Juan Medina recognized pieces of his childhood in San Ysidro when he’d read “Lines and Shadows,” the early 1980s nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, about a team of San Diego police officers tasked with arresting people who were harassing and harming immigrants crossing the border.
“…He tells of how the San Ysidro hills had become a ‘no man’s land’ with nightly murders, shootings, and smuggling scenes,” Medina says. “As 8- and 9-year-old kids, those same hills were once our playgrounds, from north of Sidro to the international border, and along the southern border to the Pacific Ocean, with the Tijuana River Valley in the middle; this is the area where my life as a drug dealer began.”
In “Border Crossings,” Medina’s self-published book released in September, he tells the partly autobiographical story of growing up in San Ysidro from the 1950s to 1980. He describes it as a fictional memoir, having changed some names and circumstances, documenting loss and redemption, power, trauma, his involvement in the Chicano civil rights movement and hope. Although he got involved in drug smuggling when he was young, he would also participate in the San Ysidro chapter of the Brown Berets (founded by Chicano youth during the 1960s and reportedly modeled after the Black Panther Party), study at Sacramento State University, and spent his career working in mental and behavioral health and job development. He’s scheduled to speak and sign copies of his book from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. today at the San Ysidro Library.
Medina (on Facebook and Instagram as author.juanmedina), 75, lives in San Diego’s Otay Mesa neighborhood with his wife, Elsa, and he has two daughters and a son. He retired in 2017 as a program manager from Mental Health Systems, Inc., serving on various committees, task forces and networks focused on employment services, and has been recognized as a leading Latino professional. He took some time to talk about growing up along the U.S.-Mexico border in the 1950s and ’60s, and the lessons he’s learned looking back.
Q: When did you first begin thinking about telling this story?
A: After I retired and started looking back at my life, at how lucky I was that I never was busted, how I came out of that life unscathed, how I did not finish my education at Sacramento State University, and how my drug-induced life back then just threw away an opportunity to study for a post-graduate degree at Stanford University. I also wanted to find out what luck really means. Was I lucky, or was it something else?
Q: Why was this something you wanted to write down, publish and share with an audience?
A: I wanted to offer help to those who think they can be as lucky as I was — it doesn’t work that way. Back then, it was a whole other world. , the DEA did not become active until 1971, and it was only U.S. Customs, Border Patrol and local police departments enforcing drug laws. To us, it was the Wild West and the “imaginary line,” as Mr. Wambaugh called the border between Tijuana and San Ysidro, was where we sealed our reputations as drug dealers. Risk and danger were not in our vocabulary because it was poverty and hunger that propelled us into that life. We also have to that during those years, the big Mexican drug cartels had not started controlling this area, which later came to be known as the Tijuana/San Ysidro Plaza.
What I love about Otay Mesa…
Since the death of our daughter (that’s another book I wrote) we have lived in this neighborhood for 12 years. It is a quiet neighborhood now, but in the 1990s it was gang territory. The folks around here are now more at ease and some have been living here for over 40 years. They’re very good neighbors.
Q: Were you born and raised in San Ysidro?
A: No, we came from Calexico in the Imperial Valley. I was born in Mexicali, Mexico. I was 8 years old when we moved here in 1957; however, I do consider myself as being raised here. We called our beloved barrio Sidro.
At 8 years old, the hills of San Ysidro became a wonderland for me — long treks through the valleys, riding down a hill on flattened cardboard boxes, jackrabbits, coyotes, trap door spiders, and many birds made their summer home here. For me, it was just like in the movies. We made slingshots to get pheasant; later, my friend was given a .22-caliber rifle and he would hunt rabbits. We were amazed when he began skinning and cooking the rabbit right there in the middle of the hills.
(I lived in San Ysidro) from the summer of 1957 to the fall of 1969, when I was nominated for a fellowship program at Sacramento State University to study bilingual education and become a bilingual elementary school teacher. At 19 years old, I had already started the Brown Berets, and the Chicano Movement was blossoming in Sidro.
Q: How would you describe the culture in San Ysidro when you were coming up?
A: In 1959, two years after we moved to Sidro, the census reported the population of the town at 4,860. By 2020, the population had grown to more than 29,000 … I believe the culture can be defined as small-town folk caring and taking care of each other. Everybody knew each other and the adults would watch over us kids and share their food with us. There was always someone who could heal those soulful maladies that poverty brings about.
Q: When did drugs enter the picture for you?
A: In 1959, at 9 years old, I attempted and succeeded in smuggling a small amount of marijuana. I made $10 that day, and little did I know how it would define my near future.
Q: What informed your decision to begin smuggling drugs? Did you feel like you had a choice about whether to participate in smuggling?
A: Poverty! At first it was just weed/marijuana. Later, it included cocaine, and I was able to put food on the table and pay the rent.
Yes, I had a choice — deal drugs or go hungry. As a young boy, I worked very hard in the horse ranches of Sidro and the tomato fields of the Otay Mesa, but the lure of better money was the choice I made.
Q: At what point did the Chicano civil rights movement enter the picture for you?
A: In early 1968, the much-reported school walk-outs in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas are what spawned the movement in our barrio. I had dropped out of school at Mar Vista High School just a year before; that was the deciding factor for me to the movement.
Q: Was it difficult to extricate yourself from smuggling and focusing on civil rights?
A: In 1979, the Mexican cartel had already established a stronghold in Tijuana. Bloody street shootings, bodies hanging from street overes, and the Sidro dealers were heavily outnumbered. When I was finally able to have just one buyer for my loads, she was arrested at the border checkpoint in San Onofre. I was not busted. Next, my friend was shot and killed, his body cut in two and stuffed down two, 50-gallon barrels and left on the beaches of Tijuana. We received the call, a stark warning to leave the territory to the cartel.
Q: What’s been your goal in writing this book? What do you hope people get, or understand, from reading it?
A: To see the importance of emotional intelligence and mindfulness, and to respect, care for and help others.
Q: As you look back, what lessons did you learn from the experiences you talk about in “Border Crossings”? And, how have you been able to apply those lessons to your life in the years since?
A: After two failed marriages, I think these experiences have helped to make me a better husband and father. My wife and I now have 27 years of faithful marriage.
Q: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
A: Author and anthropologist Carlos Castaneda writes that fear is one’s first enemy. I think I read that too late.
Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?
A: For those who have not read the book and know me, it is that I was once a drug dealer.
Q: Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend.
A: To take my family out to dinner, or lunch, see the sights of San Diego and bond.
