Our next door neighbors
When I was five years old (so this would have been in the mid-1960s), as part of a trip to Southern California, my parents dipped us into Tijuana. I still remember that trip. We went to a large, crowded market place that smelled bad. That’s all I remember. But what my parents remember is me coming to a dead stop in the middle of the market and howling “I want to go back to my own civilization.”
Tijuana is still an uncivilized place, and continues as a reminder that Mexico is an unstable, crime-ridden society, and that good fences make good neighbors.