For those who have said (and who hasn’t) that the towns along the border just aren’t the real Mexico,” a delightful new book, Bahia Ensenada and Its Bay, should bring about a change in mind.
Under the skillful writing of Thaddeus R. T. Brenton, the little city of Ensenada, only 70 miles south of that lusty and gusty Mexican town of Tijuana, comes alive.
The people, their customs and culture, stream across the pages almost as plainly as they might on the television screen. The advantage is, however, that the reader can see Ensenada, once a more important seaport city than San Francisco, through the eyes of Mr. Brenton, a transplanted Hoosier, who has found in Mexico a way of life that provokes, pleases, stimulates, and satisfies.
We sense in his telling of Bahía’s discovery by the Spanish conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542 the same pride as that of Florida historians who realize that there is still much to be told about those early years of American history.
“When he first discovered our bay, Shakespeare was not yet born; and the Mayflower would not yet leave Southampton for 78 years.” How familiar the sound!
But it is not of history of which he talks all the time. He speaks of everything from bordellos to bullfights, fiestas to dust storms, sauce molé to manners, all related in a style that is never dull.
He speaks frankly, but tolerantly of the Mexican people. He is kind without portraying them in a defensive way. It is almost as if he might say directly: These are the Mexican people. They have their foibles that may seem strange to other people, but I like them just the way they are.
Perhaps Mr. Brenton’s years at the Sorbonne in Paris, Oxford University in England, or in Manila conditioned him to many environments. Whatever it was, he has adjusted himself to life in a new and different country and rekindled the jaded spirit that he had once thought was gone forever. Ensenada is his Shangri La, and most readers will want to visit the little city, mindful now that some border towns can be “the real Mexico.”