"Every Mexican border city and town divides itself among indigenous nortenos, surenos from the South, and chilangos from the capital. There is even a constituency that calls itself fronterizos, from the border itself. These are crucial points of identity. More than half the population of Tijuana comes from "traditional" southern Mexico, not to live according to some folklore kitsch but to work in maquiladoras or eke out some other living in desperately poor colonias on the city's outskirts. For the southerners, or those from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, Tijuana can be harsh, unwelcoming, dangerous, and violent. Attacks on Mixtecs, Mayas, and Zapotecs are routine. Until recently, when vast estates of uniform housing were built around the city, whole communities from South and Central America lived on the dompes, or landfills of domestic and industrial rubbish."
A sample chapter here.
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