Life on the Edge : Illegal Aliens Run Through Yards, Sewage Seeps in From Mexico. Yet Loyal Residents Extol Border Communities

Welcome to Scott Bowler’s neighborhood, where, on a typical day:

* Thousands of illegal trespassers, often guided by smugglers, sneak across lawns and through yards, hiding in woodsheds and garages.

* Federal agents on foot, horseback, in aircraft and four-wheel-drive vehicles conduct operations day and night, monitoring “hits” on hidden sensors, watching for violators with binoculars and night-vision scopes.

* Raw sewage cascades down the hills from the south, lending a foul stench to the air and ground, polluting home sites and creating fertile grounds for infestation by mosquitoes and other vermin.

“It’s no fun listening to helicopters and having people running through your back yard all the time,” observes Bowler, on horseback in a place called Goat Canyon, a quarter-mile from the Pacific Ocean, as he takes a break after a ride on his sorrel quarter horse. “But it’s sure better than living in Los Angeles.”

He is among the hundreds of San Diego-area residents who reside--with considerable pride, it seems--in one of the nation’s most singular communities: the border strip separating the United States from Mexico, the developed world from the Third World. And, while many voice complaints about the incessant action in an area often referred to as a “war zone,” many residents declare defiantly that they would live no place else. They cite the area’s semi-rural ambience, the prevalent live-and-let-live attitude and, paradoxically, the peace and quiet. With so much going on, trivial complaints about junk in the yard and unkempt front lawns are relegated to the domain of the inconsequential.

“You’re talking about a thin strip of rural life wedged between 4 million people,” says Brian Bilbray, a San Diego County supervisor who has lived in and around the area all of his life, and, like others, says the zone has long suffered from neglect by area policy-makers. “It’s tough to live there, and most people can’t take it. . . . There’s no other place in the country like it. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize that you’re in the United States, much less California.”

While much of the border area is within the city limits of San Diego, California’s second most-populous city, the boundary strip retains a mostly pastoral character, hosting assorted farms and horse ranches; some residents maintain chickens, geese and other livestock; jack rabbits cavort in the chaparral. The region’s feel is more Southwestern backcountry than Southern California urban/suburban.

“No one bothers us here,” says Richard Cordova, who actually lives in a Tijuana neighborhood but spends considerable time with friends in the Otay Mesa border area of San Diego. He jogs and rides his bicycle back and forth across the international line, often traversing steep and dangerous canyons.

“Everyone minds their own business,” said Cordova, 47, a Vietnam War veteran with flowing black hair, chiseled features and a red headband.

Area residents inhabit one of the world’s great migratory pathways, a place where U.S. Border Patrol agents now record almost 2,000 arrests each day , mostly along a 12-mile stretch of international boundary between the Pacific and the foothills of the San Ysidro Mountains to the east. And lawmen admit that most unauthorized crossers manage to escape on their road to Los Angeles and other immigrant-employment hubs.

On a recent afternoon, as Scott Bowler sat atop his quarter horse, a group of perhaps 20 people--men, women and children--dashed up an adjacent hillside, headed north.

“Happens all the time,” Bowler, who helps run a horse farm, says from below his broad-brimmed cowboy hat, lighting another cigarette. “I like it here. Hey, I lived in Mexico for four years.”

Here on the international frontier, a kind of Old West-like sense of rugged individualism, a tolerance of the eccentric and offbeat, seems to predominate--in the midst of the interminable chases and arrests, the high-powered spotlights and megaphone warnings. Residents are a heterogenous lot, mostly working-class but including some wealthy and poor, renters and homeowners, Latinos and non-Latinos, drawn mostly, it seems, by the distinct lifestyle--and, in some cases, comparatively low housing costs. Realtors say the border area has some of the area’s least expensive dwelling prices, primarily because many people are hesitant to live amid the seeming chaos of the border.

“It’s different here than anywhere else,” says Herman Smart, a retired machinist whose stucco home near the ocean, where he has lived since the mid-1970s, is probably the most southwesterly residence in the United States. “You gotta know what you’re doing,” says Smart, standing amid the clutter of old pickup trucks, horse trailers, vehicle parts, tin cans, crates and other collectibles that mark his property, which is guarded by a pack of hounds with droopy ears, bloodshot eyes and menacing yelps.

“The aliens don’t bother us much,” Smart says--a remark repeated by others--of the border-jumpers who come down from the high ground marking Tijuana to the south.

Homes built closest to the international line are generally distinct from the tract-type subdivisions that are prevalent further north, amid the more densely populated neighborhood of San Ysidro, for instance. Most border-strip residences are older and built on larger parcels. Some area residents live in trailers, without basic services such as running water and electricity.

Canyons and public land separate some home sites. Housing turnover is generally limited; many area homes are inhabited by longtime residents who have no intention of moving or selling.

Zoning restrictions--much of the area is designated for agricultural or low-density residential use--have greatly limited construction. Bilbray, the county supervisor, said flooding problems have prompted city officials to restrict development in the Tijuana River Valley area.

“You can never get permits to do anything legally, but no one enforces it if you do it illegally,” Bilbray says resignedly. “It really is a free-for-all down there.”

Authorities say complaints about housing are relatively few, although some area dwellings, notably those lacking running water and electricity, are clearly not up to code. “It’s kind of a rural approach to living,” said Lorenzo Green, senior San Diego building inspector. “The level of tolerance is much greater around the border. Neighbor to neighbor, you’d have less tolerance in a place like La Jolla.”

Some residents, particularly Latinos, openly resent what they view as Border Patrol harassment, referring to the frequent questioning by agents. “They come in here all the time and scare off customers,” says Jose Godinez, a Mexican citizen who owns an auto-sales business in San Ysidro.

Residents often complain that outsiders exaggerate the area’s hazards, painting a broad “war zone” brush, but there is no question that the border zone can be dangerous. Authorities say thieves killed nine would-be immigrants in the area last year. Prosecutions are rare for murder and other crimes committed in the oft-described “no man’s land,” where suspects quickly flee across the international line. Crosses memorialize the sites of some murders, including the shooting death a year ago of Miguel Angel Cancino Rios, known as Tobi, a Good Samaritan who witnesses say was killed as he attempted to intervene on behalf of several mugging victims.

“He tried to help people,” Antonio Campos, 16, whose home is about 150 meters north of the border, said during a recent visit to the cross and pile of stones that mark the spot of his friend’s murder.

In recent years, police have charged several U.S. citizens residing in the border area in connection with robberies of undocumented immigrants.

Last May 18, a bullet fired from the rear balcony of a home along Monument Road in southern San Diego killed Emilio Jimenez Bejines, a 12-year-old undocumented Mexican boy who was en route with two siblings to his parents’ home in Orange County. A 23-year-old Imperial Beach man is serving a two-year prison term for manslaughter in connection with the death. Shortly before firing the fatal shot, according to a witness quoted in court papers, the suspect was heard stating, “Let’s shoot some aliens.”

But, while there is undoubtedly considerable resentment directed at illicit border-crossers in the San Diego area, discussions with residents who live along the actual boundary line--arguably those most affected by the daily migration--indicate little open animosity.

“I got no problem with people trying to better their lives,” says Scott Kesling, who moved to a rented home along Monument Road near the border three weeks ago and speaks with great affection of the area’s tranquility.

“I was raised on a farm in Ohio,” explains Kesling. “This is like going home for me.”

Yet minutes before, a Border Patrol helicopter had descended nearby and herded a group of undocumented people to a nearby hillside.

And Kesling inevitably brings a 12-gauge shotgun along during his frequent rounds seeking trespassers near the grounds of his rented home.

Al Silva, Kesling’s landlord, also likes the border area--though he moved north to Chula Vista recently because his wife tired of the commotion. He returns often to his 10-acre site, which he rents from a gravel company, and in turn sub-leases a home to Kesling. A plaque along the road marks the area as the former site of El Camino Real, The Royal Highway, the path used by Spaniards, missionaries and others headed north during California’s early settlement. Today a nearby pass is called Smuggler’s Gulch, still a major byway for contraband.

“I love it here,” says Silva, 66, a retired Navy flight engineer and Boy Scout enthusiast, who once had five scouting sites on the border patch where he first moved in 1978.

But because of another problem--sewage--Silva has had to close the campsites. U.S. authorities say as many as 13-million gallons a day of raw sewage flow downstream from Tijuana into southern San Diego each day via the Tijuana River Valley, west of the port of entry at San Ysidro. Gov. Pete Wilson recently declared a health emergency in the zone, where residents worry that mosquitoes and other sewage-related pests may transmit disease. (Ironically, the Tijuana River Valley was once home to several firms marketing bottled water.)

“Avoid All Contact,” say the warning signs posted on area roads and along the beach at nearby Border Field State Park.

“This here is pure sewage,” Silva says, showing a visitor the unsavory sandy buildups along the land behind his house, where polluted debris and earth were deposited after record rains in March. (He, like other area residents, blame local, state and federal officials for not doing more about the sewage and other problems that bedevil the area.)

The burned-out hulks of vehicles dot the fringes of his property. Smugglers regularly use the area as a dumping ground for stolen cars, which are quickly stripped and burned.

Last September, Silva says, someone deliberately set fire to his barn, destroying several classic 1950s-era Chevrolets that his son was restoring, along with a treasured supply of tools, car parts, other supplies and various items assembled over years. He suspects that a vengeful coyote, or alien-smuggler, set the blaze, in retribution for a former tenant’s habit of holding suspected smugglers for the Border Patrol.

“The aliens don’t bother you; the coyotes do,” says Silva, as he walks through the charred ruins of the barn. He also blames smugglers for having killed several of his dogs in recent years.

Area horse farms have learned to secure their animals at night. Horse thefts are not uncommon; stolen animals are quickly spirited back to Mexico through canyons, residents say. An area farmer recently reported losing a pig.

One border horse-keeper says thieves--presumably smugglers--rustled two horses about a year ago. Mexican police managed to find one of the stolen animals, he recalls, but officials in Tijuana wanted to charge him a $5,000 recuperation fee.

“I told them, ‘No thanks, I hope he makes a nice lunch,”’ says the keeper, who wished to be identified only as Al. “They do one of two things with the horses down there: They ride ‘em till they drop or they eat ‘em.”

Last November, he says, traffickers stashed 450 pounds of marijuana on a trailer on his property.

Yet despite the crime and the constant law enforcement scrutiny, residents speak fondly of what they view as the area’s pace of life.

“When we first came here, I thought all these people crossing the border were gonna jump in our house or something,” says Gina Ortiz, 18, who has resided in a Monument Road home for about a year after moving with her family from the Los Angeles area. “Now I think it’s quieter than L.A. You don’t have the traffic.”

A few miles east, an ongoing development boom associated with cross-border commerce has eroded some of the rural character of the Otay Mesa area, once a sleepy farming backwater. Some land prices have tripled and quadrupled in the past 10 years, realtors say, prompting considerable speculation and a dizzying array of For Sale signs on vacant lots that once held farms.

But in an undeveloped stretch of the mesa’s grasslands, Vicente Lopez Ramos pays $150 a month rent for a space in a battered trailer. He, like others residing on Otay Mesa, has no electricity or running water in his home.

“But where else could I live this cheaply and still have my animals?” asks the Mexican-born Lopez, 65, who keeps five cows, four pigs, four goats, two horses and various dogs. He knows that development will force him out soon.

The animals graze freely in the abundant nearby pastures, as Border Patrol vehicles churn up dust and groups of new settlers hike north. His grandchildren visit to pet the animals and ride the horses.

“I’ve always worked with animals,” Lopez, a father of 12 and native of the central Mexican state of Michoacan, says as he invites a visitor to sample his homemade cheese, churned from cow’s milk. “This has always been my life.”

The mesa’s residents, like other border-area dwellers, seem largely unperturbed by the comings and goings of today’s immigrants. Some seem to take comfort in the movement’s familiarity.

“In our place at night you can hear the steps of people going by, almost like animal hoofs,” says Carol Lee, who resides atop Otay Mesa with her husband, Nick Chiarello, both of whom moved from San Diego’s Ocean Beach neighborhood in search of a more pacific lifestyle. “It takes a lot of courage for these people to come through like that.”