LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — Approximately 17 miles (about 27 kilometers) from the U.S.-Mexico border at San Ysidro here is the resort city of Rosarito, Baja California in Mexico. It is a small city with about half the population of Dumaguete. In 2010, according to the census, Dumaguete had a population of 120,883 while Rosarito’s was 65,278.
While some cities simply would have more people than others, what’s alarming about this comparison is the land areas where these two populations exist. Dumaguete, having 46 percent more people, has a land area of 12.97 square miles. In contrast, Rosarito has a land area of 198.19 square miles. So, 46 percent more population is living on 93.5 percent less land.
I know that experts may not describe it this way, but this is the way I think about it. Any way I look at it, Dumaguete has far too many people than it can accommodate comfortably.
I used to go to Mexico on a whim when I was living here in California. I had a group of friends who, like me, loved riding motorcycles. We would go down there just because it was another country, and we could just ride our motorcycles to go there.
It would be the same case with Canada, but it’s much farther from California for a quick weekend getaway. Americans weren’t even required to carry passports until just a few years ago because of the rise in illegal entries into the U.S.
After entering Mexico at Tijuana, the sights become so markedly different from what you see in the States. I remember feeling like I was in the Philippines, every time we entered Mexico.
It wasn’t so much the sights, but the smell. You immediately get a faint whiff of diesel fuel, much like in any town in the Philippines. Emission controls there are not as tight as they are in the States, especially in California.
On one occasion, one of my friends who owns a timeshare (vacation ownership) in Rosarito invited us there. It was a pretty comfortable coastal condominium complex, complete with a charming little restaurant on site, and a couple of acres of sprawling green lawn overlooking the Pacific Ocean. On the edge of the small cliff, seemingly teetering, was a party room with large panes of plexiglass for windows, mainly to stop the salty breeze from coming into the party room and keep it relatively quiet in case conversations were the theme, instead of the mindless, rowdy shenanigans of college parties. It had a barbecue deck on the side, complete with a wood-fired smoker type grill. We could have had a party there if we weren’t pressed for time. We still had a ball though, the wives taking hundreds of pictures, frolicking like kids on the immaculately-manicured grounds. It had real grass, but it looked like artificial turf. That’s how green it was, and healthy.
Rosarito is a wonderful place to visit if you were from California, say San Diego or Los Angeles, and you just wanted to drive to another country for a nice, carefree weekend, where fresh seafood was abundant and cheap.
If you went a little farther south from Rosarito to the small village of Puerto Nuevo, a sumptuous lobster dinner will set you back only $8. And this is in a nice restaurant with a cliff-side view of the Pacific Ocean. You can see seagulls perched nearby, sometimes flying so close to your window, you could almost just reach out and touch them.
Earlier, I said that as soon as you get to Mexico, the sights become markedly different from what you might see in the States. That’s true, except maybe for the highways. On one visit to Mexico, we proceeded to Ensenada where we spent an evening before leaving for San Felipe the next day. The 170-mile ride to San Felipe was only scenic the first third of the way. After that, it was long, straight stretches through the desert that was dangerously-hypnotic, especially for motorcyclists. I found out after arriving in San Felipe that it wasn’t only me who felt sleepy but the others, too. Our wives, well, they weren’t driving, so I guess some of them actually dozed off riding in back even for just seconds at a time.
The highway we were on seemed endless. The drone of the Harley engines was so pleasant to our ears at first but after hours with no change in the v-twin’s cadence, it tended to lull the rider to sleep, like a road siren’s song. Not to worry, we all had guardian bells on our bikes. The somewhat boring ride was well worth it, just to see the little fishing town of San Felipe, where one could truly be carefree, where seafood was so fresh it came straight to the kitchen from the fishing boat. The dock was only 50 meters away.
At some point during the ride, when there was nothing else in front and on the sides but asphalt and desert, my mind got to thinking about other things. I thought that if I didn’t know I was in Mexico, I probably would have thought I was in the States because the highway was so nice and well-maintained, even as it seemed so remote and inaccessible to maintenance crews.
This, in a country where so many people risk their lives to illegally cross over to the U.S. because their country is supposedly poor and corrupt. This, in a country where the government spends a good portion of its budget fighting the drug cartels. This, in a country so close to America, and yet, the ordinary citizen does not speak nor understand English–not even a little. This, in a country with so much more land than its present population could ever require.
It makes one think that, at least, their corrupt leaders still cared enough to give them such beautiful highways.
I start to make comparisons when I see something so different in a country supposedly similar to ours in culture. It boggles my mind that in our little Province, our government finds it so difficult to build roads or to keep roads maintained, and the excuses for it range anywhere from budget, a different majority party, even a different local official who belongs to, as they say, the “wrong” party.
How more f’d up would we have been if we had hundreds of thousands of miles of road to build and maintain, some so far away I’m sure our old and dilapidated provincial vehicles certainly could not reach.
There is now what looks like a massive crackdown on corruption and drugs back in the Philippines. Hell, it seems that corruption should take over drugs as far as gravity — what with all that’s been happening in the country’s government institutions, most recently at the Bureau of Prisons.
But even if we say, just for a moment, that corruption cannot be eradicated in the Philippines, could the corrupt politicians at least ensure that the people have good roads? By good, I mean finished, unobstructed, and maintained roads.
Could they, after stealing from the people, at least give some back, demonstrating that despite being corrupt, there’s some care left in them to fulfill some, if not all, the promises they have so easily made to the people just to win?
Or do they think, that because they bought their way to office, it is the people who owes them? It is hard to tell anymore whether those who profess to be righteous really are, or just playing the people for fools.
I hate to sound as if I don’t mind corrupt officials as long as they show they care in the form of meager things that they give back to the people, but the way things are, if that is the only way to get something, anything back, then our choices are truly tough.
It seems, the people are always at the mercy of those in positions of power. These officials give the people little choice but to wait when they move, how they move, and how much they move, if ever they did move. When will it ever be the other way around?
While the Philippines is currently said to be the fifth richest country in Southeast Asia, according to the International Monetary Fund, it is unable to show it, because it’s hemorrhaging internally. Its wealth is sucked dry by the very government officials entrusted with it.
Nowadays, it seems to be just wishful thinking to talk with friends about what our government should really be giving us and doing for us. Our government should be providing us with the best education it could provide, reliable police protection to keep us safe, easy hospital and health care, building and maintenance of our highways, maintaining reliable public utilities such as water, sewer, and electricity, and many other things that we pay taxes for, and in some instances special fees on top of taxes.
Some may argue that we are getting all these things already. I may tend to agree but not without asking about the quantity and quality of what we are getting.
You see, it seems everything is ruined by corruption, reducing everything to leave some for the corrupt to steal. If a budget is spent on everything it’s supposed to be spent on, what would be left for the corrupt? So, everything we get is always going to be shy of 100 percent.
That is why they need to go. They need to be unmasked for who they are, and punished, banished from government service. Let’s worry about who will replace them when the time comes, but replace them sooner, we must.
If it should ever be that we could not be free of them just yet, I hope they will realize that no matter how subtle they are in their theft of what’s ours, our unfulfilled needs would always give them away.
I wish someday, in my own homeland, that I could drive on a nice, wide, and unobstructed highway, and think, even for a moment, that government built it for the people because they cared, if only a little.
I wish to wake up one day and find that the way it is has been replaced with the way it should be. Just a wish.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
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