Tijuana’s Children of Despair : Street Urchins Try to Eke Out Living From Tourists

TIJUANA —  Through the gray revolving doors at the pedestrian entrance to this border city, past the customs officers, two-bit hawkers and pushcart vendors selling perros calientes (hot dogs), 9-year-old Pedro Lopez strums a guitar that seems almost as big as he is.

In his high-pitched child’s voice, Pedro, whose Mixtec Indian parents migrated here from deep in the Mexican interior, sings the melancholy corridos, or ballads, of Mexican migrants who have come to the north to pick tomatoes in California, sew garments in Chicago or work as busboys in Phoenix. Always, the songs are of lonely men who pine for the security, love and stability of their homelands.

As Pedro, in his childish voice, sings a song of adult sadness, dozens of American tourists, many in short pants, sunglasses and colorful shirts celebrating a sunny weekend afternoon, stream by en route to a festive day of shopping, eating and drinking in Tijuana. Some take the time to throw a coin in the pink plastic bowl positioned on the pavement in front of the singer. Others aim money in his general direction, sometimes hitting him or his instrument. Few listen to Pedro’s doleful ballads, fewer still would understand. Most walk by, oblivious.

“Que cute!” one woman says, mixing Spanish and English.

Pedro Lopez is one of the hundreds of poor children who hustle the streets here in search of tourist dollars. These youngsters, many less than 12 years old, scurry about the congested visitors’ areas, their tiny figures darting through lines of vehicles and crowds of adults, always on the lookout for prospective clients--and for police officers and inspectors, who are cracking down on unlicensed and under-age vendors and beggars.

Aiming for ‘The Other Side’

Like youths in tourist centers throughout the Third World, the children sell goods ranging from chewing gum to artificial flowers to blankets. In addition, they play music and sing songs, beg for coins and carry tourists’ purchases--do anything, in short, that may gain them some income.

“I come here to make some extra money to take home to my mother,” said the soft-spoken Pedro, echoing the reasons given by other children for their presence on the streets. “I like to sing. Someday I would like to be in a band. Maybe I’ll be in a band in el otro lado (the other side),” he adds with a demure smile, using the common euphemism for the United States.

His comments are similar to those of other youngsters who pound the streets here. Although some Americans seem vaguely threatened by their approaches, the vast majority of the children are simply hard-working kids eager to bring a few extra coins back to their humble dwellings in Tijuana’s teeming, poor colonias , home to tens of thousands of migrants from the Mexican interior, lured here in part by the possibility of crossing over illegally to el otro lado.

The youthful exuberance generally displayed by the children stands in stark contrast to their reality. Most of them face bleak futures as the offspring of some of the poorest segments of Mexican society. Eventually, some will drift toward juvenile delinquency and even prostitution, some will enter the United States clandestinely in search of work, while the great majority will eke out precarious livings in Mexico.

“The disgrace is that many are forced by economic circumstances to leave school and become vendors and beggars, and they lose out on their education and any opportunity they could have,” said Jose Luis Perez Canchola, who runs an immigration study center here. “Most are likely to live forever on the margins of society.”

For the millions of U.S. tourists who come here each year, the disheveled children appear to be little more than a transitory distraction--a tiny hand thrust forward in search of a handout, a pleading voice selling chewing gum or trinkets, a dirty face with hunted eyes and a shock of black hair offering to find a taxi.

Major Social Problem

“Wash your windows, mister?” they ask in broken English as they approach cars stopped for a red light, greasy rags in hand.

“Chiclets?” they ask other potential customers.

Although generally short-lived for most visitors, the images of these children can be among the most memorable--and disturbing--of any encountered during a trip to the border.

For Mexican officials, however, the children’s presence represents quite a bit more: a major social problem, a loss of the fees and taxes paid by licensed merchants, and a somewhat unpleasant and embarrassing symbol of the nation’s economic crisis. The notion of these unwelcome young reminders of Third World life working the streets--particularly when they should be at school or under adult supervision--doesn’t jibe with the promoters’ preferred vision of this former sin city as a haven of progress, industrial growth and tourism.

“It’s bad for Tijuana’s image,” explained Joaquin Maldonado, a city inspector who was busy on a recent day chasing children and other unauthorized vendors at the port of entry.

Official response has emphasized police action. Seizures of chewing gum and other goods from children and other unauthorized salespersons have generated criticism from vendors and others who view the policy as a misguided form of persecution.

“This is a social problem that cannot be solved by putting more policemen on the streets or building more jails,” said Perez Canchola, who is affiliated with an opposition party here. “These chamacos (youths), they only are trying to survive. They have no alternatives . . . Absolutely nothing is being done to help them.”

When approached, the children seem like kids everywhere--some shy and some talkative, some boastful and others tentative, some street-wise and others downright naive. They speak in undramatic tones of their tenuous street lives, which represent a constant struggle to dodge police, avoid resentful older and licensed merchants--and still attract the attention of the generally uninterested U.S. tourists.

Most of the young street vendors here appear to be the children of recent migrants. The majority seem to live with their families, although some say they reside in hotels or on the streets. In most cases, they speak about themselves in the trouble-free tones of youth.

“Stop teasing me,” Dalia Gonzalez Martinez, 14, tells the young male admirers who gather around her as she pauses to speak to a visitor near the port of entry here.

Dalia, a striking but shy girl who wore a bright dress, stockings, facial makeup and earrings on a recent afternoon, explained that she came to Tijuana several months ago with an older sister and an aunt from her home in Acapulco, more than 1,000 miles south. Now she sells chewing gun and garapinados-- candied nuts--to motorists waiting in line to enter the United States. She becomes somewhat evasive when asked about her schooling.

“You can earn a little more here than in Acapulco,” Dalia said, explaining that she can pocket as much as $20 in a good day.

Does she miss her family? “Sometimes,” she acknowledged with a bashful smile.

From where Dalia sells her wares near the port of entry, a concrete bridge crosses the sewage-clogged Tijuana River and leads to the city’s artisans’ market, perhaps a quarter of a mile to the west. This strip is worked hard by boys with metal supermarket pushcarts, who offer to carry blankets and other purchases for tourists.

“You want some help, lady?” 9-year-old Alfonso Ceja Torres asks in heavily accented English as he approaches a blonde woman who is lugging a colorful Mexican shopping bag full of items purchased in the artisan’s market. “I take to border. One dollar.”

The woman keeps going.

In Search of Gringos Alfonso is undeterred, approaching other Americans at rapid-fire speed as he skillfully maneuvers his shopping cart through the crowd. He quickly rushes by Paula Berenice Amaro Sahagun and Iliana Sahagun, two 7-year-old first cousins whose energized but somewhat off-key versions of three well-known Mexican folk songs are regular fixtures on the bridge. Often the tiny girls appear to be almost submerged in the crowd as they crouch on the pavement, boxes of chewing gum positioned in front of them and a tiny orange guitar serving as their simple accompaniment.

“I like Tijuana better than Guadalajara,” explains Paula, who recently came from Guadalajara with her family.

Why? “Because there’s more gringos here!” she replies.

Meanwhile, Alfonso speeds by again, pushing a cart full of blankets purchased by Americans at the market. Alfonso, who maintains that he only comes here after school and on weekends, says he can earn as much as $8 in a good day. The money, he says, all goes to his mother.

“I like working,” he says as he speeds with his cart over the bridge spanning the fetid Tijuana River. “I’m learning a lot of English. Maybe sometime I can get a job in el otro lado. “

Alfonso disappears down the ramp leading to the artisan’s market, where other boys cruise the crowd with their shopping carts.

On the stairs to the market, Carmen Torres sits bundled in a brightly colored shawl under a shady alcove, a box of chewing gum in hand and a metal can of flowers on the step beside her. The stairwell reeks of urine. Her disabled son, Carlos Alberto, 6, sits on the step alongside her, a confused, forlorn look on his face as he weakly displays his box of chewing gum.

As Carmen Torres speaks, dozens of Americans pass by, most of them unaware of her presence or of the many other women who sell items and beg on the dank stairwell. Torres is the mother of Alfonso Ceja Torres, the boy with the cart.

“Alfonso is a great worker, he’s very outgoing,” she explains as her younger son, Carlos Alberto, looks on, his eyes distant. “My life is like a book, like a novel.”

Nostalgic for Homeland

A native of Michoacan state, deep in the Mexican interior, Carmen Torres says she came to Tijuana with her husband 24 years ago, intending the cross the border but never quite making it. Her husband suffered an injury and now has difficulty working. She has been mother to 10 children here, but now, she says, she yearns to return to her homeland.

“At least there we had the land, we could always eat,” she says, clearly nostalgic. “Here it is a constant struggle, una lucha, to survive. One has to make do. We’re all children of God . . . Without the help of the young ones, I’m not sure we’d have anything to eat at night. But we never, never beg. I’m too proud to allow that.”

Like Carmen Torres, Juana Gomez, who looks years beyond her age of 27, has no problem with the fact that three of her children--among them the wheelchair-bound Antonio, 12--all hawk flowers and chewing gum on the streets near the border. It’s simple economics, she explains.

“The tourists like to buy more from the children than from us,” explains Gomez, a mother of seven and native of Guadalajara who exudes good cheer even when recounting the most difficult of circumstances. “They have to be here with me so we can put food on the table at night. Without them, I don’t know what we’d do . . . I’ll tell you this, though. My children go to school every day. Every day. We use the money here to buy them books and supplies for schools and, of course, food and clothing. I want my children to have a good education.”

Recently, in fact, things have gotten more difficult for the family. A 7-year-old son died a few weeks ago of complications from a kidney ailment he had had since birth. The $225 burial fee has just about left the family broke; the money was borrowed from a neighbor, who is being repaid at the rate of $25 every two weeks. In a few years, she hopes to be able to send her 12-year-old son, her oldest, to San Diego for an operation to cure the bone disorder that has crippled him.

“To lose a child, losing all that love, it’s like losing a piece of yourself,” Gomez said, still smiling and patiently answering questions about a difficult topic.

On a good day, Gomez says, her family can earn as much as $20. Like other unlicensed vendors, she is upset that police and inspectors occasionally confiscate her merchandise because they do not have proper vending licenses.

‘It’s Not Just’

“We went to City Hall and tried to get a license, but they said there were no more licenses available for this area,” Gomez explained. “This is the best area. It doesn’t pay to sell anywhere else . . . It’s not just. We are just trying to survive here. Everyone has the right to survive.”

Later, her 10-year-old-daughter, Julieta, is seen selling chewing gum to the line of cars waiting to enter the United States. As she goes from car to car, she pushes her wheelchair-bound brother, who also has a box of chewing gum for sale.

Why does Julieta sell the gum? “To help my mother,” she explains with a pixieish grin.

Juan Enrique Cordova Espinosa is a street-wise, 14-year-old native of Sinaloa state who said he has been on his own since he was 7. He speaks with a kind of world-weary knowledge gained from the streets, employing part bluster and part hard experience, his language not unlike a Spanish-language version of the cynical patter favored by Hollywood’s Dead End Kids a generation ago in a different world.

Cordova, who sports a punk-style tail of black hair falling down his back, says he left home at age 7 after his father died and his stepfather, an alcoholic, began to beat him. Ever since, he says, he has been on his own, living on the edge of the law. He first arrived at the border in Mexicali seven years ago, he said. He likes the excitement of the border.

“I dedicated myself to selling Chiclets, washing car windows, doing anything to make some money,” Cordova explained matter-of-factly as he sat on a bench near the border. “At first I slept on the streets. Then I earned enough to stay in a hotel . . . Eventually, I learned how to make a living.”

Cordova said he left Mexicali a few months ago when he ran afoul of the law ands things began to get too hot. Apart from washing car windows in Tijuana, he acknowledged dabbling in some more lucrative professions: selling drugs and assisting in the smuggling of pollos, or chickens, as illegal aliens are known, into the United States. Whether these claims are true or just youthful bravado is hard to know, but Cordova certainly sounds convincing.

“I want to live a good life, to have money, to dress in nice clothes,” said Cordova, adding that he now lives in a hotel in Tijuana, paying $4.50 a night for a decent room--not just a dump. “I don’t want to dress and look like a bum. To enjoy life, you have to have money.”

He speaks generally about a vague future in some kind of clandestine activity, but first, he said, he would like to find a job as a cook or a chauffeur or in some other legitimate field where he could earn more. Among his current priorities, he said, is paying a corrupt lawyer $20 to forge a false birth certificate that will state that he is 18 years old--a fact that would qualify him to work legally in various menial jobs that are a step up from street vending.

Cordova said he’s too smart to end up in jail--he understands how the police work. He scanned the nearby streets, pointing out the cars of the various police agencies that cruise Mexican cities. His hero is Rafael Caro Quintero, the notorious reputed drug smuggling king who is jailed in Mexico City in connection with the murder of a U.S. drug agent.

“Caro Quintero had houses all over the world; he knows how to live,” Cordova said, reciting the words of a ballad telling of the accused smuggler’s exploits. “They’ll never keep him in jail.”

“I like the dark side of life,” Cordova said.

When they return to the United States on foot, tourists who earlier may have listened to Pedro Lopez singing Mexican corridos often have the opportunity to hear the songs of another young Mixtec Indian boy. Lorenzo Lopez Ramirez, 8, who sometimes rests his head on his tiny guitar as he sits on a trash bin and sings softly, is generally a sad-faced presence at the modern crossing.

One evening not long ago, Lorenzo was unable to play. He showed a visitor a deep, red gash on his forearm that he said came from a stray shard of glass.

A few days later, Lorenzo was back playing his guitar. The wound appeared to be infected and there was no bandage on it, but Lorenzo, staring downward, was doing his best as the tourists streamed by, occasionally tossing a coin into the little boy’s paper cup.