Crossing the border in slow motion

They say that Angelenos like to measure their trips in terms of time rather than distance. "Oh, it will take you about 20 minutes to get there." "It's about three hours north of here." I don't really know why we do it, we just do.

That said, my trip to the border - and crossing it - was interminable. What should have been a relatively short trip from L.A. to Tijuana doubled for any number of reasons, including L.A. traffic, Orange County traffic, San Diego traffic and a side trip to a FedEx Office to get business cards (very cool ones, by the way).

I don't mean to sound whiny. I'm not. It wasn't bad so much as sloooooow. And our moment in Mexican customs was fairly surreal. Not bad, just slow and surreal as any bureaucratic border crossing can be.

My friends continue to express their heartfelt wishes that my trip goes well and that I will succeed in my endeavors. They also share their fears about the violence we hear about in the media.

The more read about Baja, the more I believe that the media coverage about the violence is distorted and over-generalizes its impact. Much of the violence occurs in select border towns and under specific circumstances.

A friend of my colleague Chris shared with me a funny video this morning that addresses the misperceptions of violence and safety here. Enjoy.


The city of La Paz on the southern end of Baja just launched a public relations campaign touting their city as one of the safest in the world. The headline of their news release declared that La Paz "declared peace on the United States."

I don't have anything else to share at the moment. Things are just...slow. And I'm okay with that. As things move along, slowly or not, I'll let you know.

Update: A good friend and neighbor shared with me a February 2011 report from the Trans-Border Institute at the University of California about drug violence in Mexico between 2008 and 2010. One interesting item in the summary:  56% of all homicides from organized crime in 2010 occurred in just four of Mexico’s 32 states (Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, and Guerrero). Most others have had much lower levels of violence, and several states have been virtually untouched by violence (Baja California Sur, Campeche, Querétaro, Tlaxcala, and Yucatán)