It’s a quiet Friday night, a few minutes before midnight. An elderly gentleman approaches me and asks “Ud. habla Español?” “Si” I reply. He then tells me “los taxistas llevan droga en el volante.” He proceeds to explain how the taxi drivers hide drugs where the horn is in the center of the steering wheel. I suppose he thought I was a reporter; one tends to stick out like a sore turistic thumb slogging a camera/bag/tripod up and down Avenida Revolución.

My guess is more than ninety percent of those on Avenida Revolución on a given night aren’t from México. Manu Chao’s “Welcome to Tijuana” is fitting for these visitors, but there are several million more people who actually live in Tijuana but never visit Avenida Revolución. They’re good people, quite tired of corruption and the violence of rival narcotraficantes. And as I walk down this street with a target on my back, I actually feel quite safe.

This is from the roof of my mother-in-law’s home in Tijuana, taken by my 12 year-old nephew Alex. I let him try the camera and was pretty impressed with this shot of me with my nephews. From left to right: Angel, Benjamin, myself, André.

Check out this radio piece I co-produced on the music of the Nortec Collective. On his blog, P.G. Beas (Hiperboreal) refers to me as a “gringo muy mexicano.”

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On Saturday, November 20th, a group from the North County Church of Christ in Escondido, California, brought 125 blankets to Tijuana. Above, a group of locals help take blankets through the colonia Terrazas.

As they walked through the neighborhood, this woman approached and asked the selling price. He told her they were free and she stared at him. She asked what the catch was and he said there was none, that they came from the church around the corner. She relunctantly took a blanket double checking that it was actually free. Her expression following this picture was a sincere mix of disbelief and gratitude. That would have made a more powerful picture, but I had lowered the camera at that point to avoid further scepticism.