Nocturnal, dissolute. Fun and strange, like old and freshly made. I went to Mexicali to cover the restoration of the Colorado Delta (in El Economista you can read my chronicle of that. I invite surprise that activism can be of some use), but I ran into the spirit of Al Capone. I went to meet the story of the mafia and intermittent night. A place that keeps underground secrets.
I also went to look for my grandfather.
My paternal grandfather, Captain Miguel Moreno López, died in Mexicali in 1957. My father was ten years old when he lost his father. With his grandmother, my great-grandmother Magdalena, he undertook the journey from the neighborhood of Santa Julia in what was then Mexico City to that northern city that did not say anything about burying him.
My grandfather was a soldier. I didn’t know much about having a family. He spent time here and there and treated his wife and children from afar, like strangers. With my dad it was different. While he disdained his other children (I’m referring to my dad’s legitimate brothers, I’m sure the good guy left many others on the road)—like a good Mexican macho, my grandfather held the grudge against my grandmother for having had two girls and only two boys—he treated my father, his first-born son, as his true other miniature self. While everything at home was scarce, my grandfather took his son to the beach in the soldiers’ truck.
My dad was very happy in his adventures with Captain Moreno. It devastated her to leave him: my grandfather was her true friend in a violent world. There was a lot of bad blood in that family. Parents are imperfect, but my grandfather was a disaster. He died in his early thirties with his liver destroyed by his alcoholism. He left my dad alone, a ten-year-old boy with broken shoes.
Well, I went to Mexicali with the idea of giving him one last memory of his father, maybe finding the grave (my dad doesn’t even remember where he was buried) and taking a photo of the tombstone. The task turned out to be too complex and I had to work.
I didn’t find the tomb but I did find Mexicali. On the last day of the trip, the hosts were kind enough to give us a guided walk through La Chinesca, Mexico’s Chinatown, a historic pair of San Francisco’s Chinatown. When you go north you look for chilorio, asada and burritos. You go to Mexicali for Chinese food. Although I found the Chinese tradition already somewhat false, the tour was entertaining.
The ride was given to us by a cheerful boy who looked like a university heartthrob with the unforgettable name of Robin Alejandro. Robin, so nice, showed us his CDMX mobility card when he found out about our chilanguitude. It’s not a complaint or a mockery, I liked Robin at the time because someone who does that understands the need for details to tell a story and involve the audience.
Mexicali is the first Californian city, not the last Mexican city. Robin asked us to look at the buildings in the historic center of the city: they all face the border with Calexico. There is the border wall, so everyday, so undeniable. A long pole would be enough to jump United. (My dad remembers the border with Calexico as a cyclonic mesh, suddenly the street ended and, like someone crossing a chicken coop, he was already on the other side). In front of the border, on the Mexican side, is the first Mexican school founded in Mexicali, still during the Porfiriato. The building today is the cultural center of the city and looks like a small Beverly Hills mansion from a century ago (did Beverly Hills exist a hundred years ago? Forgive the license, but the visual reference is clear). It is an architecture that is recognized by American movies, not by the mirror of other Mexican cities. It’s another wave, then.
I said I went to Mexicali because I wanted to walk the streets of Al Capone. Old Al founded a proto-Vegas in Mexicali during the Prohibition era. The Owl, his nightclub in Mexicali, had a tunnel that crossed the border and through which alcohol was transported to the United States. Robin told us a visual detail: when there was alcoholic cargo for the tunnel, the owl on the façade of the Owl lit up. It is cinema, without a doubt.
Yes, Mexicali is cinematic. In its streets the spirit of old Hollywood, heroin addict and drug addict, survives, as well as Mexican cinema and its entertainment. Pedro Infante was a frequent visitor to clubs and casinos. But in addition to the stars, the cinema was a common presence: the terrible heat only lessened in the cinemas; Its rooms were the only refrigerated buildings.
That Mexicali also has a very literary vibe. Have you read James Ellroy? His noir stories in Los Angeles, 1940s, could well be set in Mexicali. Sumptuous at the same time as lustful and capable of terrible things, in Mexicali you can believe in black dahlias, noble and violent police officers in love with the lost case on duty, faithful prostitutes and bastard Chinese hitmen. Opium. Revelry all night and mass on Sundays.
Due to its distance from the center, Mexicali was part of an imaginary Mexico. Maybe there is something there, the Mexican government would say. They sent military detachments to deal with the heat and strip the teeth of the gringos. I guess my grandfather went on one of those missions. The Mexican government had lost little in that place, but the Americans had to be kept in line so that they did not get invasive ideas. You know what gringos are like: they are investors or invaders.
Of course, there is always someone who wins. Just as the gringos thought of Mexicali as their congal, others saw opportunities to settle. The Chinese came to make America in the gold rush of 1849. Victims of racism, the Americans expelled them south until they crossed the border.
Many arrived after the train had been built. The gringo train arrived in Mexicali long before the modernizing attempts of Lázaro Cárdenas. The gringo train arrived, grabbed resources and returned to supply all of California. What I mean is that the train ended there and left Mexicali decapitated from the rest of Mexico. Then the Chinese arrived.
You have to wonder why La Chinesca prospered as a Chinatown when in the rest of Mexico Chinese immigrants were almost erased by racist violence. The reason is simple: they arrived first. Ordinary Mexicans appeared in the city after, finally, the Mexican State connected the gringo train with ours.
(There would be other things to say about the train, the most important being that it causes traffic chaos in the morning and afternoon because it does not run at fixed times and cuts the city in two. The poor Mexicans have to make guesses to get to work).
Robin took us through the underworld. It wasn’t as fun as it sounds, it just introduced us to the famous basements of Mexicali. Be a bit of news: since Mexicali is a city built in the American way, the old buildings all have basements. Those basements were responsible for the legend, Robin said, that Mexicali is connected by the underground. Sadly that is not the case. It would have been so much fun to walk through those secret passages.
I tell you that everything seems fictitious. And not only in the city center, but also in its suburbs. I am not misusing the term, it is appropriate: modern Mexicali looks like a Californian suburb. With its spectacular setting—that pristine sky that has no end, on one side the Sierra Cucapá, on the other a very long horizon that disappears into the distance—the buildings are squat, but elegant, little houses that seem straight out of the San Fernando Valley.
Mexicali is a rarity. I will return because I have to find my grandfather and close that sad family story. There where the sky does not end, he died. Maybe it’s worth coming back many times.
