The sea of clamoring yellow taxis that has long been a fixture at Tijuana’s pedestrian border entrance was gone on Sunday morning — only two or three cabs lined up, waiting politely for customers as police officers stood vigil.

If Tijuana City Hall has its way, the cabs will soon be gone altogether, their permits revoked following an escalating series of attacks by yellow cab members on their competitors — a shuttle company known as Ticketon and Uber drivers — and the people who choose their services.

Declaring “nothing and no one, individuals or groups above the law,” Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum on Saturday ordered the unprecedented crackdown by Tijuana’s police department.

The move came a day after a video widely circulated on Tijuana news websites and social media showed what appeared to be yellow cab members threatening a group of pedestrians who had just walked across the border on Friday night.


After crossing at San Ysidro, the pedestrians reportedly had turned down the yellow cab services, preferring to use Uber instead, the reports said. Before it was over, one of the pedestrians was badly beaten and had to be hospitalized.

“Enough is enough,” said Raúl Felipe Luevano, second-in-command in Tijuana’s municipal government, appearing on the scene on Saturday with Marco Antonio Sotomayor, the city’s public safety secretary. Luevano vowed that the city would apply “the full force of the law to re-establish order at the international border.”

In a statement, Luevano said that the city government also plans to launch the process of canceling the concession that allows yellow cabs to operate.

The yellow taxis are not just a means of transportation in Tijuana. They have traditionally also been a political force, a group known as Gremio de Choferes Mexicanos de Tijuana, part of the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants, a union that for decades was linked to Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI.


But in recent local elections, the group has thrown its support behind candidates linked to the National Action Party, the PAN. Gastélum is a PAN member and was endorsed by the leadership of the city’s yellow taxis in last year’s mayoral election, but nonetheless ordered the crackdown.

Luevano, who is Tijuana’s secretary-general, said in a statement that the mayor’s office “will no longer allow citizens and Tijuana’s image to be affected with these completely reprehensible and regrettable acts, as various persons crossing from San Ysidro have been injured.”

The Baja California Attorney General’s Office is prosecuting three suspects, at least two of them connected to the yellow taxis, following a rock-throwing incident last month against Ticketon, a bus shuttle company that specializes in driving people between Tijuana and San Ysidro.

Tourism officials have said such incidents affect far more than just one company, and threaten efforts to promote Tijuana as as attractive destination for visitors, offering varied and innovative cuisine, sports teams, and a thriving arts scene.


sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

@sandradibble