Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 32

VILS OF THE DER EX I CAN SPOTS 2000 MILES TROUBLE Senorita Mariana Baron, above, young, dark-eyed and vivacious, is an example of the new type of Mexican entertainer whom clean-minded tourists from America like to see and who marks a new era of wholesome amusement across the border. By Oren Arnold CHAPTER TWO NDOUBTEDLY one of the prettiest girls on the Mexican frontiei today is Senorita Mariana Baron. She is perhaps 18. Her hair is black and curly: one "spit curl" always nestles temptingly down on her cheek. The eyes are dark and the lips are crimson, and the great sombrero that Mariana wears is a gorgeous thing of braided felt and velvet and jewelry and gold.

Mariana is a good girl. The police are not interested in her, officially; and the United States Border Patrol officers behold her only with lugubrious sighs. entrancing little Spanish senonta. whose dances have made her the "toast of the border" and whose smile nowadays is the brightest thing along the Rio Grande, is a symbol of something more important. She symbolizes the romantic fascination that the Latin land holds for Americans, for tourists who are out just for a sight-seeing good time, and for others whose intentions are more shady.

Even a photograph of Mariana conjures in men's minds the click of castanets and musical twanging of guitars. Unfortunately, the "pleasure resorts" of the. Mexican border towns are not nearly to lovely and wholesome as Mariana's beauty suggests. She typifies what clean-minded tourists hope to tee. What the officers of the law must cope there too often is a very different thing.

sleek-mannered devil from Mexico City, tome years ago, went lo New York and hired more than 20 pretty American girls to go to the Mexican border for jobs as "secre- t.ines." Some he was to send on to Mexico City itself, where he reputedly had connections. He had the connections, but they were as low down in the social and business scale as a human can-sink. Quite frankly, he wanted the girk for his string of houses of ill fame. He did not reveal this fact to them, naturally, when they were hired. He spoke only of foreign travel and good pay, of gaiety and bizarre pleasures in a romantic land.

He might have been guilty of the greatest white slave coup in modern history, if two ol the smart Yankee girls hadn't become suspicious. A dullard henchman of the promoter met these two girls at the railroad station in Mexico City. When he tried to boss them, as women often are bossed in Mexico, they bucked. The independent "gringo gals" bucked so definitely that they did then salacious escort bodily harm, got the local police into the mixup and wrecked the whole nasty plan. TTOWEVER, if that's the sort of thing one likes in the way of entertainment, one can cross the river at El Paso.

for instance, and go unmolested to a red-light district, at night or in broad daylight. Juarez, city of 50,000 persons just across the Rio Grande, treats man's baser nature in more or less practical manner. Out one mile Irom town is a special village, inhabited only by highly questionable girls and women and their equally questionable men There a man can buy any conceivable soiHid entertainment he may want. If he wants to, he can indulge in the fantastic "pleasure" to be had from smoking marihuana, the sei cigaret (although these may be bought from imugglers in America, too). If he prefers, he can dawdle in more leisurely manner with an opium pipe, for the clandestine Chinese arts have found profitable outlets here.

If he isn't careful, he is very likely in any case to lose his pocketbook, hi? his self-respect, and his very soul! To a varying extent, that is a fair summary of vice conditions in all the Mexican towns near the border, and it unfortunately is from such unfair exhibit: that Americans often judge the whole of Mexico. "Judging Mexico from the border dives," says one officer for Uncle Sam. who operates there, "is like judging an American city when you first happen to enter it by its dump heaps and stockyards. Its best foot is not put forward." The truth of that statement can be checked up by a sight of the interior. Whoopee-minded visitors with money to spend, resorts featuring seductive black-eyed senoritas (or blonds from Chicago), "dope" if you want a complacent policy of "anything goes" The visitor, bent on sordid escape from his everyday life, can find relief in the questionable dives of the Mexican border towns, where he can indulge in the fantastic "pleasure" to be had from, smoking marihuana, the sex cigaret, and carousing with wanton women.

HPHE of the Mexican border are not pointed to with pride by anybody. They exist as they may any other there is a demand for them. This frontier region is still "wild," still collects its heavy quota of wanted men, of fugitives, of pitiable humans who can find no satisfaction in gentler, milder modes of living. As pla.ces to not to these "dives" do add to the interest of the better type tourists. Incidentally, more American tourists are crossing the international line into Mexico this year than ever before.

New new train services, airlines and new advertising, all are catering to the American eludes that the dark-eyed senorita with a rose in her hair is likely to be more desirable than the blond he has been keeping in Chicago, whereas the blond is usually the more artistic of the. two, carnally speaking. "But the belief exists, and the border offi cers. are always being called upon to get some influential traveler out of a jam. There is nothing we can usually, to help him." manufacturer from Houston, traveled to a border town for the avowed purpose of having a good time.

had it! But when he limped into the El Paso police station asking for aid, he was minus his wallet, his watch, his automobile, his coat and even his shoes. The senoritas. he admitted, were not what they were cracked up to be. Reversing the demand for Mexican girls, on One instance is that of a girl a truly fine but fearless girl who did go to Juarez alone. Her more timid mother remained in her hotel room in El Paso.

It happened, however, that the gates coming into the United States closed then at 9 p. and when the young lady took her taxi to return to her hotel, she couldn't cross. She faced the necessity of spending a night alone in foreign border town! a girl would have become hysterical about it," the officers tell, "but this one had presence of mind. She knew Juarez had a 'good hotel, where she- would have been safe. But just to make sure, she telephoned her mother, and the elder lady came and spent the night in Juarez, too.

The gates into Mexico did not close at 9 o'clock: only the outgoing traffic was halted at that hour." A red light tionable I'hoto by Thomas D. McAvoy section of Juarez in a special village a mile out of town, where highly ques- girls and women ply a sordid trade with visitors from the United States. who likes to travel in the American way. "It is almost beyond the hope of any official body to control tile traffic in human flesh here," says a spokesman for the United States Border Patrol. "Our border American cities stay as clean as any, but across the line are money-grabbing vultures.

"Feminine charm there is a commodity, not an inspiration. Many an immoral man con- iCopyrigJit, 1935. by EveryWeek Magazine) the part of immoral Americans, is a constant demand for fair-skinned women in Mexican dives that cater almost solely to Mexicans. Many of the "Spanish" girls in this society are negroid or Indian, in reality; for a truly fair-skinned woman money premium. It is never, a good-idea, for an American girl to roam about the darkei streets of a border Mexican town, unescorted.

of the aspects of border crime whick has given officers fresh worry in recent months is counterfeit money. When a man or woman is conveniently drunk on liquor and excitement, the appearance, feel or weight of money is never noticed. Sly dealers in the border town dives can paw a fake $20 bill with shocking ease. It is in Mexico, in fact, that the art of counterfeiting American money has reached ill highest approach to perfection, and it is also that the effrontery of counterfeiters reached a new height. "I caught one Mexican who had jusl c.irne river with $20 in counterfeit quarteiu" said Sergeant Billy Mathews of the El Paw city detective bureau.

"Most of the fakin? a with paper money, however." An increasing use of spurious money ilw has been reported at the Agua 'Calientf track, where the frenzy of betting begets carf lessness. One entire battalion of Mexican stationed near Nogales, Sonora. were paid i month's salary in American money a white back because they asked it. They could do more with it in making whoopee in the border town. Wherefor, you can't blame those who deserted, when they learned that the money all counterfeit! This the second of a series of iix articla on "Two Thousand Miles of Trouble." Tht thtrd'nill next.