Jaime Millan is one of San Diego's binational businessmen. He is a masseur in San Diego health clubs and all around San Diego. He crosses the border five days a week and figures he spends ten hours a week idling in traffic backups at the border. Last week, he had to buy a gallon of gas from a vendor working the line.
When I saw him last, Jaime's heart was still in his tiny farm village. He had just made his annual trip back home to buy some beers for friends at a little bar across from the bandstand. They drank Pacifico, the beer of nearby Mazatlan.
A half century ago that beer had been made at a brewery in Jaime's village, about the time his grandfather planted two plum trees. They were in bloom this time, out past Jaime's mother's stucco house near a barren hillside that had been the family farm.
When the farm dried up 40 year ago, Jaime's father boarded a bus and started north. Jaime was 14, and went along with his father. They picked cotton up and down Imperial Valley. The ground was so hot he remembers well, that it burned through his shoes.
When they came home to his village after two drought years, there was no corn for Jaime to hoe. His father looked at the skies and despaired. Jaime climbed into a bus again, this time alone. He rode for two days to Tijuana to search for a cousin. He had enough money to stay in a cheap hotel for two nights. On the third morning, his cousin found him.
Soon, Jaime was charming powerful patrons as he shined their shoes at Tijuana Country Club, and sleeping at night on a cot in the locker room. His customers coahed him in Spanish and English. He lifted weights and became a masseur of fabled strength. He won staff jobs at the Cuyamaca Club through the San Diego Banker C. Arnholt Smith, and went on to work at Golden Door and La Costa.
He used his savings to buy home sites in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach. He learned to draw plans and build houses. One daughter attended UCSD. One became a banker and another a dentist.
But for such Mexican Americans on this border, the village from which they came remains their soul. As surely as migrating birds. They return on feast days to family, home and hereditary earth.
Jaime has missed visiting only one year in 26. It has been his earth, his home, his village. But now this border is his home.
