Glocalists in Tijuana: youth, cultural citizenship and cosmopolitan identity

Abstract

Might a cosmopolitan identity emerge as the logical cultural response to mundialization and economic globalization? With this question in mind I conducted in-depth interviews with 20 young people between the ages of 16 and 29 in Tijuana during 2004. This paper is the result of an analysis of their discourse on the phenomenon generically described as globalization. I present here the varied reactions of young Tijuana residents to what it means to be young, a border dweller, Mexican, and tijuanense and the ways they characterize members of ‘other’ cultures with whom they share metropolitan Tijuana.

Keywords:

• youth
• cultural
• citizenship
• identity

Notes

José Manuel Valenzuela, El color de las sombras. Chicanos, identidad y racismos, El COLEF-UIA, México, 1998.

The title of this section refers to a book by Humberto Félix (2004) called Tijuana la Horrible, the object of study of that text are the processes and historical events that gave rise to the poor reputation of Tijuana. As the author mentions, ‘the hegemonic discourse about Tijuana due to the allocation of stigmatizing a property set out certain social or particular causes, some historical, some constraints, as well as the imposition of a number of provisions that have governed since then both views as social practices. Therefore, to recognize the history behind this approach means to recognize their origins and the imposition of hegemony (who, how and from where). It is worth saying that the stigmatized identity of Tijuana is the result of an asymmetrical and social differentiating look. I refer to this book because in the rest of the paper I will try to deconstruct the stereotype and myth of Tijuana with the discourse of those who live there’.

The border between Mexico and the United States stands out as the only international border in the world that has a considerable number of human settlements as cities or twin pairs on both sides of the line. There are 12 twin cities: Tijuana/San Diego, Mexicali/Calexico, Yuma/San Luis Rio Colorado, Nogales/Nogales, Agua Prieta/Douglas, Ciudad Juárez/El Paso/Las Cruces, Ojinaga/Presidio, Del Rio/Cd.Acuña, Piedras Negras/Eagle Pass, Nuevo Laredo/Laredo, Reynosa/McAllen, and Matamoros/Brownsville (Joy 1992).

The ‘Dark Legend’ is how tijuanenses refer to stories about the city's immoral patterns of behavior in the first half of the twentieth century.

Commercial and tourist exchanges of the border between Mexico and the United States have been influenced by several factors: the first of these, relates to the blurring of politics, the second with the population dynamics and the third with the economic and political changes recorded on both sides of the division. ‘Therefore, studying tourism at the border and the intensity of visitor flows between the two countries, means among other things, to interpret the causes that limit or facilitates it. Streams of visitors to both sides of the border are an example of both the spatial and socio-economic integration between the two places, so that any increase or reduction of these has effects on regional economic growth’ (Bringas 1991).