Long Before Instagram, Tijuana's Tourist Donkeys Were Camera-Ready Carolina A. Miranda - The Los Angeles Times
go to original November 14, 2015

Eduardo Perez waits for tourists with his burro named Barney, painted like a zebra, on Avenida Revolución in Tijuana. The burro cart photo-op tradition dates back to the 1930s. (Charlie Neuman/San Diego Union-Tribune)

It is Tijuana's most prominent touristic icon: the "zonkey" - a donkey painted with zebra stripes and made available for souvenir pictures along the party strip of Avenida Revolución. But who came up with the idea? And why zebra stripes?

In doing research for my recent series on the expanding Tijuana arts scene, I stumbled on the answer in the Los Angeles Times archives.

A 1978 story by the late Times journalist Laurie Becklund explained it all. The burro cart as tourist spectacle, she reported, started in the 1930s:

"The burro cart owners say the idea for the tourist attractions came shortly after 1935, when gambling was declared illegal in Mexico and the famous Agua Caliente Casino in the valley southeast of downtown was closed...

The carts became so popular that, by World War II, a union of burro cart owners was formed, and members were each assigned a specific street corner to work.

It was sometime during or in the wake of this period that the zebra stripes also emerged. Like most things to do with the burro cart, it turns out they had everything to do with the aesthetics of photography - which would have then been black-and-white or sepia.

Read the rest at The Los Angeles Times

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