Tijuana killings rise in a city haunted by violence of years past

School was in session for 350 junior high school students in a gritty working class section of Tijuana on a recent afternoon when shots rang out next door. By the time it was over, the assailants had fled and two people were dead: the owner of a small Clamato and car wash business and a 17-year-old customer.

Homicides have been back in the headlines in Tijuana, casting a pall over a period of economic hope. They come as the city has seen a rise in maquiladora employment, plans for a new bus rapid-transit system, a boom in high-end residential construction, the flourishing of a craft beer scene, the opening of new bars and restaurants, the staging of numerous festivals where crowds celebrate everything from opera to art to tequila to the Caesar salad.

With 636 killings in Tijuana through the end of September, 2016 is shaping up to be the most violent year since 2010, and last month’s 89 homicides made it the deadliest so far this year.

Law enforcement authorities have said the great majority of victims and perpetrators are members of Tijuana’s neighborhood drug underworld, often street dealers with addictions and criminal records. But even so, the rising tally is an uncomfortable reminder of the unprecedented violence that gripped the city eight years ago as rival trafficking groups waged a brutal battle waged for control of the plaza—a battle that had spillover effects on society at large.

“It’s what all the reporters keep asking me, ‘Are we going back to the way we were in 2008?” said Miguel Angel Guerrero, head of special investigations in Tijuana for the Baja California Attorney General’s Office. “God save us from going back to what we went through in 2008.”

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A rise in homicides in different parts of Mexico has been a source of growing concern. Because of its high numbers, Tijuana is among 50 cities nationwide targeted by a new federal anti-crime initiative launched this month and being implemented gradually over the coming months.

A tally by Mexico’s federal government of municipalities with the greatest number of homicides showed Tijuana’s numbers only second to Acapulco, according to an analysis by the independent news website Animal Politico. With 44 homicides per 100,000 residents, Tijuana was ranked 15th out of 50 Mexican cities, the site reported. Two smaller Baja California cities also made the list: Rosarito Beach with a higher rate than Tijuana; and Tecate, which has virtually the same rate as Tijuana.

Tijuana’s levels for 2016 remain lower than those reported for St. Louis (59 per 100,000) and Baltimore (55 per 100,000), the two U.S. cities with the highest homicide rates, according to U.S. crime statistics for 2015 released last month by the FBI.

A series of incidents in recent weeks have helped draw renewed attention to the issue in Tijuana. On Sept. 3, a driver on Bulevar Benítez crashed after her windshield was struck by a dismembered corpse that fell from a bridge. At the scene, police found two other dismembered bodies and a sign with a threatening message ostensibly by members of the Sinaloa Cartel to members of another group, Cartel Tijuana Nueva Generación.

On Sept. 7, an 18-year-old Imperial Beach resident named Desteny Hernández who was last seen alive in a bar in the city’s Río Zone turned up shot repeatedly in eastern Tijuana off the busy Vía Rápida highway. Investigators are probing the dead teenager’s boyfriend and his connections to organized crime.

On Sept. 24, Jesús Armando Martínez Escobar, a 35-year-old Tijuana police officer in the department’s tourism unit, was shot dead while making a routine traffic stop near the U.S. border in the city’s Zona Norte, or red light district. Two suspects in their 20s arrested in connection with the crime said they had just driven across the border from San Diego with two AR-15 assault rifles that they claimed they planned to sell in Tijuana, according to the Baja California Attorney General’s Office. One of the suspects is a U.S. citizen.

The owner of the Clamato and car wash business stand was with four young customers when an assailant with a .40-caliber pistol got out of a car and opened fire, authorities said. The target was the owner, according to the Baja California Attorney General’s Office, but the clients were also shot, one of them fatally and two others seriously injured.

Hearing the gunfire, administrators at Escuela Secundaria Técnica Número 11 quickly locked the front door and ordered students to the floor, a practice already in place since a shooting near the school last year. On the following day, the state school system announced the renewal of training and protocols to help all schools respond to violent incidents.

Just a few years ago, Tijuana was held up as a national model for combating crime, with a strategy that involved the close collaboration of members of the military with civilian law enforcement agencies, and the involvement of business leaders, and other groups from civil society. Critics say the collaboration forged during that period of adversity has weakened and the three levels of government are not working together as they should.

“There is no strategy, there is no coordination, they’re not talking to each other, and they haven’t been able to do the cleansing that’s been necessary in the police department,” said Juan Manuel Hernández, a former Tijuana business leader who now writes a column in the Tijuana daily newspaper, Frontera.

Alvaro González, a criminal defense attorney, sees the need for a long-term crime strategy addressing the root-causes of crime, one that would place a strong emphasis on preventing and treating drug addiction. “What’s lacking is good planning and continuity,” said González, who specializes in federal crimes. “With the constant changes in government, one party coming in, then another party coming in, there is no continuity.”

Guerrero, head of special investigations, believes the key is taking down the financial structure of criminal organizations, “because if you don’t they’re just going to continue.”

Later this month, the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce is hoping to bring together church groups, civic organizations, business organizations, with military officials and civilian government leaders to form a common front against the violence.

“We are all now aware that we have to be united on this issue. Government on its own can’t do it,” said Gilberto Leyva, the chamber’s president. “We cannot allow this to return.”

The killings that culminated in 2008 with 844 homicides did not spike overnight. Members of the private sector group, Coparmex, were among those sounding the alarm as early as 2006, pressing for stronger government action.

Two years later, the crisis became overwhelmingly apparent as shootouts and grisly scenes of dismembered corpses with threatening messages became commonplace. The Arellano Félix Organization, which long dominated the drug trade in Baja California, was fighting an unprecedented challenge from one its top lieutenants Teodoro García Simental, who found backing from the rival Sinaloa cartel. Kidnappings and abductions rose, restaurants and bars became targets of assaults, and police themselves were frequent targets of the violence — some for their links to organized crime, others for refusing to give in.

With civilian law enforcement agencies struggling against internal corruption and powerless against the better-armed and better-financed drug groups, the Mexican military stepped in to lead the battle to regain control of the city, even taking over top roles in civilian law enforcement agencies such as the Tijuana police department. In the meantime, world recession hit, jobs were lost, tourists stayed away, restaurants went empty.

Tijuana today is a different city than it was in 2008, more hopeful and economically stronger. The criminals are far less brazen, according to Guerrero: “Criminals nowadays act at night, in the dawn hours, when they can’t be seen,” he said.

“A lot of the violence we’re seeing is at the lower levels, not necessarily at the cartel levels,” said William Sherman, special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego. “It’s not like 2008, it tends to be more street dealers battling over turf.”

After spiking from 2008 to 2010, the violence dropped and by 2012, the homicide numbers fell to under 400 as the Sinaloa Cartel became the dominant drug trafficking organization in the region, according to law enforcement accounts.

But now a new force, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacíon from central Mexico has come on the scene, joining forces with remnants of the Arellano Félix Cartel to form the Cartel Tijuana Nueva Generación and challenging Sinaloa’s control of the market.

Guerrero, the head of special investigations in Tijuana for Baja California, said that with the leaders of the various groups staying away from Tijuana, there has been a lack of control in the underworld.

“A lot of times, there is no order to kill, and they end up killing just to kill, or they abduct someone and that person switches sides, so then they’re sent to be killed because they committed treason,” Guerrero said.

“Nobody’s controlling the plaza like they used to,” said the DEA’s Sherman.

But while homicides have risen, Sherman has seen no signs of a return to the past. “If the level starts to get back to what it was in 2008, we’re going to know before it happens, we’ve got enough sources who would say, ‘There’s going to be a war,’ and we’re not hearing that right now.”