The Cultural Economy of a Border Renaissance: Politics and Practices in the City

Abstract

The production of culture in urban image-making has received much attention within geography. This paper intervenes in the culture–economy debates in a slightly different way—namely, through the lens of an understudied city of the global South. It examines the structure and discourses embedded in the Tijuana (Mexico) Municipal Plan 2005–07 to interrogate the work that culture performs with an eye to the impacts (both material and discursive) of official strategies across time and space. In so doing, two propositions are suggested. First, post-colonial spaces offer important sites from which to critique the conflation of cultural practice and policy. Secondly, the complex imbrication of culture and economy can be further distilled in grounding examples in ordinary cities.

Notes

1. I attribute this quote to Dr Jose R. ‘Pepe’ Villarino, long-time border scholar and resident.

2. Baja California has 64 movie theatres, 3 theatres, 2 bullrings, 13 museums, most of which are in Tijuana—figures on par with or higher than other states in the Mexican Republic (INEGI, 2006).

3. I am defining the cultural sector broadly as anything outside the industrial sector rife with what Mommaas (2004, p. 507) characterises as “an ambivalent and conflict-ridden mixture of cultural, economic, social and spatial interests and sentiments”.

4. This paper is part of a larger research project exploring the transformative power of the cultural sector in border cities. I spent over a year in Tijuana conducting fieldwork. In order to study the cultural transformations underway in the city, the research was organised around the in-depth analysis of three kinds of site. Each institution exemplifies diversified investment among Tijuana's cultural producers outside the manufacturing/industrial sector; they are examples of a ‘cultural politics on the ground’ in that each one can be viewed as a location of cultural strategy whereby actors are either consciously or unconsciously attempting to construct particular re-presentations of the city and its place in the nation; and the sites are high-profile establishments that have received media attention in Mexico and the US and, therefore, are recognisable elements of Tijuana to tourists and Mexican nationals. For this intervention, my focus was the municipal government and cultural producers associated with this institution. More specifically, I engaged in archival searches of key documents, interviewed dozens of cultural producers, spoke with government officials and participated as an observer in regional and city planning meetings.

5. Navalon runs the company Tercera Nacion (Third Nation), known as a platform for the promotion of private interests in the art world. He has ties with various government agencies and most recently partnered with the Tijuana airport in a high-profile exhibit to situate Tijuana as “the finest city in Mex-America” (www.arte.com, see “Tijuana, El muro del amor”).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margath A. Walker

Margath A. Walker is in the Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, 1457 Patterson Office Tower, Lexington, KY 40506, USA. E-mail: [email protected]