It
seems his successor, who Zedillo quickly heralded, is himself an outsider,
somewhat out-of-touch with the 'way Mexico was.' President-elect Fox has
sworn to make the corruption his enemy, and NAFTA his objective. Bert
and Screwface may be upset, but who cares about frigate birds anyway?
Baja, in a sense, is a symbol of Mexico's future.
Perhaps
Baja - lawless, separated, out-of-touch, is the way places should be;
after all, Baja is Northern Mexico's most unregulated region, and is leading
the way in development, despite years of near-abandonment from Mexico
City. It is no coincidence that the 1990's did great things for Mexico,
the United States and Canada. It is no coincidence that despite 'squawking
about immigration', California is the world's sixth largest economy in
part because of immigration - legal and illegal.
Freedom
from everything but one's own path - this holds true for Tijuana, as it
does for the Baja outback, and immigration, economies, and Coco - rejected
by order.
The
state of Baja California is expected to benefit by the rise of Mr. Fox,
who intends to decentralize federal rule and hand more over to the individual
states. Less laws, fewer borders, more freedom for a booming state to
rise and meet a new century on its own terms. The fact that Fox has many
potential key cabinet members in the state of Baja California will help
too; and all of them understand the border.
Borders,
it is shown time and again, are largely nonsense, and culture, anyways,
is geographical, not political. Someday, borders between Mexico and America
will be like those between Minnesota and Canada, or North Dakota and South
Dakota. And because of all this, Mexico will soon be seen as America's
equal, and maybe the world's fastest growing economy. Out of Mexicali,
we played Eyes of the World driving home underneath the date palms
along the Salton Sea.
Guadeloupe Canyon
