It’s a secondhand town. Everything has been used by somebody else before.

by Sylvia Tiersten

Life’s not bad for Sergio Arreola Armenta—as long as the sun is shining. Four years ago he moved to Colonia de San Bernardo, in Tijuana’s Los Laureles Canyon. He owns his home, a 750-square-foot structure he built himself, and he owns his livelihood, a small construction materials store that extends credit to local residents. But when it rains in Tijuana, life stops in San Bernardo, a hillside neighborhood with no paved streets, no sewer, no storm drainage system and no external lighting.

Some 80,000 people—many of them squatters—live in Los Laureles, or Goat Canyon as it is known in the United States. “It’s a secondhand town. Everything has been used by somebody else before,” says Oscar Romo, a UC San Diego lecturer on urban studies and planning and the Coastal Training Program coordinator at the 2500-acre Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve (TRNERR) in Imperial Beach. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administers the Coastal Training Program.