During my first Embassy assignment in 1982, I was selected for my first Presidential (What we call being assigned to travel with the U.S. President).  My boss at the American Embassy in Mexico City was somewhat befuddled that I had been selected for the assignment since I was a rookie, e.g. my first diplomatic assignment.  So it took some cramming to get up to speed as to what would be expected of me.  President Ronald Reagan was to travel to Tijuana Mexico to meet with the newly elected President of Mexico "De La Madrid".   My assignment was to precede him there by 2 days to set up security for his visit, then meet him there.  This is the normal procedure for a Presidential Visit.  The 2nd in command of my department at the Embassy was to go with me as the figurehead of the visit but people in his position are never professional but more in the political sphere while I would be the professional who was expected to accomplish the operational portion of the mission..

   Upon landing in Tijuana, I was met at the airport by 4 well dressed men in expensive suits.  I noticed right away that in their case..being well dressed included having an UZI sub-machine gun tucked under their suit jackets.  They would be somewhat similar to Secret Service Agents in our country.  They put me in a 2-car motorcade and whisked me to the downtown area where the President's chopper would land, and started going over the game plan with me.  My job was on the intelligence side, e.g. to provide American Intelligence on any activity by known terrorists etc that might be moving into the area.

After setting up the objectives for that first day..they took me to one of their favorite bars, and we started enjoying that part of the assignment..They learned that I was a former Navy Chief (Now retired) and asked if I had ever been to Tijuana before..I said.."Yes, I met my first love here" in 1955. Actually, my encounter had been, like most 19-year-old sailors, with a prostitute who in my naive mind was just a pretty girl.  At that early age, I wouldn't have known anything about professionals in that line of work.

As a note aside:  When I had visited Tijuana in 1955..it had mud streets and now it was a metropolis of several million. 

 But when I told them about my 1955 encounter whereby I met my first love....they asked, "What was her name"?  I said, "Man, that was almost 30 years ago..I don't know...Maria..her name was probably Maria!  Well, a few minutes later..one of the guys with the Uzi under his suit..dragged some young girl into the bar holding her hand out to me and said..Here she is....she was just a few doors down the street"  I said..No, that's not the Maria I knew"  Well he dragged in 2 more young girls, each time telling me that he had found my Maria..and each time I said.."NO, that's not her"..So he said.. You know, Your Maria is probably a grandmother by now..and I agreed..So he again pushed this latest young girl toward me and said, "Well here..Take this one.She's a nice girl".  I replied, "No, I don't think my wife would approve of that"..So he switched to another tactic. And incidentally, all this was in Spanish because these guys didn't speak English.

Do you like Mariachi Music?  I said, yes, I have several mariachi records.  No, no, no, he said..that's not Mariachi..I mean live mariachi!  No..So they again put me in one of those limo's and we drove to the main plaza in Tijuana which was a traffic circle, with a fountain in the center..but on one side of the circle was a church where the Mariachi Musicians hang out to be hired..They stopped the car right in the middle of the street, put a bottle of tequila on the roof along with lemon wedges and salt and he hired one of the Mariachi Groups..

I said, "But man..we've got traffic blocked"!!  He just ignored me and asked what Mariachi songs I liked.  I gave him some names of my favorites.."El barco de oro, Las Sacatecas" etc..and he said "Yea, those are good ones"..and this guy with the big bass guitar starts singing right in my face"..I said, MAN WE'VE GOT TRAFFIC BLOCKED"!  He just continued ignoring me and kept pushing tequila at me and bragging about the music..Then I heard the sirens coming!  I'm saying to myself..Here on my first assignment, we're going to have an international incident..The cops couldn't get close with their car because traffic was backed up for at least a whole block, so they approached us on foot..

But when they got close enough to recognize the guys with the Uzis..they saluted, backed up, and set up a roadblock, re-routing traffic around us, while we continued standing in the middle of the street drinking tequila and listening to Mariachi..My boss asked me.."Do you know who these guys are"..I said, no, but they've got lots of clout..He said, "You read about them every day in your daily communications but I can't tell you here on the street.  Then he said, But I'll tell you something else..(Tijuana is very famous for people just disappearing..never to be seen again or to turn up face-down in a ditch outside the city)..He said, this is one visit to Tijuana whereby you don't have to worry about going to jail..He continued with, "If you walked over to hat jewelry store, broke the window and took yourself a watch..YOU WON'T GO TO JAIL!

The rest of the assignment went off without incident..Reagan landed by chopper..met the new Mexican President, shook hands, laid a reef at a monument in the square, then our entire party got in limos and motorcade'd back across the border to the Hotel Coronado to spend the night before flying back to Washington.