Just Like Juárez’ Blues

“Things ain’t what they used to be,” says Marvin Gaye in his wonderful song “Mercy, Mercy me,” and that line comes to mind every time we think about the things we grew up with, especially things like our hometown, with its places and people. A few issues back Rolling Stone magazine ran an article entitled “How the Drug Lords Run Mexico” and coincidentally, I was listening to Sunny & the Sunliners in Spanish when I started browsing through the pages of that particular issue. I say coincidentally for a couple of reasons; the article mentions Ciudad Juárez with its murdered cops and drug-cartel-spurred bonanza, and Sunny & the Sunliners were popular in Juárez back in the day.  On page 15 there was a preview of Bob Dylan’s Together Through Life album, which happens to have a Tex-Mex vibe to it, affirmed by Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo’s accordion that revives the old vibes that Flaco Jimenez brought to Doug Sahm’s music both with Sir Douglas Quintet and the Texas Tornados.  Sunny & the Sunliners are Tex-Mex too, although not as folkish and picturesque maybe.

     I happen to be from Juárez myself and, for another coincidence, a song that brings back some of the fondest memories of the Juárez of my youth is Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”, because that’s one of the oldies I learned to like first apart from the Beatles music, particularly because of a funny memory that the song evokes in me. 

     I was roaming around town after a party with my cholo friend, Marcos, in his old beat-up ’57 Chevy.  It was four in the morning, and all the liquor stores were closed by then, so we were trying to ”score” some clandestine caguamas -- the Mexican version of the American beer quart – at all costs.  (For those of you who don’t know, cholos were the Hispanic gangsters that wore baggy pants – probably an offshoot of the zoot suiters of early 1940’s-- and bandanas, who made their first appearance in Los Angeles, in the late 1970’s.)  Back then --1987-- cholos still listened to the oldies, because oldies music was part of the cholo paraphernalia, and it was common to see them guys cruisin’ around with The Platters, Dion and the Belmonts, or Sam Cooke’s music --among others-- blasting out of their car speakers. My friend Marcos wasn’t the exception, and he had the radio tuned on The Big 600, which was in those days the official oldies AM station of El Paso.  I know, I was talking about Juárez, but I had to insert this because Juárez is a bordertown and we get American radio and television signals there.

     Anyhow, after we acquired some caguamas, Marcos the cholo drove through a dirt alleyway that put us right in front of a hill. Out of nowhere, two rough-looking guys appeared and approached the car to shake hands with Marcos, asking him who I was and if I was all right. Then, they proceeded to light up a joint that one of the guys had ready for the occasion --or any occasion, if it got down to it.  The radio started playing “Like a Rolling Stone”, giving the moment a surreal aura.  I took a few puffs and they finished the rest of the joint, along with a couple more. The last thing I remember of that moment is hearing ol’ Bob ask, “How does it feel? How does it feel?”…Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.  It wasn’t until seven or seven thirty that Marcos woke me up outside of my house.

     The picture that accompanies the aforementioned preview is from one of Dylan’s concerts in México City, in February of 2008.  And I wonder what he’d think about Juárez today with all its extreme violence that rates it infamously as one of the most unsafe places in the world, but especially for being the inspiration in the past for one of the songs in Highway 61 Revisited, which is also -- curiously enough-- the album where ‘Rolling Stone comes in.  I am talking about “Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” the song that tells the story of how a candid New Yorker boy gets ripped off by the Delilah of a Mexican border town brothel. “Sweet Melinda,” the “goddess of gloom,” who “speaks good English and she invites you up into her room, and you’re so kind and careful not to go to her too soon and she takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon.”  The composition also talks about housing projects, corrupt-cops, and the rain in Juárez at Easter time. Now, I don’t know –and I would love to ask him personally-- if he is sharing a real personal story here, or if he just wrote it thinking about what could have happened to him in such a somber town. 

     When I heard the song for the first time, I started my own research, trying to find out what the place was and if it was possible to spot Melinda. The same thing happened after I learned that Jim Morrison had been in Juárez around 1961, talking with a prostitute in a bar. Needless to say, I didn’t get too far with any of my endeavors since I didn’t have enough clues to even start.  But if that mission was impossible then, it is unthinkable now, since old buildings are being torn down left and right on what it used to be Avenida Juárez, the old strip and equivalent to Tijuana’s Calle Revolución. So all those cantinas, strip joints, and hellholes that made history hosting international celebrities are now just that: history. 

     A thing good Bob wouldn’t have to deal with if the story was in the present, is the “sergeant-at-arms” with his rapacious subalterns, since all of them are being murdered or they are fleeing the town for their lives.  On the other hand, though, the outcome could be a lot more dramatic because Melinda would probably have a sicario (assassin) for a pimp, so the “Rue Morgue Avenue” mentioned in the song would turn out to be literal.  As a matter of fact, I don’t think he would even venture into Juárez today just to buy a thrill at that price, even if that also meant the inspiration for a song…that he probably wouldn’t get to write.

     The times they are a-changing, and Mexican border towns are the best proof of that with all the advent of new forms of economies and governments in the world that leave their indelible mark on them. Mexican border towns used to be appealing to tourists not for their beautiful landscapes, because they don’t have them, but for the escape they provided tourists from their routines and the romanticism of being able to say that they went South-of-the-border to get their Mexican sombreros, sarapes, and their bottle of real tequila with the worm in the bottom.  It was also the chance for infinite stray cats to take a walk on the wild side and explore the decadent aspect of being a tourist in search for a real thrill, keeping busy myriad sordid characters such as the greedy bartenders, corrupt cops, pushers, prostitutes (both male and female), pimps, and even donkeys, since Juárez was famous for the shows some topples bars offered where women copulated with donkeys. 

     All that is gone now, and I am not complaining –God forbid-- about its absence, but about what came to replace it: the reign of terror brought by the narcos. But I guess that’s like everything else in life where change is not always for the good or what we want it to be --some of us don’t even like change at all, for that matter. So as they claim Buddha said, “Everything changes, nothing remains without change.”  And all I can do for now is listen to my music in search for whatever memories may be available of what has been before the last change.  

Note: This article appeared originally on Pierce College SLAM magazine.