As homicides in Mexico reached unprecedented levels in 2018, Tijuana registered its highest numbers on record.

The city’s year closed with more than 2,500 killings, and there was no sign of any slowdown. Seven victims were killed on Saturday, and another three on Sunday, according to figures from the Baja California Attorney General’s Office.

On Monday, the last day of the year, the death toll was again seven, bringing the year’s unofficial total to 2,506. The day’s first crime was reported at 7:30 a.m. in Valle Verde, where a 25-year-old man was shot dead. The last killing of the year was reported at 11:30 p.m., near the Tijuana airport, in a neighborhood known as Colonia 70-76, where an unknown male victim was found shot in the back.

While the numbers are higher than ever, law enforcement authorities say most of the homicides are targeted and linked to the lucrative neighborhood drug trade, as dealers fight over street corners. Primarily at stake is the city’s methamphetamine market, and to a lesser degree heroin sales, they say.


“From what we’re seeing, it’s definitely the street sales in Tijuana that they’re struggling over,” said Bo Morris, Special Agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The tally puts Tijuana, with a population of more than 1.8 million, in the unenviable position of being one of Mexico’s most violent cities. The tally for 2018 surpassed the previous year’s record 1,744 homicides by more than 40 percent. Many of the victims are unidentified, and their deaths go unsolved, as witnesses are reluctant to cooperate with state investigators overwhelmed with the sheer numbers of cases.

“This is a business dominated by young men whose strategy is to use violence against their competition,” said Jaime Arredondo, a scholar at the British Colombia Centre on Substance Use and a former Mexican government official who has researched the local market, known as narcomenudeo, and policing in Tijuana.


“You’ve got to remember that this was an election year, and in an election year, things are a little bit more hot,” said Arredondo, who co-authored a report earlier this year on drug violence in Tijuana as part of the University of San Diego’s Justice in Mexico Project.

At Tijuana’s General Hospital, the violence has been depleting the blood supply.

“This year, we have been in crisis,” said Dr. Yolanda Ibarra, who heads the hospital’s blood bank. Efforts to save shooting victims require large amounts of blood, she said; and while some are saved, others are not.

“Fortunately nobody has died for lack of blood, but they consume enormous amounts,” said Ibarra, who has made calls for blood donations in recent days.


Tijuana’s location on the California border has long made it a coveted region for drug trafficking organizations — a staging area to smuggle illicit drugs to the United States. But increasingly, as the border has grown harder to penetrate, a domestic market has developed in Tijuana.

Overall control of the Tijuana plaza in recent years has been split between two main groups, the long dominant Sinaloa Cartel and the newer Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, a group of traffickers from central Mexico that has been been gaining territory across the country.

But the drug underworld is one of continually shifting allegiances. And an alliance in Tijuana between members of the CJNG and remnants of the once-ruling Arellano Félix Organization is now fraying, according to a Mexican law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. There are also reports of infighting among low-level members of the CJNG itself, he said.

Experts say that it is the lack of control of the upper echelons that has led to disarray and violence at the bottom of the pyramid. “Those at the bottom are fighting others at the bottom,” said Victor Clark, a human rights activist and longtime observer of the region’s drug trafficking trends.


These dynamics have been playing out in recent years largely in outlying areas of the city, but also near the U.S. border in the city’s Zona Norte. To visit these hardscrabble working class areas is to see a Tijuana that is a far cry from its prosperous neighborhoods with restaurants, trendy breweries, upscale medical offices and a boom of high-rise condominiums.

The situation has put pressure on the administration of Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum, who ends his three-year term this year. “There is no political will, there is no decision on the part of the mayor to confront crime,” said Roberto Quijano, a Tijuana corporate attorney and the only political independent on the Tijuana City Council. “Nobody knows where we’re going.”

At Tijuana police headquarters on Monday, the city’s top public safety official, Marco Antonio Sotomayor, defended the actions of his 2,200-member police department during an end-of-the-year news conference. “We’ve had unprecedented operational results, but we understand that these have not been sufficient to offer the results that Tijuanenses are looking for,” he said. “But the origin of this problem is multifaceted and should not just rest on the Tijuana police.”

One strategy over the coming year will be to build up the strength of policing in the most violent sections of the city. “Our main goal is to reduce homicides through different operational strategies,” Sotomayor said.


A group of 120 cadets set to graduate from the police academy next month will be assigned districts in eastern Tijuana, Sotomayor said.

Sotomayor is also placing hope on a proposal by Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to create a National Guard, a measure that would require a reform to Mexico’s constitution and congressional approval.

The president, who is expected to visit Tijuana on Sunday, wants Mexico’s military to head the force — a notion that has drawn fierce criticism from human rights advocates and others who say this will only lead to abuses.

“Several organizations have warned that this is the wrong way to go, that this is not what was promised during the political campaign,” said Arredondo. “We have not really put our focus on the prosecutors, on researching crimes, and giving the technical capacity to people so they can do their jobs.”


But Sotomayor said the military’s backing already has been key for Tijuana police officers confronting heavily armed drug suspects, and is an important temporary measure. “At this time we need the armed forces, to give us support against organized crime,” Sotomayor said.

Another factor in reducing crime is prevention, but funds set aside for those effort have dried up, said Victor Clark, the human rights activist and an adjunct professor at San Diego State University. Under Mexico’s previous president, Enrique Peña Nieto, “Baja California was left without federal support,” for prevention, he said. And the city government’s budget is limited to $40,000.

Juan Manuel Hernández, the head of the Citizens Public Safety Commission, a statewide advisory group, says lack of collaboration among the various law enforcement agencies has weakened efforts to fight crime and drug sales.

In Baja California, “I think the authorities are totally lost,” said Hernández. State prosecutors “are overwhelmed with the situation, they cannot handle the cases being presented,” he said.


“We should focus on what the federal government is doing, that’s our hope.”

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

@sandradibble