Photo by Jim Coit

Ed and Esther Berning: “You have the best of Mexican culture and the best of norteamericano culture."

Quitting time comes at five o’clock for Angie Bowen, and Angie’s routine usually doesn’t vary. Her noisy office, the San Diego branch of the Automobile Club of Southern California, lies across from the southern fringe of Balboa Park, so she piles into her Buick Regal and pulls onto Highway 5 south. Maybe twenty-five minutes later, she turns off at San Ysidro, where she picks up the mail in post office box 22Q then she returns to the freeway to head south once again.

Betty Westenskoff: “Gosh, there were people waiting in line to buy back then.”

Photo by Jim Coit

The Mexican guards wave her through the border gates with an impassive nod, and within moments Angie speeds south on the wide i Ensenada Cuota It carries her to a coastline which looks like it’s been lifted straight out of the history books, a scene from California a hundred years ago, a stretch of open, unspoiled seashore where Angie lives. Bear in mind that Angie is not a Mexican citizen, nor is she Mexican-American.

Angie: "I feel they don’t seem to try and better themselves very much.”

Photo by Jim Coit

On the contrary, she seems as American as Lucille Ball, whom she vaguely resembles, perhaps because of her animated, husky voice and ready humor.

Dean Westenskoff: “The Americans down here are creating jobs for Mexicans.”

Photo by Jim Coit

Angie must be in her sixties, but she could pass for fifteen years younger; the chestnut color of her short, curled hair looks natural. Although she’s lived in Mexico for seven years, Angie still speaks only a few words of Spanish.

Stanley and Hilda Hebert: “I have never felt one minute of insecurity in this country.”

Photo by Jim Coit

Indeed, she lists that language as one of the few things which reminds her that she resides in a foreign country. She also mentions Mexican driving habits, and the people themselves. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but on a whole I feel they don’t seem to try and better themselves very much,” she muses. “When they’re working, they laugh a lot, and they eat a lot.” Yet Angie doesn’t even see too many Mexicans. “Because we’re all the only Americans down there, we all get very close.”

Photo by Jim Coit

Angie didn’t move to Mexico to socialize with Mexicans; she partly came seeking small-town America. Before moving to Baja, she lived on the same block in North Hollywood for three years, and she only knew the two neighbors on either side of her. Now she knows every one of the hundred or so full-time residents of San Antonio Del Mar, which lies fifteen miles (via the toll road) from the border crossing. Since no one in San Antonio has a phone, neighbors communicate with CB radios, and the community chipped in to buy Angie one when she and her husband celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary. Now every night when Angie gets home she broadcasts a mail call, along with any important message which stateside friends and neighbors have phoned to her office. It is Mayberry, south of the border. Except that here, she and her husband, a former gas station owner, spent about $30,000 for a comfortable home with a view of the ocean, a home that would cost them at least $150,000 in La Jolla; and now they live in a style which almost makes them feel like members of a gracious, wealthy class.

American campers and tourists have been venturing into Baja for decades, of course, but expatriates like Angie only have really become a presence here in the last ten or so years. San Antonio Del Mar was one of the very first American developments here, but now the clusters stretch all the way from Playas de Tijuana, where the border meets the sea, down to Ensenada and still further south, like some population of foreign birds that has flocked to the seashore and now huddles together in their pretty, salt-sprayed nests. One estimate, at least a year old and probably unreliable, counted 10,000 Americans living in the general area of Rosarito, but the American consulate in Tijuana doesn’t even try to guess the true figure. A staff member there acknowledges that most

Americans settle into Baja without worrying about offical documents, a situation which doesn’t seem to bother the Mexican authorities. “We’re not in the same situation as the illegal aliens on the other side of the border,” one resident explains. "There, there’s the fear that they’re taking jobs away from Americans. But everyone realizes that we’re bringing money into Baja. We’re givers, not takers.” Complicating any census still further is the mobility of so many of these expatriates, plus the presence of huge numbers of weekenders. The only certainty is that the total numbers are large — and growing.

To the Mexican government, all such American colonies are “tourist camps,” but the generalization doesn’t do justice to the variety of lifestyles. At the top of the price range are places like San Antonio Del Mar, Baja Malibu, Las Gaviotes, Bajamar — developments which would fit in nicely if they were picked up whole and plopped down in north San Diego County. Here you find the tennis courts and swimming pools and monthly management fees which can cover anything from basic utilities to security services. The un-American notes sound subtly — the flotillas of red-tile roofs, the cobblestone streets, brick and grill work a little more elaborate than one would find stateside. But down the road apiece, you can find American trailer encampments which operate just like mobile home parks in the U.S., and you can find Americans building homes on land which they simply rent from the Mexican government, and you can find others who simply rent from Mexicans homes facing the ocean. “It’s like the level of dirt that determines whether you call it a development or a camp,” says one long-time Baja resident. “If it’s rustic and unpaved and nobody gives a shit, it’s a camp, and there’s a certain class of American who loves that. That’s Mexico to him, and that’s why he’s here.”

None of these Americans — no foreigners under any circumstances — may legally own any of the land on which they live. All the land within a hundred kilometers (sixty-two miles) from the sea-coast is protected by the Mexican Constitution. Yet a few years ago you could come down here to all manner of wild schemes for by-passing or outright ignoring the ownership restrictions.

One case after another of land fraud resulted, and the worst example was the scandal which rocked San Antonio Del Mar (then called San Antonio Shores) about seven years ago. Among the developers then were the former attorney general of the state of Washington and a prominent Tijuana attorney. They enticed between 2500 and 3000 investors with everything from ninety-nine-year leases to the promise of outright land ownership, at times doling out the same parcel to two or three different unsuspecting victims. When chaos finally erupted, the Mexican government stepped in, and now the state of Baja runs that particular development. More importantly, however, the crisis prompted the creation of the fideicomtniso, a new legal instrument with which Americans can control Mexican land. Basically a trust arrangement, the fideicommisos allow Americans to control pieces of property for thirty years, at which time the land must be sold back to a Mexican national.

But that eventuality doesn’t bother Dean and Betty Westenskow, who live two blocks away from Angie at San Antonio Del Mar. When they first looked at property here about seven years ago, the Westenskows figured that a thirty-year trust at retirement age would be just as good as a bill of sale. Like everyone at San Antonio, they’ve still got about twenty-seven years left to go, and Dean doesn’t even believe they’ll really have to sell at the end of that time; he says most of the residents expect the government to grant an extension. “The Americans down here are creating jobs for Mexicans,” he says flatly. “Baja depends on tourism.”

It is so very easy to imagine the Westenskows as they must have been when they lived in Burbank, and so very incongruous to find them living in Mexico now. Dean is a trim, dark-haired man with a long craggy face, and Betty, a little on the plump side, is a fair-skinned, blue-eyed blond. They are twentieth-century suburban analogues to Norman Rockwell’s stereotypical Americans. Dean spent twenty-odd years on the telephone company’s management ladder; Betty never had kids, but worked in several offices. She can’t even remember if she ever entered Mexico before she and Dean accepted the free sales weekend here as a lark. Certainly she would have guffawed if anyone had tried to tell her she’d retire south of the border. She remembers one occasion when her brother came to visit them in Burbank. “When he wanted to go down to Mexico, I said, ‘Fine, I’ll take the kids. I don’t want them going in there.’ I was afraid of what might happen.”

But when the Westenskows drank in the sight of that pristine beach, along with the margaritas and the sales pitch, the cross-cultural prejudices melted away. They had always been beach people and Betty says shyly, “I used to tell Dean, ‘If you could just buy me one little foot on the beach, where I could stand and look at the water. I’ll be happy.’ But we never thought it would be possible because of the prices in the States.” Yet here were the Coronado Islands looming crystal clear due west of the beach, looking so close and inviting that it seemed you could practically swim out to them. Across the brand-new toll road from the main section of the development stretched a nine-hole golf course, surrounded by miles of empty hills. Only a few houses perched above the beach where surf crashed and glittered under the bright blue skies. Yet beach front lots were selling for just a few thousand dollars. “Gosh, there were people waiting in line to buy back then,” Betty recalls. The Westenskows joined them, depositing money on a lot that first weekend.

The next year they moved a fifteen-by-fifty-foot mobile home to the property, and they started driving to Mexico every weekend. The enchantment never faded, not even through all the turmoil when the crooked developers left San Antonio all but in ruins. When the state of Baja levied a stiff assessment on all San Antonio investors to pay for the completion of the roads, a sewer system, storm drains, and other amenities, the Westenskows were among those who paid up and kept the faith. “We tried to figure out how we could come down more often,” recalls Betty. Counting their pennies, they succeeded when Dean retired three years ago at fifty-five, an event which he declares never would have been possible were it not for the lower cost of living in Mexico.

Today the couple lives in a cozy rectangular home, just two levels above the breaking waves. Like so many places here, their residence is a hybrid, originally a mobile home which Mexican workers enlarged and surrounded with stucco. Today building costs run as high as they do north of the border, twenty-five to thirty dollars a square foot, but once they were as low as seven to eight dollars a square foot. Dean says the Mexican workers finished the shell of his place in about three months, then he took his time finishing the interior. Now, big windows wrap around the north and west sides of the living room, and Dean says he can’t wait to get up in the mornings. “She fixes a cup of coffee for me, and I just turn that chair around to face the window. I watch, and watch, and watch.” He sounds so lazy and contented that he ought to be purring. Below the window, a school of dolphins, regular visitors, plays in the surf.

Somehow, the couple has managed to adjust to the lifestyle as easily as cats finding a foothold. Today Dean and Betty even defend Mexico with the same loyalty with which one can imagine they might have defended the Vietnam War or the American Way. Sure, the electricity periodically falters and the water stops running, inexplicably. So they store a battery-operated TV set and torches and plenty of extra water. “If you’re prepared for things, they don’t bother you,” they agree briskly. They contrast Baja’s smogless days with the thick yellow fumes of Burbank, and Betty recalls how crime grew to be such a threat in her former home that she finally refused to walk her poodles at night. “Here, we seldom lock our door,” she says with pride. “I can go out at midnight, and with the lights and the security officer, I feel safer in San Antonio than I do in the States.”

Dean figures that their cost of living is still half what it would be stateside, with taxes among the biggest source of savings. They have been paying no income taxes, since Americans who live out of the country permanently have been exempt from the first $25,000 a year (a new law will soon rescind the exemption, with as yet unknown consequences for families like the Westenskows). Property taxes run them about $100 a year, compared to the $1400 per year they were paying in Burbank. Mexican state taxes last year cost fifty-five dollars. The Westenskows also bought a diesel Peugeot, for which gas costs eleven cents a gallon. They say water (a mix of deep well water and desalinized sea water which is piped in) and electricity cost about what they would in the States; their thirty-five-dollar-a-month management fee covers road upkeep, security, trash pickup, street lights, and general maintenance. “At most mobile home parks you’d have to pay a lot more than thirty-five dollars a month,” Dean asserts. For six dollars a visit, a maid cleans their entire house every Friday.

They drive into San Diego County once a week to telephone friends and relatives and to buy about half their food: some meat and canned items, and “your specialty foods that are strictly gringo” — Swanson’s meat pies, Hoffy hot dogs. On the Mexican side they shop at the Safeway in Rosarito, the Conasuper, and Calimaxes in Tijuana. Occasionally they patronize the open-air markets in both cities. They dine out frequently and relate the prices they pay with glee: $1.69 for a fish feast on Mondays; Italian dinners which rarely exceed $2.50.

Though San Antonio has a reputation as a social center — the Westenskows say they could join nightly bridge games, restaurant outings, private parties — Dean and Betty are homebodies. During the day they mostly golf or putter around their house, and at night they usually watch television. “We really have a lot better reception than we do in San Diego,” Betty says. They receive all the San Diego and L. A. stations without a cable; occasionally signals come from even further.

Yet Dean’s relatives still can’t understand why they’d choose to live in Baja, Betty says. Despite her softness and the poodle tucked under her matronly arm, she looks extraordinarily youthful. “You have to see it to understand.” She seems close to forgetting that there ever were mental adjustments. Then she recalls that once she feared being hassled by the Mexican police, “But now I’ve come to realize that most people get what they ask for. If you act like you’re a visitor in a someone else’s country, you’re not going to be hassled,” she insists. “We’re living in a foreign country down here! If you just act accordingly, you’ll be treated with respect.” Stanley and Hilda Hebert made their peace with Mexico years ago; indeed, Hilda has forgotten the adjustment if there ever was one. The couple simply fell in love with this section of coast the first time they laid eyes on it. Chance had brought them on a camping trip to this rocky point south of the Rosarito Beach Hotel, which the Mexicans call K28, a thundering panorama which would rob the breath of even the most jaded La Jollan. Their first weekend here, the Heberts decided to buy a mobile home with a cabana attached to it, situated on a piece of land right next to the steps leading down to the white beach. For six years they came down from Downey on weekends. Hilda sometimes spent the summers here while Stanley commuted, then six years ago they moved down permanently.

Their living arrangement contrasts dramatically with the Westenskows, whose San Antonio Del Mar is about twenty minutes’ drive to the north. Only twelve families, eleven American and one Mexican, congregate on this point. One man commutes daily to Chula Vista; three other couples are retired here full-time, and all the others come down only on weekends. When the Heberts’ original landlord ran afoul of the federal government (which owns this property), the feds took over as the landlord. Deprived of their original light and water service, the twelve families each chipped in a few hundred dollars to install their own utilities. Today the Heberts rent their space for thirty-six dollars a month, and though the Junta Federale could give them thirty days notice, the Heberts dismiss that threat with barely a shrug. “I have never felt one minute of insecurity in this country,” says Hilda, an open woman who wears her graying hair in a shoulder-length bob. ‘‘You make your own problems. And we just have always felt like they’re gonna do right by us because we never do anything wrong. Besides, like Stanley says, if we have to walk off tomorrow, we haven’t really lost anything; we’ve gotten so much out of living here.”

She fits in here as comfortably as any of the friendly dogs who belong to the beach. All year round she dives into the frothy water and recalls that at first it was the ocean which commanded her devotion.

“But now it’s the town as well. As much as it’s grown, it still has a soft, comfortable feeling to it.” Every morning she walks on the sand to the Oasis, the modest diner just a little ways down from the hotel, where she drinks her morning coffee and listens to Mexican music on the jukebox.

She laughs that she is a peasant at heart, but for Stanley there was an adjustment. ‘‘I was in sales work and I dressed and I entertained,” he says. ”I was here at ten and there at two and so forth.” When he finally retired, he had an ulcer, which since has disappeared. Now he takes pride that people mistake him for a Mexican; his skin is burnt bronze, and a droopy mustache Latinizes his face. He revels in the tempo. “Every afternoon I take my siesta. They’ve really got something going if you ask me! And this manana business! You know how they say, ‘Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today’? Well, not here!”

A commotion breaks the noon calm outside his door. It’s five maintenance workers from the Zona Federale, and Stanley darts up to embrace them. These are regulars, friends of Stanley’s, and they’ve come by on their lunch hour to help him put up a windbreak outside his door. “You want to know why I love Mexico? It’s things like this,” he says, plunging in the middle of the commotion.

Hilda looks down at the fog-enshrouded beach and declares again that Americans who get into trouble here are usually the cause of it. "People flaunt themselves. They think in terms of the ‘lowly Mexican.’ But that’s wrong. They’re a very clean people. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Mexican who had body odor. And when you see a dirt floor, you’ll notice that it’s been swept so much that it’s hard. We never patronize them.”

Yet all too many of these American transplants do just that, according to Ron Jensen. Like Hebert, Jensen could pass for a native, but Jensen is in his thirties and makes a living as a free-lance journalist. He’s lived in Baja for several years. Jensen says the Mexicans feel tolerant of the American community, “but they really resent Americans in many ways.”The ugly American exists here, Jensen maintains. “There’s the American who comes down here and expects all the Mexicans to speak English to him all the time. Then you have the Americans who go into a restaurant and they demand service right now. Or they walk into a police station and they demand attention immediately. Then they get upset when they don’t get it. Just like they were paying taxes or something and had a right to expect that!”

At the moment, Jensen stands just a few feet off the beach, on the patio of the gracious house which he rents for $200 a month, a tab which includes his water and electricity. Yet his greatest enthusiasm is neither the proximity to the water nor the lower cost of living, but rather, the sense of freedom which he says he *s experienced in Baja. “Here in the frontier zone it’s not necessary to get involved in the bureaucracy. . . . The law is a flexible guideline that you can use — if you feel like it,” he says with a laugh. “The police don’t bother me for petty little things, like being double-parked, or driving the wrong way down a one-way street. In the United States, they’re so regulation conscious. Everyone rigidly follows the rules. They’re so afraid.”

Jensen says the rigidity produces another variety of the ugly American, the one who bitches about Mexican corruption “but doesn’t understand the system. In America we give tips to waiters for better service; here they give a ‘tip’ la propina, to government officials. So why should Americans get upset? Take a traffic ticket, for example. I’d rather give the money to the cop who’s trying to support a family on six or seven dollars a day, than give it to some judge who’s living up on a hill. . . . Yet there are Americans who forget that they’re guests in a foreign culture and get upset because things aren’t just like they are back home.”

And there are a few, a minority, who come here precisely seeking that culture gap, like Ben Berning, an eight-year resident of San Antonio Del Mar. At the moment, Berning has just returned from Chula Vista, where he purchased two replacement glass tops for his electric blender. “Where we’re living you have the best of two cultures,” he expounds smoothly. “You have the best of Mexican culture and the best of norteamericano culture. If I was in Guadalajara. I'd have a hell of a time picking up these replacement parts. Here, if I really feel I want corned beef on rye, I can drive to Harbor Island. I’m fat and sassy.”

Berning actually is a tanned and full-voiced man, whose halo of white hair contrasts with his sun-darkened face. A retired financial consultant, he chortles when he thinks about how it takes two breadwinners to support a family in the U.S., while he can sit at his kitchen table overlooking the water, analyze investments part-time, place two or three calls a month, and “make more money at this table than I spend here.” Yet money isn’t the factor which drew him here. Berning says, “We have enough money that we could live anywhere we want in the world. And we live here by choice.”

Both Berrning and his wife have become fluent in Spanish since moving here, and they revel in the chance to leave the beaten path. “The Mexican’s background and all are different from the norteamericano. and if you want to live in another country, it is your responsibility to try to understand that rather than to fight another country,” he lectures.

Outside the huge glass window, a swollen sun is falling over one of the Coronado Islands, enflaming the horizon. The glow of the coastline bathes Berning’s face in repose. “The only complaint that I have is that the living is too good; the whole package is too good. Where else in the world could I go where it would be as good?” Then the jagged island gobbles up the blazing globe, and to the east, darkness blankets uninhabited hills. Berrning smiles, delighted with the prejudice which restrains his fellow countrymen to the other side of the border.