Urban Imaginaries

Urban imaginaries are considered to be those that refer to “networks or plots of specific, socially recognized meanings that give qualities to the city and its places” (^{Lindón, 2007b, p. 33}). In this sense, it is possible to reflect on what could be some collective urban imaginaries shared about the night and Tijuana, and even about Tijuana’s night, which seems to be the customized receiving mold that fits both representations.

In the first place, it is found that, from the cultural industries such as cinema, literature, music and television,¹⁰ the urban night is represented in two tendencies from whose encounter, from the transgression, the plot usually emanates. On the one hand, it is seen as a privileged space for youth sociability associated with consumption, entertainment, partying, glamor, courtship, sexuality, creativity and transgression. From the other, the night is shown as the space of crime, danger, precarious lives and taken to the limit, sexual exploitation, excesses, depression and an environment that is extremely polluting.

As an example of the bridge mediated by transgression from a depressive mood to euphoria or towards the possibility of transformative reclamation that gives way to the plot, one can mention the movie Begin again, where the character played by Mark Ruffalo, immersed in a whirlwind of depression and alcoholism, meets the talent and creativity of Kiera Knightley in a bar (^{Carney, 2013}). There is also the case of Rami Malek, portraying Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, who transcends his shyness to become an icon when he attends the presentation of the band Smile at a university bar, becoming the vocalist of what would later be Queen (^{Singer, 2018}). Another example is Ted Mosby (played by Joshua Thomas Radnor), who goes from frustration to falling in love when he meets Robin Schebatsky (Cobie Smulders) for the first time, again, in a bar (^{Fryman & Greenberg, 2005}). The list of scenes of this type of emotional transition that occur in the specificity of a bar can be endless. What is worth emphasizing is that, if the transitions between glamor and danger, excesses and criminality, or sexuality and risk were to be considered in audiovisual representations of the night, transgression would continue to be the binding bridge between the poles of the imaginaries.

This bridge, in turn, allows the focus to shift to the urban imaginaries of the city of Tijuana, which can be thought of in a similar complementary opposition: a city of decadent vice versus a metropolis of innovation. Is it a privileged space for fun or a hotbed of crime? Tijuana is a creative transcultural city, but it is also trapped in time, as it lives off the resale of American waste. Particularly, nostalgia is a theme that has already been investigated and reflected upon in literature and film. Some examples of this, which also provide a rich analysis of the cultural representations of Tijuana, are the works of ^{Palaversich (2012)} and ^{Candelario (2015)}.

Similarly, cultural productions also give, and are, evidence of the multiplicity of products where the weight of the imaginary associated with the night and the city of Tijuana, frame a polarization of subjective appreciations in extreme poles. In the same vein, we could mention ^{Pablo Sáinz-Garibaldi (2020)} with the collection of journalistic chronicles in Calafiero, ^{Shinpei Takeda (2019)} with the documentary El México más cercano a Japón, or ^{Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson and Del Monte (2019)} with Bad Hombres, where the contrasts of the border city are portrayed with a journalistic approach, through stories that range from everyday life to the circuits of organized crime in the city and violence against migrants. Similarly, as an example of the narratives about the pulse and tension of organized crime violence, the legacy of journalist Jesús Blancornelas, who was murdered in November 1997, could be mentioned.

Similarly, this reflection could also apply to musical elements such as the animation produced by ^{Hubley (1966)}, inspired and accompanied by the songs Spanish Flea and Tijuana Taxi, about the creation of the city and transportation in Tijuana. Or the iconic songs Tijuana makes me happy (^{Nortec Collective, 2005}) and Welcome to Tijuana (^{Manu Chao, 1998}), which have a language that mixes Spanish and English, and describe the contradictions of the previously mentioned urban imaginaries.

In short, Tijuana and its nocturnity awaken polarized imaginaries. Even so, when thinking about Tijuana’s nightlife, there is a greater inclination towards danger, transgression, and illegality, which creates a bias and causes its rich everyday life and potentiality to be minimized or at least to make it invisible. This situation causes Tijuana to be invested with a de facto negative and contaminating condition for those who, from an external position, refer to it.

Diffuse Liminalities

The diffuse boundaries and borders of “the night” and Tijuana are intertwined with the polarization of imaginaries. The night goes beyond a temporal limitation, that is, the less luminous twilight interval (the time between sunset and sunrise), which in this city would be from 7:56 p.m. to 5:40 a.m., on average. It is also not possible to confine the city within geographic limits: Tijuana is not only the 1 239.49 km2 that make it up, representing 1.73% of the national extension (^{Metropolitan Planning Institute of Tijuana, 2022}). The practical, symbolic, and polysemic uses of the night and the city transcend these limitations.

As will be seen later on, the configurational character of the night in its sense of nocturnity, nocturnal time economy, or what has been called noctem, has diffuse liminalities, which are analyzed from a conception of space as socially constructed and unrepeatable; multidimensional, dynamic, and sensitive (^{Becerra, 2018a}, ^2018b, ²⁰²⁰), so it is not viable or desirable to frame it under a criterion of solar cycle or based on a schedule. Similarly, the city of Tijuana has challenged urban development plans and even viability expectations by extending the urban sprawl to hills and orographic contexts that would not have been considered suitable for housing.

Differentiated Access in the Configuration of Nocturnity (Noctem) in Tijuana

Look, almost nobody is from here, but I am really from here, well, not my parents because my dad is from Juchitán [Oaxaca] and my mom from Chilpancingo which is in Guerrero (...) but I was born and raised in La Mariano (...) but it wasn’t until now, that I moved to El Soler and I’m 25, that I can say I am getting to know the Tijuana that everyone talks about (Checo, Call Center worker, 25 years old, personal communication, May 13, 2022).

Throughout this article, we have discussed the diffuse liminalities that characterize the night and cities, particularly in their noctem character, and in the context of the city of Tijuana, so that, given the introductory nature of several of the topics addressed in this article, it is evident how futile it would be to try to explicitly or deeply delve into the topic of the night life economy that this city offers, as this is not a business or market study. At the same time, these elements allow us to glimpse how impossible it is to create an X-ray that shows the entirety of the complexity of the noctem in which the youth living in Tijuana participate, build, and experience.

However, based on the preliminary results of the first stage of fieldwork in the postdoctoral research project that gives rise to this document, it is possible to present some key aspects that shape the noctem of this particular border context, with an emphasis on young people.

The starting point is found in the polysemic diversity of the nocturnity that is configured by different levels of accessibility, experience, and participation. In the shared narratives of the participating young people and in the referred, guided and in situ observations, the breadth of nocturnal practices and offerings becomes present, which, in turn, are framed in a variety of interests, aspirations, and imaginaries around the desirable nocturnal experience, 11 where even the practice in terms of times, rhythms, and spaces is defined according to the unique and unrepeatable biographical trajectory of those who co-produce it.

There was a time when downtown was for tourists, only for gringos, foreigners (...) and look, wealthy people, at least those who stay on this side [of the border] on the weekend, go to La Cacho, Zona Río and some who want to feel alternative come to downtown, but they don’t set foot outside La Revu, they just go to El Mamut, that’s it. What did we have left? Nothing. But in recent years it seems that La Revu and the entire area have returned to us (Juan Antonio, student and worker, 23 years old, personal communication, April 17, 2022).

Similarly, although the diversity of nocturnity is imbued with phantasmagorias (^{Pile, 2005}), it can be mapped based on the circuits and nighttime districts (^{Mercado Celis, 2021}), which allows for accounting for the different intensities in the flows of NTE in the areas anchored as nodes of these activities in the collective mental maps of the city. Thus, in Tijuana’s noctem, different types of outings are experienced: a) as a couple—from the whole gender spectrum; b) group outings—with a wide range of age, gender, socioeconomic, neighborhood, etc. diversities; c) collective outings— both recreational and as school, political or ideological associations (such as bikers, taggers, lowriders, academics, feminists, etc.); and d) solitary outings—this being the modality where gender has greater relevance due to the possibilities and limitations of agency and risk.

In turn, these outings take place in different spaces that could be characterized as: a) specifically designed for nighttime entertainment—such as bars, nightclubs, lounges, cantinas, casinos, stripclubs, pulquerías, neopulquerías, breweries, bar-restaurants, café-bars, pubs, mezcalerías, and their derivatives—; b) multipurpose spaces—concert halls, cultural or alternative venues, cafes, restaurants, dance halls, party halls, etc.—; c) private spaces—such as family or multifamily homes, shared rental apartments (roommates), or, in the rarest and most unusual cases, owned properties— ; d) mobile units—private vehicles where the fun happens (for “cruising and drinking beer”); taxis, Uber, and rental party buses, limousines, vans, and Hummers—; and e) improvised, reappropriated, and contested public and semi-public spaces—such as garages, parking lots, abandoned houses and businesses, sports fields, parks, street corners, underpasses, porches, vacant lots, and hills—.

Based on the above, in order to reflect on those who are excluded from the right to the noctem, it is necessary to consider that practices, the offer, and interests are framed within the margins of accessibility, experience, and participation that are configured according to class, gender, phenotype, identities, location/context of housing, as well as mobility agency in the border and English language proficiency. However, as will be seen below, in some cases, this is accentuated by being distinctive and perhaps exclusive to the border life in the city of Tijuana.

First and foremost, it is imperative to mention that an element that conditions the Tijuana nightlife experience is the relational and subjective character associated with age. Currently, the construction of nocturnity is not interpreted as a unique or privileged space of youth, but as an intergenerational meeting arena, where the condition of youth is intimately related to performance—young people and those who appear to be young—in such a way that the opposite pole of youth is not necessarily adulthood, but old age.

On the other hand, it is likely that the main ordering elements of the nocturnal experience in Tijuana—as well as for the Latin American case—can be analyzed from the perspective of social identities and gender. The former correspond to the “symbolized and meaningful thresholds of affiliation/differentiation and belonging/exclusion, inscribed in specific socio-historical contexts and socio-cultural networks” (^{Valenzuela Arce, 2014, p. 17}). On the other hand, the gender perspective enables the analysis of the existing discrimination and social inequity in the relationships between men and women, from where the inequality in access, control and decision-making about existing resources, the sexual division of labor, and levels of economic, social, and political participation are constructed (^{Lagunas-Vázquez et al., 2015}).

As an example of the above, the following is a fragment of an interview with a young woman, who comments on her perception of safety and liking for bars in Tijuana:

It depends, because it’s not like I could tell you, ‘here it’s fine’ or ‘there it’s not because we get harassed’... because the truth is, it depends on who you go with. Look, for example, at La Terraza, the atmosphere is really cool and I can go with my girlfriends, guy friends, or even just another girl and me and it’s all good, we can be dancing and everything. But at Tropics, you have to go with a guy or male friends, because if not, as soon as they see you come alone or with another girl, a guy will come up to you with a “hey friend” [imitating man voice] face, you know? But the truth is, even with all that, I like Tropics more, but I know I must go with guys, male friends (Tania, university student, 23 years old, personal communication, February 7, 2022).

Continuing along those lines, the testimony exemplifies the relationship that social identities establish with spaces of appropriation for nocturnal practices (noctem), where preference, choice or restriction is marked by criteria of class, gender and construction of taste. In that sense, Tijuana’s youth social identities are not a homogeneous block and, therefore, their participation and access in the city vary undeniably. In this regard, the following account is quoted:

The downtown area has always been for the “gabachos” (derogatory term for Americans), maybe now you see more people from Tijuana, but those of us from here don’t really go to Dandy every Friday, you know? My friends and I prefer to go out for some craft beers, have dinner, chat, it’s not all about spring break, partying and screaming, although sometimes it is, but in general we feel more comfortable in La Cacho, maybe Plaza del Zapato or Container (...) but for sure people hear “they’re from Tijuana” and immediately think we spend all our time in La Revo, but it’s not like that (Jorge, graphic designer, 25 years old, personal communication, April 24, 2022).

The spectrum ranges from those who have access to elite spaces—where the spending per person in one night can exceed the monthly minimum wage (5 255 MXN)—to those who are excluded from the NTE. However, identity constructs consider subjective elements that do not necessarily work as an equation, where higher spending equals higher income, or where greater access equals higher spending. Instead, the urban imaginaries and phantasms of those who visit NTE spaces generate associations of class, taste, identity, and collectivity that can be observed in phrases such as “the rich kids go here,” “the bohemians gather there,” “the crowd likes this place,” “that’s a biker bar.”

However, this phenomenon extends beyond these spaces to seep into other ways of experiencing the night, reaching those that, for various reasons, have more limited and even rough, dangerous, and violent accessibility (which will be further reflected on later).

In relation to the spaces that are part of the main circuits and corridors of the NTE, those that are currently anchored to the mental maps of the urban imaginary in the city of Tijuana could be summarized, in general terms, in the Zona Norte, the district of nocturnity (^{Mercado Celis, 2021}) in the Zona Centro, and the Avenida Revolución, the Plaza del Zapato (now with less attendance), the Plaza Río, and the gastronomic nightlife corridor of the Zona Río. However, considering the blurred boundaries of nocturnity and Tijuana, it is difficult to assume that nocturnity only happens in those places. Doesn’t the practice of nocturnal sociability occur in other gentrified spaces such as the Playas de Tijuana delegation of district 11 or in exclusive neighborhoods such as Chapultepec, Burócrata Hipódromo, Madero—better known as La Cacho—or Agua Caliente? And going to the other pole of the diffuse urban fabric, neighborhoods with a marked condition of inequality such as Camino Verde, El Florido, Mariano Matamoros—in all its sections—, or those quasi-encapsulated by geographic and systemic structural violence, such as the El Niño neighborhood, are not exempt from this practice.

T- When I was younger, we hardly ever went down to downtown, my friends and I would grab a 12-pack, the speakers, and head to the hills.

E- Which hills?

T- What do you mean which hills? It’s all hills around here, we would just go to the one that was closest to us, who knows what they’re called.

(Tino, maquiladora employee, 23 years old, personal communication, February 22, 2022).

In that sense, from an NTE approach, it follows that these poles end up blurring in studies of nocturnity. Moreover, in the case of areas in precarious conditions, there is a gap in terms of public policy regarding the night that goes beyond the regulatory, criminalizing, and surveillance functions of nighttime. This situation, in turn, highlights two important points. The first is that nocturnity practices (noctem) are not limited to NTE circuits, but emerge or languish throughout the spectrum that constitutes the urban sprawl. The second point is that for many people, narratives about the night in Tijuana are often based on a sense of nostalgia and longing for the past—that is, they are based on the phantasmagoria (^{Pile, 2005}) of the city, which further complicates thinking about a radiography of the night in a border context, as its perception is not only organized spatially, but also temporally. As an example of this, a participant’s response to the question “where do you like to go when you go out?” is presented, which also highlights the transformations and associations of the same nocturnity circuit.

Oh, to a lot of places, but where Chips used to be there’s nothing now. Before it was cool to go to “XXXXX” because that’s where you could get anything, I mean pills, coke, weed... even crystal or crack, but everything was peaceful, no trouble or danger. And you always ran into your whole crew there, but now you go and you don’t bump into anyone anymore. The people who used to go to La Plaza [del Zapato], since they banned drinking in public, now go to Montecarlo or La Once, but I still go to Tropic’s and La Mezcalera, looking for a place with a good jukebox. For example, I also go to Porky’s, but it’s not the same as when it was El Porky’s and the same goes for Chenson, which will always be there, but now only young people go there and a few veterans (...) well, it also depends on what time you go (...) but those places are more like restaurants, like Mamut, or places that only play reggaeton and norteño music like Las Pulgas, are not for me (...) if I’m in a really good mood or if we go with a bigger group, I can handle El 96 (Mateo, technology factory worker, 28 years old, personal communication, March 8, 2022).¹²

On the other hand, acknowledging that the experience of nocturnity is not limited to defined circuits opens the door to considering that it also occurs in divergent, paralegal, private spaces and in contexts of strong inequality and precariousness. At the same time, it is worth questioning, what is the margin of mobility in the offer of nocturnity and who has the greatest agency? And where are the ascending or descending limits of said offer marked? Or, in other words, how deep does the rabbit hole go?

And although there is no direct answer to these questions, it is likely that the keys to interpreting the phenomenon lie in the narratives of the people who reside in this border. These people are part of a broad spectrum that includes poles of precariousness and systemic violence, whose nocturnal practices are marked by privileges and consumption that escape the expectations of what is possible or are lost in the imaginaries anchored in multimedia productions.¹³

Desirable, Precarious and Excluded Nocturnity

As presented throughout this work, the night—in its broadest sense—is not only the repository of rest, intimacy, and privacy, but also has a transgressive, playful, collective, and predominantly young character experienced in urban spaces of diverse and diffuse socioeconomic contexts (called noctem). It is a dynamic space that configures identity processes in intra and intergenerational articulation for all kinds of youth. At the same time, it constitutes an arena of exclusion guided by economic and class interests, which reproduce structural, systemic, and symbolic violence that exacerbates inequalities in access to private, semi-public, and public spaces.

This promotes that besieged youth (^{Nateras Domínguez, 2016}, ²⁰¹⁹) are thrown into a residual and denied nocturnity, close to “social death in life” (^{Nateras Domínguez & Valenzuela Arce, 2020, p. 72}). In this way, it contributes to the confinement of youth inserted in contexts of systemic violence to a death by drip (^{Muñoz, 2015}) and by youth homicide (^{Valenzuela Arce, 2012}, ²⁰¹⁵) alluding to “the symbolic disappearance of youth as a social actor, their invisibility as a protagonist of the public scene and the metamorphosis of the youth period, which goes from being a transitional phase to being an intransitive phase” (^{Strecker et al., 2018, p. 431}). Coincidentally, in response to this, the public policy of the state has been to maintain a posture of surveillance, criminalization, and regulation of the night from a regulatory and prohibitive framework.

Regarding the methodological and ethnographic aspects of studies on nocturnal spaces and practices, it is considered that from non-representational theory (^{Thrift, 2008}), anthropology of experience (^{Díaz Cruz, 1997}), lived conceived space (^{Lindón, 2007a}, ^2007b, ²⁰¹³; ^{Thrift, 2008}), and the city’s phantasmagorias (^{Pile, 2005}) materialized in an interconstructed distinction of the night into noctis and nocturnity/noctem (^{Becerra, 2018b}, ^2018a), subjectivity and the experience of those who participate (or wish to participate) in the night are prioritized, instead of the circuits of consumption spaces of the NTE where they predominantly take place. This allows for the expansion of the study of nocturnal practices towards diffuse spaces that are not inserted in these circuits, thus making visible the contexts of inequality and violence present in the non-traditionally protagonistic part of studies on the night. In other words, in the sense of noctis, the nocturnal time is conceived as one in which rest, reproductive tasks, shift work, and the private sphere are complementary to sociability, entertainment, and violence.

On the other hand, situating and reflecting on the night in Tijuana implies an even more particular perspective. There is a wide range of diversity in transgressive, playful, and sociable practices in the noctem of the border, as well as in the polarizing gradient of its night time economy, which extends to spaces that escape formality and traditional business models. These, in turn, range from atypical dynamics in urban space—such as gathering to drink, smoke, and chat on one of the many hills that coexist with the city—to high-risk contexts with violence where territorial association not only provides a sense of belonging and identity, but also limits and restricts the mobility of those who, by desire or geographic affiliation, are associated with a community of lives on the edge. There are cases where neighborhood affiliation makes it dangerous to travel to neighboring colonies and go to the most representative nocturnity circuits in the city. In addition, there is the presence of a parallel economy that permeates throughout the urban fabric of Tijuana. The result is a configuration of the noctem in which the nocturnal experience is mainly crossed by constructs of class, identity, and gender, emphasizing that the danger and restrictions in access to the night, in a broad sense, are substantially intensified for youth in contexts of precariousness and systemic violence.

Finally, it is recognized that by analyzing the narratives of those who participate in the extraordinary character of Tijuana’s noctem on a daily basis, a more nuanced approach to the accessibility, agency, and mobility with which youth negotiate, resist, and perpetuate the impulses of the night time economy could be achieved. These considerations would also be fundamental for the construction of public policies for night management from inclusive, proactive, and non-criminalizing perspectives.