Mexicali, the last Mexican city, the first Californian city

Nocturnal, dissolute. Fun and strange, like old-fashioned and newly made. I went to Mexicali to cover the restoration of the Colorado Delta (you can read my report on that in El Economista. I invite you to be surprised that activism can be useful), but I ran into the spirit of Al Capone. I went to discover the history of the intermittent, mafia-like night. A place that holds underground secrets.

I also went to look for my grandfather.

My paternal grandfather, Captain Miguel Moreno López, died in Mexicali in 1957. My father was ten years old when his father died. With his grandmother, my great-grandmother Magdalena, he began the journey from the Santa Julia neighborhood in what was then Mexico City to that northern city that had no intention of burying him.

My grandfather was a soldier. He didn't know much about having a family. He was always deployed here and there, and he treated his wife and children from a distance, like strangers. It was different with my father. While he disdained his other children (I'm referring to my father's legitimate siblings; the good captain surely left many others on the road)—like a true Mexican macho, my grandfather held a grudge against my grandmother for having had two girls and only two boys—he treated my father, his firstborn, like his true, miniature other self. While everything was scarce at home, my grandfather took his son to the beach in the soldier's truck.

My father was very happy in his adventures with Captain Moreno. It devastated him to be away from him: my grandfather was his true friend in a violent world. There was a lot of bad blood in that family. Parents are imperfect, but my grandfather was a disaster. He died in his early thirties with a destroyed liver from his alcoholism. He left my father alone, a ten-year-old boy with torn shoes.

So I went to Mexicali with the idea of ​​giving him one last memory of his father, perhaps finding his grave (my dad doesn't even remember where he was buried) and taking a photo of the headstone. The task proved too complex, and I had to work.

I didn't find the tomb, but I did find Mexicali. On the last day of the trip, the hosts were kind enough to give us a guided tour of La Chinesca, Mexicali's Chinatown, a historic counterpart to San Francisco's Chinatown. When you go north, you look for chilorio, asada, and burritos. In Mexicali, you go for Chinese food. Although I found the Chinese tradition a bit unconventional, the tour was entertaining.

We were given a ride by a cheerful young man with a college-age heartthrob appearance and the unforgettable name of Robin Alejandro. Robin, so friendly, showed off his Mexico City transportation card when he found out we were chilangu-esque. This isn't a complaint or a joke; I liked Robin at that moment because someone who does that understands the need for details to tell a story and engage the audience.

Mexicali is the first Californian city, not the last Mexican city. Robin asked us to observe the buildings in the city's historic center: they all face the border with Calexico. There's the border wall, so everyday, so undeniable. A long pole would be enough to jump over the United States. (My dad remembers the border with Calexico as a cyclone fence; suddenly the street ended, and, like someone crossing a chicken coop, you were already on the other side.) Facing the border, on the Mexican side, is the first Mexican school founded in Mexicali, still during the Porfiriato. The building today is the cultural center of the city and looks like a small Beverly Hills mansion from a century ago (did Beverly Hills exist a hundred years ago? Forgive the license, but the visual reference is clear). It's an architecture recognizable from American movies, not from the mirror image of other Mexican cities. It's a different vibe, then.

I said I went to Mexicali because I wanted to walk the streets of Al Capone. Old Al founded a proto-Vegas in Mexicali during the Prohibition era. The Owl, his Mexicali nightclub, had a tunnel that crossed the border and used to smuggle alcohol into the United States. Robin told us a visual detail: when there was alcohol shipped to the tunnel, the owl on the Owl's facade would light up. It's cinematic, no doubt.

Yes, Mexicali is a film city. The spirit of old Hollywood heroin and drug addiction, as well as Mexican cinema and its showbiz, lives on in its streets. Pedro Infante was a frequent visitor to clubs and casinos. But beyond the stars, cinema was a common presence: the terrible heat only eased in the movie theaters; their halls were the only buildings with air conditioning.

That Mexicali also has a very literary vibe. Have you read James Ellroy? His noir stories set in 1940s Los Angeles could easily be set in Mexicali. Sumptuous yet lustful and capable of terrible things, in Mexicali you can believe in black dahlias, noble and violent police officers in love with the hopeless case at hand, faithful prostitutes, and bastard Chinese hitmen. Opium. Revelry all night, and mass on Sundays.

Because of its distance from the center, Mexicali was part of an imaginary Mexico. Maybe there's something there, the Mexican government would say. They sent military detachments to deal with the heat and beat the gringos' teeth. I suppose my grandfather went on one of those missions. The Mexican government had little to do in that place, but they had to keep the Americans in check to keep them from getting any invasive ideas. You know how gringos are: they're either investors or invaders.

Of course, there are always winners. Just as the gringos saw Mexicali as their haven, others saw opportunities to settle. The Chinese arrived to make their mark in the Americas during the 1849 gold rush. Victims of racism, the Americans gradually expelled them south until they crossed the border.

Many arrived after the railroad was built. The gringo train arrived in Mexicali long before Lázaro Cárdenas's modernization attempts. The gringo train arrived, collected resources, and returned to supply all of California. What I mean is that the train ended there, leaving Mexicali cut off from the rest of Mexico. Then the Chinese arrived.

We must ask ourselves why La Chinesca prospered as a Chinatown when, in the rest of Mexico, Chinese immigrants were almost erased by racist violence. The reason is simple: they arrived first. Ordinary Mexicans appeared in the city after the Mexican state finally connected the gringo train with ours.

(There are other things to say about the train, the most important of which is that it causes traffic chaos in the morning and afternoon because it doesn't run at fixed times and cuts the city in two. Poor Mexicali residents have to guess to get to work.)

Robin took us through the underworld. It wasn't as fun as it sounds; it simply showed us Mexicali's famous basements. As a side note, since Mexicali is a city built in the American style, the old buildings all have basements. Those basements were responsible for the legend, Robin said, that Mexicali is connected underground. Sadly, that's not the case. It would have been great fun to explore those secret passages.

I tell you, everything seems fictional. And not just in the city center, but also in its suburbs. I'm not misusing the term; it's accurate: modern Mexicali looks like a California suburb. With its spectacular backdrop—that pristine, endless sky, the Cucapá Mountains on one side, and a long, long horizon stretching into the distance on the other—the buildings are short but elegant, little houses that look like they came straight out of the San Fernando Valley.

Mexicali is a strange place. I'll return because I have to find my grandfather and close that sad family story. He died there, where the sky never ends. Perhaps it's worth returning many times.