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Monument Road – a quiet place overshadowed by Tijuana
Runs west from Dairy Mart Road to the recently opened Border Park
The peaceful atmosphere along Monument Road is astonishing. Only 15 or 20 minutes from Downtown, a ride along southernmost San Diego's Monument Road is like flipping through a book of Dorothea Lange photographs. A rundown ramshackle wreck of a stucco house with an abandoned stove on the front porch. A 50-year-old wooden farmhouse with two acacia shade trees in the front yard and a scarecrow in the adjacent field of lettuce and string beans. A couple of house trailers nestled in a group of avocado trees. An abandoned vegetable stand. All of this under the shade of the Tijuana plateaus.
The road meanders through a checkerboard of flat farmland devoted to vegetables and dairy cows and patches of the natural Tia Juana riverbed, covered with sage, wild tobacco, buckwheat, and tumbleweeds. On one of the mailboxes in front of one of the farmhouses is painted, "S. Moromoto."
There isn't very much traffic in the daytime on two-lane Monument Road, even on a Sunday when the roads in North County and most other rustic areas around San Diego are jammed with Sunday drivers. An occasional Navy couple who have bicycled down from Nestor on 19th Street or down from Imperial Beach on Hollister Avenue. A family of horseback riders who are walking their horses up from Trails End, a nearby stable which rents out "Gentle Horses." A pair of border guards parked in one of the pull-out areas.
The road runs west from Dairy Mart Road near the San Ysidro border crossing a full five miles to the recently opened Border Park. At the Border Park entrance, the road forks: one prong unpaved, heads straight for the beach and really is fit only for horses. The other prong, paved, climbs up to the seaside cliff where one can visit the Border Monument, Overshadowed by Tijuana's Building-by-the-Sea, the stark, 10-foot obelisk only has large letters on it which spell out the penalty for defacing it. A small plaque next to the obelisk says the monument was built as a symbol of the friendship between the Mexican and American peoples. In light of the border situation here, this could only be comic irony.
Twenty feet from the monument, two border guards stand next to their patrol cars, one of which is a sort of paddy wagon with a thin Mexican locked in, looking out. The Mexican wears a gold wedding band.
"We caught him walking too far up the beach. Border Park is open to 'them,' but we have to see that they don't go too far north. We catch 50 or 60 of 'em every night from here to five miles the other side of San Ysidro, but that's only two percent. There's 3000 of 'em that make it across every night. And now's not half as bad as January. They all go home for Christmas, you see, and then they come back. No, no, we don't have to shoot. They're used to the federales. They stop right away. Those federales, they shoot if you run, no questions asked.
"Yeah, there's all kinds. Not just Mexicans, you see. Then's El Salvardorians, British Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Chileans.... Used to be a lot more Chileans. Hmm. Haven't got me a Chilean in quite a while. not too many Chileans these days. Not since Allende. I guess the military down there must be doing their business.
"Course, when they do catch 'em up in L.A. or San Diego — ever been up to Bonita? — they catch a lot of em there — they don't do anything. There's supposed to be some law against employing wetbacks, but Congress is controlled by big business, and big business has an interest in that cheap labor. Look at that Mrs. Banueltos, the Secretary of the Treasury. She made her millions, all right. But it was by employing wets. She paid 'em 50 cents or $1 an hour. How could anyone compete with her if they have to pay $2 an hour?"
Asked if a gringo can cross to the other side by walking south on the beach, the guard replies, "No, it's illegal. It's a $500 fine and six months in jail if you do. We used to have signs up here saying that, but they'd get torn down as soon as they'd go up."
The guard partner who isn't doing the talking has been scanning the beach and starts to interrupt the conversation. he points to a group of three Latins walking north on the beach. "Well, what'd'ya think? Shall we got get 'em?"
"Yeah, I guess we can give him the points to the Mexican in the paddy wagon) to Jack (he points to a San Diego Police car in the parking lot, the crowd of Latins on the Mexican side of the fence near the Monument — women, children, teenagers, old men, young men — all stand up and follow the guards with their eyes. A few teenagers duck under the barbed wire and cross over. A middle aged couple, well-dressed, stroll over nonchalantly. A couple of Latins pass from the American side to the Mexican side. no one seems to take the border seriously.
The guard said that one easy way to tell there was heavy evening illegal border crossing was to go over to the just-plowed field next to the cabbage field on Tijuana Road near Dairy Mart Road. Sure enough, anyone can see it. Thousands of footprints pointed north, freshly plowed dirt. Only 100 yards from the elaborate border crossing at San Ysidro. The footprints, combined with the frustration of the guards and brazen disregard for the border along Monument Road, gives the whole area down here an aura of Catch 22 absurdity.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Monument Road – a quiet place overshadowed by Tijuana
Runs west from Dairy Mart Road to the recently opened Border Park
Monument Road – a quiet place overshadowed by Tijuana
Runs west from Dairy Mart Road to the recently opened Border Park
The peaceful atmosphere along Monument Road is astonishing. Only 15 or 20 minutes from Downtown, a ride along southernmost San Diego's Monument Road is like flipping through a book of Dorothea Lange photographs. A rundown ramshackle wreck of a stucco house with an abandoned stove on the front porch. A 50-year-old wooden farmhouse with two acacia shade trees in the front yard and a scarecrow in the adjacent field of lettuce and string beans. A couple of house trailers nestled in a group of avocado trees. An abandoned vegetable stand. All of this under the shade of the Tijuana plateaus.
The road meanders through a checkerboard of flat farmland devoted to vegetables and dairy cows and patches of the natural Tia Juana riverbed, covered with sage, wild tobacco, buckwheat, and tumbleweeds. On one of the mailboxes in front of one of the farmhouses is painted, "S. Moromoto."
There isn't very much traffic in the daytime on two-lane Monument Road, even on a Sunday when the roads in North County and most other rustic areas around San Diego are jammed with Sunday drivers. An occasional Navy couple who have bicycled down from Nestor on 19th Street or down from Imperial Beach on Hollister Avenue. A family of horseback riders who are walking their horses up from Trails End, a nearby stable which rents out "Gentle Horses." A pair of border guards parked in one of the pull-out areas.
The road runs west from Dairy Mart Road near the San Ysidro border crossing a full five miles to the recently opened Border Park. At the Border Park entrance, the road forks: one prong unpaved, heads straight for the beach and really is fit only for horses. The other prong, paved, climbs up to the seaside cliff where one can visit the Border Monument, Overshadowed by Tijuana's Building-by-the-Sea, the stark, 10-foot obelisk only has large letters on it which spell out the penalty for defacing it. A small plaque next to the obelisk says the monument was built as a symbol of the friendship between the Mexican and American peoples. In light of the border situation here, this could only be comic irony.
Twenty feet from the monument, two border guards stand next to their patrol cars, one of which is a sort of paddy wagon with a thin Mexican locked in, looking out. The Mexican wears a gold wedding band.
"We caught him walking too far up the beach. Border Park is open to 'them,' but we have to see that they don't go too far north. We catch 50 or 60 of 'em every night from here to five miles the other side of San Ysidro, but that's only two percent. There's 3000 of 'em that make it across every night. And now's not half as bad as January. They all go home for Christmas, you see, and then they come back. No, no, we don't have to shoot. They're used to the federales. They stop right away. Those federales, they shoot if you run, no questions asked.
"Yeah, there's all kinds. Not just Mexicans, you see. Then's El Salvardorians, British Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Chileans.... Used to be a lot more Chileans. Hmm. Haven't got me a Chilean in quite a while. not too many Chileans these days. Not since Allende. I guess the military down there must be doing their business.
"Course, when they do catch 'em up in L.A. or San Diego — ever been up to Bonita? — they catch a lot of em there — they don't do anything. There's supposed to be some law against employing wetbacks, but Congress is controlled by big business, and big business has an interest in that cheap labor. Look at that Mrs. Banueltos, the Secretary of the Treasury. She made her millions, all right. But it was by employing wets. She paid 'em 50 cents or $1 an hour. How could anyone compete with her if they have to pay $2 an hour?"
Asked if a gringo can cross to the other side by walking south on the beach, the guard replies, "No, it's illegal. It's a $500 fine and six months in jail if you do. We used to have signs up here saying that, but they'd get torn down as soon as they'd go up."
The guard partner who isn't doing the talking has been scanning the beach and starts to interrupt the conversation. he points to a group of three Latins walking north on the beach. "Well, what'd'ya think? Shall we got get 'em?"
"Yeah, I guess we can give him the points to the Mexican in the paddy wagon) to Jack (he points to a San Diego Police car in the parking lot, the crowd of Latins on the Mexican side of the fence near the Monument — women, children, teenagers, old men, young men — all stand up and follow the guards with their eyes. A few teenagers duck under the barbed wire and cross over. A middle aged couple, well-dressed, stroll over nonchalantly. A couple of Latins pass from the American side to the Mexican side. no one seems to take the border seriously.
The guard said that one easy way to tell there was heavy evening illegal border crossing was to go over to the just-plowed field next to the cabbage field on Tijuana Road near Dairy Mart Road. Sure enough, anyone can see it. Thousands of footprints pointed north, freshly plowed dirt. Only 100 yards from the elaborate border crossing at San Ysidro. The footprints, combined with the frustration of the guards and brazen disregard for the border along Monument Road, gives the whole area down here an aura of Catch 22 absurdity.
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