Ciudad Recuperación, 2005

After three years of researching and videotaping the dramatic stories of a group of young women undergoing drug rehabilitation in Tijuana (Que suene la calle [Let the Streets of Tijuana Be Heard], 2003–5), Itzel Martínez del Cañizo took on the task of creating a new video for inSite_05 entitled Ciudad Recuperación (Recovery City). As part of this new project, she worked with a group of male patients at a voluntary detoxification program for adults in Tecate. Martínez del Cañizo intervened in the center’s program of rehabilitation through the development of an imaginative game. The group of patients employed video cameras to forge personal narratives about an ideal city, imagining a dignified and inclusive place of their own, constructing a possible Tijuana that would be reinvented according to the desires and ideals of its recovering citizens. In addition to the patients’ vision of an ideal city, Ciudad Recuperación also includes, in contrast, the testimonies of another social group: upper- and upper-middle-class women of Tijuana. The recovering drug abusers who use the video camera to explore and represent the ideal conditions for their social inclusion are conjoined with interviews with women from Tijuana’s privileged classes. These women also imagine and describe an ideal city where they have a place. Ciudad Recuperación functions as an essay on the utopia of belonging within the context of the social reality of Tijuana.

Curators: Osvaldo Sánchez and Tania Ragasol
Venue: MultiKulti Cultural Center, Tijuana.

Co-participants
Gabriel Tovar
Cristian Contreras
Pablo Gerardo
Aurelio Contreras
Martín Navarro
Luis Alberto Sevilla
Gabriel del Real
Juan Martín García
Jorge Pérez
Alida Cervantes
Vicky Cuenca
Yolanda Walther-Meade

Video production
Yonke Art
Ingrid Hernández
Iván Díaz
Abraham Ávila
José Luis Martín

inSite production
Daniel Martínez
Márgara de León
Joy Decena
Zlatan Vukosavljevic
Esmeralda Ceballos

Individuals acknowledgments
Michael W. Hager
Juan Carlos Arreguin
Daniel Macías
Antonio Alapisco
Mario Gonzalez
Raymundo Reveles
Teresa Vicencio

Organizations
Centro de Rehabilitación ARAC-MERAC Tijuana y Tecate
Yonke Art

Sponsors
XEWT Cannel 12 Television
Cerveza Tijuana
Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (CONACULTA)
Centro Cultural Tijuana