San Diego-Tijuana Exchange Helps Bridge a Culture Gap

An invitation to play a concert of 19th- and 20th-Century music gave a San Diego harpist a rare opportunity to discover a foreign culture.

“We set foot across the border, and we might as well have been a million miles away,” said Marian Rian Hays. “I was very pleasantly surprised at the enormous difference.”

China? The Soviet Union? Inner Mongolia?

No, the country was Mexico. The city was Tijuana. And the concert was part of a cultural exchange between San Diego and Tijuana.

Although individual arts groups from San Diego have performed in Tijuana for several years, the series of cultural events, which began in October, is the first city-sanctioned effort to bridge a considerable cultural gap that separates life in the border cities.

The exchange is sponsored by San Diego through its Public Arts Advisory Board, the Centro Cultural Tijuana, the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California and the Casa de la Cultura in Tijuana.

The city program has already paid dividends in terms of future arts swaps that have been arranged between organizations, and Hays has commissioned a piece by a local Mexican composer.

However, the city does not plan to sponsor a project next year.

“I hope that the city will see fit to really seriously consider pursuing this kind of cultural exchange in the future,” Hays said. “I think it’s a very healthy approach, and it gives San Diego a much more international flavor.”

Douglas Sharon, director of the Museum of Man in Balboa Park, agrees. As part of the exchange, the anthropological museum has a display of contemporary Mexican folk art selected from an exhibition at the Centro Cultural Tijuana.

One of the displays is a threesome of fearsome, animal-like Judas masks from the state of Nayarit, fashioned from cardboard, cactus fiber and paper and worn during Holy Week festivities.

The 38-piece exhibit, which is open through Jan. 3, includes colorful hand-woven textiles, earthenware jars and pots, a wooden drum and other crafts such as a large child’s plaited palm doll from San Luis Potosi and a polished, hand-carved, naturally striped wooden jaguar from Huazolotitan.

“We think (cultural exchange) is the way we are going,” Sharon said. “It’s a shame (San Diego) isn’t more binational. If you compare us with other border states and cities, we’re not very good at this in San Diego. We’re the largest gateway between two cultures. I see (exchange with Mexico) as a major thrust of the museum. It’s right on the border.”

The Museum of Man plans to send its exhibit of Huichol Indian art to the Centro Cultural Tijuana when the show returns from a tour. And this spring, the two museums will exchange two exhibits on the ancient rock art of Baja California, Sharon said.

Although Sharon and his counterpart at the Centro Cultural had talked about swapping exhibits for years, the city-sponsored exchange program was the impetus for their first exchange.

Although a binational arts program is part of the Public Arts Advisory Board’s arts plan, the cultural exchange came about because the City Council this year ordered the arts panel to spend $127,000 in accumulated money or lose it. Most of the money went to public performances in neighborhoods. The binational exchange was funded with only $5,000, said city’s arts coordinator Joyce Selber.

The money was used to pay part of the costs of sending to Tijuana the Old Globe Theatre’s Teatro Meta, a six-member ensemble from the San Diego Opera, a performance by the American Ballet Ensemble, and the flute, viola and harp trio that Hays plays in.

Besides the folk art, Mexico sent over an art exhibit by local artists, the classical music ensemble Camerata, two classical guitarists, and the Rondalla from the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California at Mexicali, which performed traditional songs and dances.

The Tijuana artworks were exhibited at the San Diego Art Institute in Balboa Park. The Mexican performers appeared at the Educational Cultural Complex and the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park. An exhibit of historic photographs of Tijuana from the Tijuana Historical Society was displayed at City Hall.

The exchange opened the official contacts between city officials and helped identify the procedures necessary to move people and material across the border for performances and exhibits, Selber said. More significantly, it revealed differences in the goals and objectives of the key participants.

“Our goals and objectives are to service a broad-based community of our citizens and to provide communication between the two cities,” Selber said. The Universidad de Baja wants to do specific scholarly exchanges, especially in the arts and literature, she said. The Centro Cultural has still another goal: sponsoring a major San Diego arts company in Tijuana and an appearance by Tijuana artists in a major facility here, according to Selber.

As for next year, Selber said that funding for an exchange was beat by other arts projects in the intense competition for city money at budget time. Exchange with Tijuana remains a part of the city’s arts plan, however. This year’s program will be evaluated.

“The important thing is understanding the rhythm, color, texture, innuendoes and procedures of each culture,” Selber noted. “I see the role of the city as facilitating exchanges, not doing the exchanges.”

Hays, whose trio was sponsored by the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, recently was asked to return to the Casa de la Cultura where she played a new piece of music for four sopranos, flute, triangle and harp. This time Hays was the only English-speaking musician in the ensemble.

“It was great,” she said. “They tried out their English on me, and I tried out my Spanish on them.”

Hays was so taken with the music that she commissioned the composer, Juan Silva Hidalgo, to write a piece for the harp.

Her opinion of the exchange program: “It has created a dialogue between musicians from two countries. It’s enlarged my horizons as an artist, and that’s what we hope to get.

“Right in our back yard we have such a wonderfully different culture. We should take advantage of it.”