by Denise Calaman

Created on: May 20, 2009   Last Updated: October 21, 2010

  Chula Vista, California 1996

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" my boyfriend asked as he pulled me aside away from our group of friends.

"Yes, I'm sure." I nodded. I had only been in Escondido for a few hours visiting my boyfriend who was stationed at Camp Pendleton when we decided to take a trip to Tijuana. "It's only Mexico."

"Yeah, but it's a third world country and you've never been to a third world country. You will see things here that are going to be difficult for you. Sometimes being overly compassionate has its downside." This was a man who spoke from experience. He saw first-hand the ravages of many third world countries. He had been shot at in Somalia as he tried to feed starving children. He cleaned up dead bodies in the Philippines after Mount Pinatubo erupted. He fixed combat helicopters in the desert war zones of the Middle East.

I took in my first sights of a third world country. Women sat on sidewalks with empty tin cups and signs begging for money. Little children as young as two and three walked up to me with weeping eyes, rattling tin cups in front of me, begging for American coins. These children should have been at home, in their beds, long ago, dreaming childlike dreams. Instead they were on their own at midnight, wondering the streets, panhandling for a bit of change that many of us so carelessly throw into our car ashtrays without a second thought.

My visit to Tijuana was some 12 or 13 years ago but I can see so vividly in my mind a young girl of five or six passing me on the sidewalk. She has wearing a sackcloth dress and had a burlap sack with a baby rigged to her back. This was well after midnight and she and the baby were walking alone to a destination I could only hope was her home. As she walked she continued to pass crowds of people. I saw her pass two armed Mexican policemen with big automatic guns. She walked right in between them. I don't think they even noticed her as she faded into a sea of tourists. Today I still wonder about her. Did she grow up and become a woman? Is she a mother and does she let her own children roam the streets as she did all those years ago?

After a night of clubbing we were walking over a cement walking bridge leaving Mexico heading for the United States I looked west into big floodlights that hung over huge swale like ditches used to divide the two countries. I thought to myself, "So many Mexicans risk their lives trying to climb these swales in order to escape their homeland.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>