeneración a partir de negociaciones, una labor que las administraciones actuales y pasadas nunca consiguieron. El potencial para reanimar el centro de Tijuana radica en parte en la conservación de los distritos históricos –como estos viejos pasajes comerciales– y en la promoción de novedosas oportunidades de vivienda para un sector de la población económica y socialmente mixto. Y el turismo siempre estará presente, pero el perfil del turista está cambiando del cervecero comprador de baratijas al hipster de gustos más cosmopolitas.

Rene Peralta

Published by Rene on September 8, 2012

El Libro editado por Fiamma Montezemolo, Rene Peralta y Heriberto Yepez -Here is Tijuana- forma parte de la bibliografía de Research Methods in Urbanism, clase de Jason Rebelliot en Harvard Graduate School of Design