SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022

ournalist Sandra Dibble expected to spend a year

reporting on Tijuana, a city misunderstood by
foreigners and Mexicans alike. Instead, she found
herself drawn into the worlds that intersect at this
crossroads of the Americas. Journalists. Migrants.
Artists. Drug gangs. Tijuana is a place where paths
converge, often in unexpected ways. From a writer
who spent more than 25 years there, comes the
true story of beauty, violence and belonging at the
world’s busiest border.
2 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022

KEY PEOPLE

Sandra Dibble
Reported on
Tijuana for
The San
Diego Union-
Tribune for
almost 27
years. She
was born in
Egypt; raised in Europe, the
Middle East and the United
States; and has spent much
of her career writing about
international and multicul-
tural topics. She earned a
bachelor’s degree in Arabic
from the University of Utah
and a master’s degree in
journalism from Columbia
University. She spent a year
on an international journal-
ism fellowship in which she
traveled and studied in
Mexico. She worked at the
Miami Herald for nearly a
decade, specializing in cov-
erage of the Cuban, Nicara-
guan and Haitian communi-
ties and was part of a team
awarded the 1987 Pulitzer
Prize in national reporting
for uncovering the Reagan
administration’s clandestine
support of the Nicaraguan
Contras. She also spent
three years at National Geo-
graphic, where assignments
included writing feature
articles about Paraguay and
Oaxaca.
Dancers from Baja California Polytechnic Preparatoria make their way down Avenida Revolución
Benjamín Arellano Félix in Tijuana during a parade marking the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s independence, Sept. 16, 2010.
Longtime
leader of the
Arellano Félix Jesús Blancornelas Alfredo de la Torre 2008 and challenged the Jesús Labra Aviles
Organization, Co-founder in Tijuana po- Arellano Félix Organiza- Low-key
during the 1980 Tijuana lice chief shot tion’s dominance when he financial
1990s consid- newsweekly to death in formed an alliance with the brains of the
ered one of Zeta, known February Sinaloa Cartel. Arrested by Arellano Félix
the world’s for its pio- 2000 as he Mexican federal police in La Organization
most violent and powerful neering inves- drove to work Paz, Baja California Sur, in during the
drug trafficking groups, tigations on alone on a January 2010. 1980s and
linked to hundreds of mur- corruption Sunday 1990s. Ar-
ders in Baja California, in- and drug trafficking. Blan- morning. Mexican author- Francisco Guerrero rested in 2000 as he watched
cluding those of high-rank- cornelas reached the conclu- ities said his killers were Oaxaca-born his son play American foot-
ing law enforcement officials. sion that Mario Aburto acted working for the Sinaloa musician, ball at a Tijuana high school.
Benjamín Arellano was alone when he killed Colosio. Cartel as it was attempting graduate of Extradited to the U.S. in
captured by Mexican author- Was the first journalist to to muscle in on the Arel- Mexico’s 2008, he pleaded guilty to
ities in Puebla in 2002. He write about the AFO. Blan- lanos’ territory. Escuela Na- conspiracy to distribute
was extradited to the United cornelas survived a 1997 cional de marijuana and cocaine and
States in 2011 and in 2012 attack ordered by the AFO’s Steve Duncan Musica, in- was sentenced to 40 years.
pleaded guilty in San Diego leadership, but the attack Longtime special agent with structor of
federal court to racketeering claimed the life of his body- California Department of classical guitar and danzon. Julian Leyzaola
and conspiracy to launder guard. Recipient of several Justice. Expert on street Came to Tijuana from Mexi- Retired Mexi-
money. He was sentenced to international press awards gangs, prison gangs and co City in 1997. can army
25 years in prison. In April, that recognized his work for Mexican drug trafficking officer who
he filed a plea for compas- press freedom in Mexico. organizations. Member of Alejandro Hodoyan led the Ti-
sionate early release. Died in 2006. the Arellano-Félix Task Palacios juana police
Force, a group made up of U.S. citizen from 2008 to
Francisco Javier Arellano Felipe Calderón U.S. federal, state and local and oldest 2010 before
Known as El Mexican law enforcement agencies son in a well- taking a
Tigrillo, took president and that investigated and tar- to-do Tijuana similar position in Ciudad
over leader- PAN member geted AFO members. family. He Juarez. Praised for his efforts
ship of the who declared was drawn in to combat police corruption,
AFO follow- war on drug Antonio Escalante by the Arel- fight powerful drug cartels
ing the cap- cartels soon Sonora-born lano Félix and lower crime, he has been
ture and after stepping abstract Organization. He has never dogged by accusations of
death of his into office in painter who been heard from since his human rights abuses. Leyza-
two older siblings. Captured December 2006. When his helped lead a abduction in September ola has been paralyzed since
by the U.S. Coast Guard policy called for deploying group of 1996 in Tijuana. Presumed a 2015 assassination at-
while deep-sea fishing off the thousands of federal forces fellow Tijuana dead. tempt. Since 2020, he has
coast of Baja California Sur to hot spots across Mexico, artists that in been fighting a state arrest
in August 2006. Serving a life including Tijuana, homi- 2010 took over Alfredo Hodoyan warrant stemming from a
sentence in U.S. prison after cides soared to record levels an alley of abandoned tourist U.S. citizen 2010 accusation that he
pleading guilty to racket- by 2010. shops off of Avenida Revolu- and younger participated in the abduc-
eering and money launder- cion and converted them brother of tion and torture of one of his
ing in 2007. His sentence has Victor Clark Alfaro into gallery spaces. Alejandro officers.
been reduced to 231⁄2 years Longtime Hodoyan,
after “extensive” co- Tijuana hu- Vicente Fox who also Andrés Manuel
operation with authorities. man rights Fox made became in- López Obrador
activist, ad- history in volved with Leftist found-
Ramón Arellano Félix junct profes- 2000 when he the Arellano Félix Organiza- er of Morena
Considered sor at San won the presi- tion. Sentenced in Mexico Party, won a
the enforcer Diego State dential elec- to serve a 50-year term in the six-year term
of the AFO, University tion as a 1996 killing of federal police as president
responsible and frequent expert witness member of commander Ernesto Ibarra in 2018. Cam-
for planning in American courts for cases Mexico’s Santes and three others but paigned to
the killings of involving asylum, organized National Action Party, PAN, was released in 2017 after he end corrup-
drug rivals crime and other border- breaking seven decades of was exonerated by a judicial tion and focus on combating
and law en- related issues. rule by the PRI. In 2001, he panel. crime through “abrazos no
forcement officials. Placed sent 700 federal police to balazos” — hugs not bullets
on the FBI’s most wanted list Luis Donald Colosio Tijuana as part of a nation- Ernesto Ibarra Santes — a strategy that would
in 1997, after he was charged The presi- wide crusade against drug Federal police stress job creation and op-
in San Diego federal court dential candi- trafficking. commander portunities for young people.
with conspiracy to import date for Mexi- shot to death
cocaine and marijuana. co’s long- José Galicot in 1996, a Antonio Martinez Luna
He was killed in a shootout ruling Institu- Business month after Attorney
with police in 2002 in Maza- tional Revolu- leader and being as- general for
tlan. tionary Party, entrepreneur signed to Baja Cali-
PRI. He was and founder Tijuana. fornia during
Pedro Gabriel Beas shot and killed at a cam- of Tijuana Ibarra was a medical doctor adminis-
Known by his paign rally in Tijuana on Innovadora, a and anti-narcotics specialist tration of
musical March 23, 1994. One suspect, nonprofit who spoke openly about the PAN Gov.
name, Hiper- Mario Aburto Martinez, was launched in presence of the Arellano Eugenio
boreal, he is a captured at the scene and 2010 as a large event with Félix brothers and said he Elorduy, who governed the
composer and confessed to the crime. De- prominent speakers and had information about their state from 2001 to 2007.
performer spite numerous conspiracy exhibits aimed at changing whereabouts and that of
who was a theories, a six-year govern- perceptions about the city. their supporters. José Medina
member of ment investigation con- His investments have in- Tijuana-born
Tijuana’s Grammy-winning cluded that Aburto had cluded telecom, industry Kenedy tenor, com-
Nortec Collective, an en- acted alone. and real estate. Back in the Cameroonian from the Afri- poser and
semble that fused electronic 1980s and 1990s, he owned can country’s English-speak- artistic direc-
music with Mexican tamb- Dora Elena Cortes the flashy Tijuana nightclub ing region, part of a wave tor of Opera
ora and norteño music and Tijuana jour- called Oh! Laser Disco, that arrived in the city in 2019 de Tijuana
pioneered a new genre that nalist who which drew an international fleeing imprisonment, tor- and founder of
brought international atten- was a corre- clientele — including the ture and mistreatment by its Ensamble
tion to the city. spondent for patronage of Arellano Félix the the French-speaking Lirico Juvenil.
the national brothers before they were majority, which controls the
Federico Benitez newspaper El targeted by law enforcement government. Miguel Mesina
Tijuana sec- Universal, and went underground. Longtime Tijuana police
retary of and then Mamoru Konno officer detained in March
public safety created her own news Teodoro García Simental Japanese 2009 on suspicion of ties to
was shot to agency, Agencia Fronteriza Often known maquiladora organized crime as part of an
death along de Noticias. Author together as El Teo, he executive who unprecedented purge of the
with his body- with Manuel Cordero of was a lieuten- was kid- department under Julian
guard in April “Complot,” a book that ant in the napped in Leyzaola and the Mexican
1994. Author- argues that Colosio’s killing AFO, respon- Tijuana in military. Mesina said he was
ities said that Benitez had was the result of an elaborate sible for nu- August 1996 tortured at a military base
turned down bribes from plot. The work of the Cortes merous kid- as he left a while Leyzaola was in the
drug traffickers and that and Cordero partnership nappings, company baseball game. He room. Spent more than a
federal police agents work- won Mexico’s Premio Nacio- extortions and a wave of was released nine days later year behind bars without
ing for drug traffickers were nal de Periodismo, a national exceptional brutality. He after his company paid the charges, and released from
tied to the killings. journalism prize. separated from the AFO in $2 million ransom. prison for lack of evidence.
 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 3

This special section tells the story about beauty,

violence and belonging in Tijuana from a journalist
who spent more than 25 years reporting at the
border for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Crime and friendship.......................................................................4
Chapter 2: A new life in a city under a cloud................................................7

JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE Chapter 3: A city of contrasts comes into focus ..........................................11
Chapter 4: Violence hits close to home...........................................................14
Chapter 5: Upheaval and brutal violence hit the cartels........................17
Esther Morales Guzman abducted before her eyes,
Oaxaca she fought for years to find
native and him, then took up the cause
Chapter 6: A city on edge and under siege...................................................21
former Los of other families searching
Angeles for missing loved ones, join- Chapter 7: Tijuana’s rocky rebirth..................................................................24
resident who ing marches and other pro-
opened a tests calling for government Chapter 8: A city of resilience and hope .......................................................27
small restau- action. Died of cancer in
rant, La March 2013.
Antiguita, in downtown
Locations and statistics .....................................................................................31
Tijuana after being deported Armando Pesqueira
2010. Over the years, she has Tijuana-born musician,
emerged as an activist for graduate of San Diego State SPECIAL SECTION
migrants and deportees who University and the San
serves meals at migrant Francisco Conservatory, Reporter, writer, creator ......................................................................................................Sandra Dibble
shelters and shares her story conductor of the Baja Cali-
about rebuilding her life. fornia Orchestra. Editor, co-creator ........................................................................................................................Susan White
Editors ...................................................................................................................John Cannon, Lora Cicalo
Adela Navarro Bello Javier Plascencia Illustrator ...............................................................................................................................Gloria Orbegozo
Journalist A chef and
and co-editor restaurateur Designers ...................................................................................................Gloria Orbegozo, Michael Price
of the Tijuana at the fore- Cover design and art direction.......................................................................................Gloria Orbegozo
investigative front of the
Photo editing and research...........................................................Merrie Monteagudo, Roger Wilson
weekly Zeta. BajaMed
Winner of cuisine move- Graphics and data........................................Cristina Byvik, Michelle Gilchrist, Michelle Guerrero
numerous ment, who Copy editors..................................................... David Clary, Monica Hodes-Smail, John Kowalczyk,
international has played a Amanda Selvidio, Barbara Trageser, Holly Trusiak
journalism awards, includ- key role in putting Tijuana
ing the Committee to Pro- on the map as an interna-
tect Journalists’ Interna-
tional Press Freedom Award
tional foodie destination.
‘BORDER CITY’ PODCAST
and International Women’s Arturo Rodríguez “Border City” also is available as an eight-part podcast
Media Foundation Courage Owner of La
in Journalism Award. Caja Galeria, narrated by Sandra Dibble.
an independ- The story introduces listeners to Tijuana the way she was
Lauro Ortiz ent art space introduced to it — through the news stories she covered but
Former Zeta reporter who founded in also through her personal connections in the city’s cultural
was inadvertently assigned 2005 to pro- community and her friendships with ordinary Tijuanenses.
to cover a homicide scene mote con- “Border City” takes listeners with Sandra on her journey of
that turned out to be his own temporary
discovery, as she chronicles the city’s evolution and searches for
brother’s. art in Tijuana.
her place in it.
Francisco Ortiz Franco Eric Rosenberg It also tells a larger story that reaches far beyond the U.S.-
A founding Tijuana physician, educator Mexico border — a story of belonging and identity that touches us all.
member of and head of the city’s Cole- To listen to the “Border City” podcast, go online to sandiegouniontri-
the Zeta gio Medico, the main medi- bune.com/bordercity and find the streaming platform of your choice, or
newsweekly, cal association. In 2008, he
scan the code at left with a smartphone.
shot to death helped lead anti-crime pro-
in 2004. A law tests demanding that the
school gradu- state government take ac- Reporter, writer, creator ......................................................................................................Sandra Dibble
ate and Zeta tion against extortionists Editor, co-creator ........................................................................................................................Susan White
co-founder, he had begun to and kidnappers targeting
Associate producers...................................................Elize Anoush Manoukian and Hafsa Fathima
write about drug trafficking members of the medical
when he was targeted by community. Music and sound design ...................................................................................Kurt Kohnen and AMFM
assassins linked to the Arel- Production support ..........................................................................Joanne Faryon and Garage Media
lano Félix Organization. Fernando Sánchez Arellano
Executive producers.............................................................Jeff Light, Lora Cicalo and Beto Alvarez
A low-key
Nemesio Oseguera nephew of the Special thanks.................Jazmin Aguilera, Jason Begin, Darius Derakshan, MaKayla Hartter,
Cervantes Arellano David Jacobsen, James Liggins, Merrie Monteagudo, Gloria Orbegozo and Brandon Sides.
Known as El Brothers,
Mencho, he’s who took over
the leader of the organiza-
the Cartel tion after his
Jalisco Nueva uncles were
Generacion gone. Known as “El Inge-
— an increas- niero,” he was arrested in
ingly power- 2014 in Tijuana, and was the
ful drug trafficking organ- last family member to lead
ization based in central the organization.
Mexico that has been
battling in recent years to David Shirk
gain control of the Tijuana University of
Plaza. San Diego
political
Héctor Osuna Jaime science pro-
Mayor of fessor and
Tijuana from principal
1992 to 1995. investigator
Senator of the school’s
representing Justice in Mexico Project,
Baja Cali- which addresses law and
fornia from security issues in Mexico.
2000 to 2006.
Served as president of Mexi- Hugo Torres
co’s Federal Telecommuni- Owner of the
cations Commission from Rosarito
2006 to 2010. Beach hotel,
long popular
Cristina Palacios de Hodoyan with U.S.
A Tijuana tourists. He
socialite who played a key
became an role in esab-
outspoken lishing Rosarito Beach as a
social activist municipality in 1995 and
after two of served twice as the city’s top
her sons elected official. Helped lead
became in- a tourism image committee PEGGY PEATTIE U-T FILE
volved with the AFO. When formed in 2011 to improve A Mexican flag flies over Tijuana, on the busiest stretch of the U.S.-Mexico
the oldest, Alejandro, was the city’s image in the U.S. border. It’s a place of unique people and culture that’s also plagued by violence.
4 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022

Sandra Dibble expected to stay in Tijuana a year.

Instead she found herself drawn into the worlds that
intersect at this crossroads of the Americas. Journalists.
Migrants. Artists. Drug gangs. Tijuana is a place where
paths converge, often in unexpected ways.

U-T ILLUSTRATION

CHAPTER 1 THE YEAR I ARRIVED

It turned out that I had arrived
at a critical year for Mexico: 1994.
On Jan. 1, indigenous Zapatista
rebels in southern Mexico declared
CRIME AND FRIENDSHIP war on the Mexican government.
The Zapatistas wanted to draw
attention to the injustice and pov-
erty that was sending so many
people to the United States.
henever I catch the news these days, I see stories On that same day, the North
about the U.S.-Mexico border. American Free Trade Agreement
was launched. It created a giant
And so many times I’m struck by one thought: trade zone made up of Canada, the
U.S. and Mexico.
They don’t capture the heartbeat of the place where But before the year was out, a
major peso devaluation brought
I’ve lived and worked for almost 28 years. new challenges to Mexico. It was
called the Tequila Crisis. Mexicans
It’s not that the stories are wrong. struggled with rising prices and
spiking interest rates. Investors
It’s just that in the rush of daily news and the fury lost confidence and moved their
of talk-show debates, so many voices are drowned money out of the country.
In Tijuana, there was also a
out — so much is left unsaid. feeling of impending violence. Like
the first raindrops of a storm.
This story is about my time reporting in Tijuana — The Arellano-Félix drug cartel
was defending its control of the
a city on the busiest stretch of the border — a city smuggling route through Tijuana
into the U.S.
both cursed and enriched by its proximity to the Rivals were murdered. Cops
and prosecutors were bribed and
United States. threatened. Or killed.
The cartel was run by five broth-
It’s about the people who live here. And the people ers from the state of Sinaloa. They
who pass through. About the geography that shapes began as small-time marijuana
smugglers then expanded to co-
— and sometimes breaks — them. caine and heroin. They were grow-
ing rich and more powerful.
Then, just a week before I
started my job, an unthinkable
crime drew the eyes of the world to
Tijuana.
Luis Donaldo Colosio was Mexi-
co’s leading presidential candidate.
He was in his mid-40s. Handsome.
Charismatic. He talked about
social justice.
The election was still five
months away, but Colosio was sure
to win.
His party — the Partido Revolu-
cionario Institucional — hadn’t lost
a presidential election in 65 years.
On March 23, Colosio was wrap-
ping up a campaign stop in Ti-
juana. He was in the working-class
neighborhood of Lomas Taurinas.
A video from that day shows
him trying to make his way through
thousands of people. They had
crowded into a vacant lot to see
him. He could barely move. A lively
cumbia played in the background.
A hand with a pistol emerges
from the crowd, just a few inches
from Colosio.
The pistol fires, hitting him in
the head. Then it fires again, hit-
ting him in the stomach.
The crowd is so large and the
ROBERT GAUTHIER U-T FILE
music so loud that at first most
Aides help presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio after being mortally wounded during a people don’t realize Colosio has
campaign rally in Tijuana on March 23, 1994. Colosio died about 21⁄2 hours later. been shot.
Then there’s panic. And the
ILLUSTRATION ABOVE: A 1997 Union-Tribune photo of reporter Sandra Dibble and a video blurs.
March 23, 1994, Robert Gauthier photo of presidential candidate Donaldo Colosio (circled) Colosio is rushed to a hospital,
amid a campaign crowd in Tijuana before his assignation. but he doesn’t survive.

On the tourist strip Avenida Revolución, Sandra Dibble made friends with merchants of wares crafted by people from Mexico’s interior.
MY NEW HOME
Other U.S. reporters who cov-
ered Tijuana lived in San Diego
and commuted across the border.
But I decided to live in Tijuana.
I imagined slipping into a busy,
bustling metropolis filled with
people searching for a place and a
purpose.
So I left my job and my family
and friends in Washington, D.C.,
and set out on an impulsive midlife
adventure. Covering Tijuana for
The San Diego Union-Tribune.
To my friends, it seemed like a
bold decision. But to tell the truth,
I was homesick and filled with
self-doubt.
I spoke Spanish and had stud-
ied and worked in other parts of
Mexico. But I didn’t know a single
person in Tijuana. It felt over-
whelming.
I’m not prone to prayer, but
this is what I wrote in my diary the
day I accepted the job: “I cannot
bear to leave what I know for the
unknown. Please God, help me,
give me strength and courage to
start anew. I am not sure why I am
doing this. Please God guide me
through this.”
The mechanics of crossing into
my new life were simple.
From San Diego, I took Inter-
state 805 and drove south. As I got
closer to the border, I could see
Tijuana’s hillsides packed with
tiny houses. There wasn’t much
foliage. It looked so different from
San Diego.
I found a two-bedroom apart-
ment in a neighborhood on a hill-
side near the city’s golf course. The
streets were so quiet that at sun-
down I could hear flocks of birds
chirping in trees.
The houses were protected by
barking dogs. And by tall walls
splashed with red, pink and purple
bougainvillea.
MY FIRST BIG STORY
My first big news story landed
on the night of April 28.
I was in my new apartment, feel-
ing stranded as I watched the sea
of lights from my balcony window.
And then my pager went off.
Tijuana Police Chief Federico
Benitez and his bodyguard had
been ambushed on a busy highway
about 9:30 p.m. One vehicle cut
them off. Then a gunman in a Ford
Bronco opened fire with an AK-47.
Both men were dead.
As I drove through the dark-
ened streets to a news conference,
Tijuana felt eerily still. The broad
boulevards were almost empty.
Only the wails of police sirens
pierced the silence.
It felt unreal — as though I were
moving through a dream.
I drove through a traffic circle
and turned onto the bridge that
crosses the Tijuana River channel.
I hung a left and pulled up at City
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Hall — a three-story, box-like
building that takes up most of a
city block.
Outside, a small crush of jour-
nalists surrounded a city spokes-
man.
A reporter who looked to be in
her 30s was calling out questions.
When the spokesman fumbled for
answers, the reporter didn’t back
down.
I asked no questions. But that
reporter noticed me, just as I
noticed her.
Her name was Dora Elena
Cortes.
“I noticed you were there,” she
said later. “It was difficult not to
notice that there was an American
in Mexico in the middle of a small
group of Tijuana colleagues.”
Over the years, Dora Elena
would become one of my most
trusted friends. She’s been report-
ing in Tijuana since she was a
teenager. She’s seen the city per-
sist through political transitions
and economic crises.
But crimes of this magnitude —
the killings of a presidential candi-
date and a police chief — shocked
even her.
“These were horrific and criti-
cal moments that Tijuana was
going through,” she said. “We had
just gone through the assassina-
tion of Luis Donaldo Colosio, and
we could not understand why we
were going through this wave of
violence.”
The chief was 42 years old.
Married, with three children.
Previously, he’d been a lawyer and
a factory administrator.
His lack of police experience
was a plus for Mayor Hector Os-
una, who had appointed him to the
job just 17 months earlier.
Osuna wanted a chief who was
an outsider — someone willing to
weed out corruption and restruc-
ture the department. A reformist
who shared Osuna’s determina-
tion to create a city government
that people could count on.
Benitez had a reputation for
honesty and hard work. He
seemed like the perfect partner.
He had already fired several
hundred police officers suspected
of corruption. Those who re-
mained were given better training
— and higher pay.
And the public was responding.
Some people reached out to Ben-
itez personally when they saw
something suspicious in their
neighborhood.
“So they were telling us
through the police force and
through everybody telling us
what’s going on in every colonia of
Tijuana,” Osuna said.
Benitez had been getting death
threats. Osuna got them, too. But
they weren’t all that worried.
Osuna didn’t even take body-
guards with him when he drove to
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
JIM BAIRD U-T FILE
JOHN R. MCCUTCHEN U-T FILE
ABOVE: A news confer-
ence following the
murder of Police Chief
Federico Benitez and his
body guard. At the table
are State Attorney
General Vidal Rosas,
Gov. Ernesto Ruffo (with
microphone) and Mayor
Hector Osuna.
BELOW: Benitez, who
was gunned down in an
ambush on April 28,
1994.
5
JAMES SKOVMAND U-T FILE
work. He said the threats were
common.
“It turned out that there were
so many that you couldn’t take it
seriously,” Osuna said.
A few days before Benitez was
killed, he told the mayor about a
meeting he had with a federal
police commander — a young guy
who’d just been assigned to Ti-
juana. The commander asked
Benitez to stop interfering in
drug-related activities. If he did,
both of them would receive “a
benefit.”
Benitez didn’t seem to be
frightened.
“I think he was surprised about
the boldness of the first encounter
with him,” Osuna said.
After Benitez was killed, Osuna
started wearing a bulletproof vest
and began traveling with body-
guards.
Osuna also got some personal
advice from the U.S. consul gen-
eral in Tijuana who had lived in
Colombia. He said Osuna would
become accustomed to violence.
“And I was thinking at that time
that it was very difficult to get used
to it,” Osuna remembered. “He
says, no, no, no. Don’t worry about
it. You’ll get used to it. Just be care-
ful about it and take your precau-
tions. But you’ll get used to it.”
Osuna said that after a couple
of weeks, he stopped worrying so
much. He still had a security de-
tail, but it was smaller.
“And then we just said forget
about it. I mean if it’s gonna hap-
pen, it’s gonna happen anyway,”
he said.
A state prosecutor was as-
signed to investigate Benitez’s
murder. He was a young lawyer
who had a reputation for taking on
sensitive organized crime cases.
He charged three people in the
chief’s death — including the
commander who had tried to bribe
Benitez.
Three years after the chief was
assassinated, gunmen shot that
young prosecutor more than 100
times. They drove back and forth
over his body. It happened outside
his home in Tijuana — in front of
his wife and infant daughter.
WHERE PATHS CONVERGE
To outsiders, Tijuana is often
defined by violent incidents like
these. But I quickly learned that
Tijuana is a city of many realities.
Because I knew so few people
when I arrived, I had a lot of free
time to roam. I would drive east, to
the ragged neighborhoods on the
city’s outer edges, places without
paved roads or running water. I
saw houses built from old garage
doors that had been carried across
the border from California. I
dropped in at outdoor markets
and watched families do their
weekend shopping beneath
brightly colored tarps.
Other times, I headed for
Avenida Revolución, the busy
tourist strip, and made friends
with the merchants selling fine
pottery and embroidered blouses.
One was Sr. Espinosa, who wore a
beret and shared his wine and
cheese as he told me about the
people from Mexico’s interior who
made the crafts he displayed.
One of my first friends was an
Argentinian woman named Ade-
laida Lagares.
I was covering an anti-violence
protest in downtown Tijuana, and
she was hard to miss. She was
wearing a blazer with red and
white stripes that looked like
something she’d stolen from a
barbershop quartet.
She was in her early 60s. She
had short, white hair; big, aqua
eyes; and a laugh that made every-
thing seem all right.
Adelaida had raised six chil-
dren. She had survived a military
dictatorship, exile and two di-
vorces. She was always ready for a
6 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
The home (far right) where Alejandro and Alfredo Hodoyan Palacios grew up in the upper-middle-class Colonia Hippodromo in Tijuana.
political discussion, with a ciga-
rette and a coffee cup in hand.
I became part of Adelaida’s
eclectic circle of friends and family:
sociologists, psychologists, a histo-
rian, a demographer — most of
them transplants like me. We gath-
ered at her hillside apartment for
potluck parties. We shared wine
and talked for hours.
I could tell Adelaida anything
that was on my mind. I told her
about my family. About growing up
in different countries as a diplomat’s
daughter. About the Tijuana I was
discovering day after day.
Sometimes, we’d walk to her
window and just stand together,
looking at the hillsides covered
with lights.
We talked about how the city
was a crossroads, just like the cities
of antiquity I’d studied in school —
Carthage, Alexandria, Damascus,
Constantinople. A vibrant city of
trade and migration. Of people like
me and Adelaida.
A place where paths converge.
Where lives play out, sometimes in
odd and unexpected ways.
MUSIC ON A HILLSIDE
One night, high on a hillside, I
went to hear a performance by
Marco Antonio Labastida. He sang
romantic music by the late Maria
Grever, a 20th-century Mexican
songwriter.
Marco Antonio graduated from
the Oberlin College Conservatory
in Ohio. His accompanist was
Pavel Getman, who moved to Ti-
juana from the former Soviet
Union.
Tijuana’s broad reach caught
me by surprise. There I was, listen-
ing to a Tijuana-born, U.S.-trained
tenor sing beloved Mexican songs
with a Ukrainian-born pianist who
now called Tijuana his home.
It was as though I’d gotten in on
a wonderful secret, one that defied
all the stereotypes about the city I
was already beginning to love.
ON THE JOB
In my first weeks in Tijuana,
I wrote about Chinese smugglers.
A NAFTA milk dispute. And an
endangered mouse whose exist-
ence threatened the construction
of a sewage treatment plant.
I shared an office with two
Union-Tribune colleagues —
photographer John Gibbins and
reporter Gregory Gross.
Greg was a talented, lightning-
fast writer who covered law
enforcement and the Arellano drug
cartel.
John had a deep knowledge of
Baja California developed over
years of crossing the border.
Our editor in San Diego, Aida
Bustos, was a passionate champi-
on of border coverage.
We worked in one large room
with frayed carpeting and piles of
old newspapers gathering dust. It
was in the upscale Rio Zone, the
city’s financial center.
Federal and state police offices
were so close that I walked to them.
For lunch, I strolled to a nearby
taco stand or waited for a vendor to
buzz from downstairs. He’d walk
up with a plate of fruit sprinkled
with chili, salt and lime juice.
My circle of friends slowly grew.
I met Mexican colleagues for
coffee. Sometimes, I sat with Dora
Elena, my new journalist friend. It
was — and still is — hard to get a
word in edgewise at her table.
She talks fast, and people are
always stopping by to discuss the
latest news.
Dora Elena invited me to family
gatherings at her house. Everyone
clamored for a chance to sing, and I
was fascinated by their lack of
inhibition.
Dora Elena’s sister, Norma,
would belt out boleros and ballads
in a deep, soulful voice. Soon
Norma and I were friends, too.
THE ARELLANOS
By the time I arrived in Tijuana,
the leaders of the Arellano cartel
had gone underground. But they
were a hovering presence here.
Their names would come up when-
ever people were killed, arrested or
disappeared.
The brothers had begun insert-
ing themselves into Tijuana society
in the early 1980s.
It was a smaller city then — not
much more than a half-million
people — but growing fast. Nobody
was quite sure what to make of
them, with their brash manners
and garish shirts.
By the mid-’80s, they were spot-
ted all over town.
Benjamín Arellano led the or-
ganization. He married a local
woman and they had two children.
He could be seen poring over led-
gers at Sanborns, a popular restau-
rant on Avenida Revolución in the
city’s tourism district.
Ramón Arellano was the cartel’s
temperamental enforcer. He sped
around in a red Porsche and par-
tied in the upscale Hipodromo
neighborhood. Sometimes he
flirted with girls outside an elite
private school, Instituto Mexico.
Some of the students were mes-
merized by his gaudy clothes and
fancy car.
The brothers and their entou-
rage often showed up at a popular
nightclub called La Oh! They
dressed like cowboys, and they
partied in the VIP lounge.
“They were too loud, too strong,
and too ... They were impressive
young people from Sinaloa,” said
Jose Galicot, who owned LA Oh!
back then.
I asked him if they were impres-
sive because they were smart or
because they were handsome.
“When you are a young guy and
you see people that have been
successful — they have cars, they
have money, they have girls — most
young people want to emulate
that,” Galicot said.
Tijuanenses — that’s what
people here call themselves — had
never seen anything like the Arel-
lanos. I wondered if they made him
scared for his own children.
“When they came here, it was a
surprise. We didn’t have this kind
of people. So we were not ready to
defend ourselves or our children.
As soon as we saw what was hap-
pening, I talked to my children,
many times,” Galicot said.
Adriana Hodoyan was one of
the young people whose life would
be turned upside down by the
Arellanos. She had just turned 20
when she first saw Ramón Arel-
lano. It was in 1987 during a party
at a neighbor’s house.
“I’m just hanging out. And then
this guy, this clown I would say. He
had this hair. Like he was wearing a
helmet out of hair,” she said.
“He was wearing a mink vest. No
shirt.”
Along with a gold chain and
cross encrusted in emeralds. And
leather shorts and cowboy boots.
“I mean, I just started laughing. I
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
PEGGY PEATTIE U-T FILE
U.S.-trained, Tijuana-
born tenor Marco
Antonio Labastida.
There I was,
listening to a
Tijuana-born,
U.S.-trained tenor
sing beloved
Mexican songs
with a Ukrainian-
born pianist
who now called
Tijuana his home.
CHARLIE NEUMAN U-T FILE
was like, who brought the clown,
you know?” she said. That quieted
everyone.
“That is Ramón? Oh, my good-
ness. So yeah, I didn’t have a good
start with him.”
Ramón would sometimes swing
by a meeting place for neighbor-
hood teens — a tree simply known
as El Arbol. It was just down the
block from the large, comfortable
house where Adriana grew up with
her parents and three brothers.
It was the kind of street where
neighbors knew each other.
Adriana’s paternal grandfather
was an immigrant to Tijuana. He’d
settled there after fleeing the geno-
cide in Armenia early in the 20th
century. Her father, Alejandro, was
a respected civil engineer. Her
mother, Cristina, spent time at the
country club and volunteered at
the Red Cross.
Adriana and her brothers were
born in U.S. hospitals, a common
practice then for Tijuana residents
who could afford it.
Like many people in Tijuana,
they are dual U.S. and Mexican
citizens. They attended presti-
gious Catholic schools on both
sides of the border.
Adriana still lives in the family
home. She remembers a happy
childhood, where she and her
brothers felt safe playing outside
until sundown.
“We were good kids,” she said.
“You know, we never did anything
bad to people.”
Her oldest brother, Alejandro,
was called Alex. He played basket-
ball, football and baseball, and was
often the team captain.
Alfredo was 10 years younger.
He loved animals and was on the
country club swim team.
As Adriana and her brothers
grew into adolescence and adult-
hood, they did what others in their
circle of childhood friends were
doing.
They partied hard. And they
didn’t think too much about the
consequences of their actions.
“We thought we could get away
with everything,” Adriana said.
“We could run a red light and
nothing would happen. If we’d get
stopped by a police car, you know,
we’d be like, ‘I’m so-and-so’ and
they’d be like, ‘OK, sorry, go
ahead.’ You know, we thought the
world was ours. Our parents had
money.”
And not many in their crowd
saw the need to work. Adriana said
that among her crowd of about 25,
about five had jobs.
Adriana isn’t sure how it hap-
pened, but Alex and Alfredo and a
few other young men in their group
gravitated to the Arellanos.
These privileged young men
who joined the cartel became
known as “narco juniors.”
Before long, Alex and Alfredo
were being watched by law en-
forcement agencies on both sides
of the border.
Adriana is 54 now, the mother of
two grown daughters. She talked
to me in her kitchen while she fixed
tacos made of hibiscus flowers.
Her lively brown eyes filled with
laughter — and then tears — as she
spoke of her brothers.
“I don’t know what happened,”
she said. “We all hung out with the
same people. So Ramón, the Arel-
lanos, started like infiltrating. The
next thing I know is that all this is
happening, and I told my brother,
‘why don’t you just take off. Just
leave.’ ”
He said he couldn’t because it
would endanger the rest of the
family.
“And that’s when he realized
that he was in deep, you know, that
it kind of snuck up on us,” Adriana
said.
By the time she and her parents
understood how far Alex and Al-
fredo had drifted, it was too late. ■
 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 7

The kidnapping of a prominent maquiladora executive

and the threatening presence of the Arellano drug cartel
overshadow the city’s ambitious effort to boost its image.
But like many Tijuana residents, Sandra feels little personal
danger as she settles into her new life and explores the city.

U-T ILLUSTRATION

CHAPTER 2

A NEW LIFE IN A CITY UNDER A CLOUD

n 1996, the Republican National Convention put San Diego in the

spotlight. Some 30,000 people crowded into the city’s hotels and
conference halls.
Tijuana’s boosters hoped to lure some of them across the border
to shop and eat. JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
Outside the Sanyo plant in
They also hoped some of the journalists assigned to cover the Otay Mesa, a television crew
convention would venture into Tijuana — and send back positive reports on the kidnapping of
Mamoru Konno in 1996, which
stories about what they saw. made news worldwide.

A U.S. public relations firm was hired. The streets downtown

On that Saturday evening —
were swept. A promotional video was prepared. while my friends and I were enjoy-
ing live music and fireworks over
Late on a Saturday afternoon the day before the convention, I San Diego Bay — something was
happening in Tijuana. Something
drove three of my Tijuana colleagues across the border for a lavish that would dash its grand hopes of
attracting those Republican tour-
media party. It was hosted by my newspaper’s Republican owner. ists.
A Japanese businessman was
My car was tiny and there was barely enough room for all four of kidnapped. A man with the nick-
us. I drove in circles through downtown San Diego, feeling anxious. name “Mr. Sweet.”
I’m Sandra Dibble, and this is a
Everything seemed unfamiliar, so different from Tijuana. print adaptation of Border City, a
podcast from The San Diego
Union-Tribune. It’s about Tijuana,
a city known for violence, drugs and
migration into the United States.
But it’s also a city where I — like so
many others — have found a place
and a purpose. A city of exuberance
and hope.

THE KIDNAPPING
The Japanese businessman was
58-year-old Mamoru Konno. He
was vice president of Sanyo Video
Components, one of Tijuana’s
largest assembly plants.
Konno lived in San Diego
County and crossed the border to
go to work. Employees called him
“Mr. Sweet” because he often
passed out candy.
Konno drove into Tijuana that
Saturday afternoon to cheer for his
company’s baseball team.
After the game, he walked to his
car with an employee and her sis-
ter. Two vehicles blocked his Cadil-
lac. Then gunmen jumped out and
abducted them.
The women were released the
next morning. But the kidnappers
demanded $2 million in ransom for
Konno.
The story was explosive.
COURTESY OF SANDRA DIBBLE A foreign executive had been
Sandra Dibble (center) became close with the woman who cleaned her apartment, Angela Rangel kidnapped. And the timing
(left), and her family, including her daughter Teresa (right). couldn’t have been worse.
Globalization was in full swing
ILLUSTRATION ABOVE: Japanese businessman Mamoru Konno, vice president of Sanyo in those days. And Tijuana was a
Video Components in Tijuana. He was kidnapped by gunmen on Aug. 10, 1996, leaving a base- booming manufacturing hub.
ball game there, and held for ransom. The $2 million demand was paid and he was released. Foreign companies had built
8 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Tijuana had hundreds of maquiladoras. The pay was low for residents like those living in Cinco de Mayo Colonia, shown here.
large, flat buildings in industrial
parks across the city. Their prod-
ucts — often electronics — were
going to U.S. consumers.
The plants were called maquila-
doras, and the city had hundreds of
them, more than anywhere else in
Mexico. The pay was low — less
than $50 a week for an entry-level
worker. But it was a steady job, and
employees got government hous-
ing credits and health care. Free
meals and grocery coupons were
often part of the deal.
Sanyo had opened its first fac-
tory here in the 1970s. By 1996, it
had five maquiladoras and 5,000
employees. They assembled refrig-
erators, batteries, televisions.
Konno’s kidnapping drew at-
tention to Tijuana. Just not the
kind that tourism promoters were
counting on.
This was the first known kid-
napping of a maquiladora execu-
tive in Mexico, and the story went
worldwide.
“It makes me feel really bad
because you know Tijuana doesn’t
kidnap people. There are some
people from outside, and they
kidnap this Japanese guy, who was
a good man,” said José Galicot, the
owner of the popular nightclub
where the Arellano brothers once
partied. He’s also a prominent
businessman and a founding mem-
ber of the city’s Image Committee.
“We were very upset, and there
were few things we could do. We
didn’t have the tools to find him, so
we were just praying to God that he
was alive.”
Sanyo paid the ransom. And a
week after he was kidnapped,
Konno was released.
But by then, the convention was
over.
I asked Galicot if he felt the
kidnapping caused his efforts to
promote the city and its people to
fail.
“All the time,” he said. “We are
fighting with the bad image, and I
am a very optimistic person. They
say that an optimist is a guy who
sees a light where there is none and
the pessimist is the one who turns
this off. So I’m optimistic all the
time. I’m presenting the good
things of the city.”
AM I IN DANGER?
Was it dangerous for Americans
to visit Tijuana?
Was it dangerous for me to live
there?
My friends in the United States
often asked me those questions.
And I usually told them the same
thing.
Yes, horrible things had hap-
pened to some people. But not to
anyone I knew.
I felt safe in my apartment. I felt
safe in my office. I avoided traveling
in rough neighborhoods at night.
But during the day I drove any-
where in the city, reporting stories
or just exploring on my own.
My middle class Mexican
friends didn’t seem especially
worried either. In those days, the
violent crimes that made the news
rarely involved ordinary people like
them.
In most of the cases I wrote
about, the victims were linked to
the drug world. Or they were law
enforcement officials who had
somehow angered the traffickers.
Once in a while, the violence did
come close to my world. Uncom-
fortably close.
A few months before Konno was
kidnapped, a former federal prose-
cutor was jogging on the track at a
Tijuana recreation center. It was a
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SANDRA DIBBLE
place where I often exercised.
Two men came up behind the
prosecutor and shot him in the
back. He died at the scene.
But once the crime tape was
removed and the blood washed off
the track, things returned to nor-
mal. By the next morning, the
runners were back. I went back,
too.
ANGELA
My job was keeping me so busy
that a neighbor helped me find
someone to clean my apartment.
Angela Rangel arrived at 7 a.m.
on a Saturday. She was a small
woman with a ponytail and wore a
shirtwaist dress, white bobby
socks and loafers.
She looked to be about my age,
in her early 40s. But she barely
reached my shoulder, and I’m only
5 foot 4.
To get to my apartment, An-
gela traveled across town from her
hillside neighborhood. She took
two taxis that were more like
buses.
People traveling the same
route would squeeze in together.
After the taxi let her out, An-
gela would walk uphill for 20 min-
utes — then up two flights of stairs
to my door.
She wasted no time getting to
work. Beads of sweat formed on
her brow as she cleaned nonstop.
When she was done, I drove her
back to the two-room house she
shared with her husband and
three daughters.
It was on an unpaved street
and had no running water. To
bathe, they heated full buckets on
a gas burner or on a wood fire
outside. The toilet was an out-
house.
Like me, Angela came to Ti-
juana from elsewhere. But that’s
where our similarities ended.
She was born in the state of
Michoacan, about 1,500 miles from
the border.
She was the oldest of 11 chil-
dren.
When her father fell gravely ill,
16-year-old Angela left for Tijuana
to support her parents and sib-
lings. She made the 30-hour bus
trip alone and took a job as a live-
in housekeeper. Eventually, she
met a man from Michoacan and
started a family of her own.
Angela cleaned my house every
Saturday. Sometimes, she
brought her girls to help. Teresa
was 17 and pregnant. Angelita was
14, funny, noisy, affectionate and
always in motion. Griselda — La
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
Gris — was 15, a middle-school
student who spent hours dreamily
at the sink.
“It was always something spe-
cial when my mother would say
we’re going to go with my Madrina
Sandra,” Griselda told me. “We all
wanted to come, but we couldn’t all
come at once, we had to take turns.
... For us it was a chance to have an
outing and see something different.
When we went for the first time and
saw, it all looked so pretty, and
when we knew you, even more. You
would bring us things, and it was so
special, because we were children
who had nothing.”
Bit by bit, Angela told me about
her life. She had survived uterine
cancer. When massive flooding hit
the city one year, their canyon
neighborhood was cut off and food
had to be dropped in by helicopter.
Week after week, she showed up
at my place with her stories.
Week after week, I drove her
home.
Our lives became interwoven,
without really trying.
Angela began inviting me to her
family’s parties. She called them
convivios, which translates to “live
together.”
We’d fill our plates with tortillas,
guacamole, beans and carne asada.
The thin slabs of beef were grilled
by her sisters’ husbands.
Someone usually prepared
jamaica. It’s a red drink made of
hibiscus flowers.
As the setting sun cast long
shadows, we’d all sit together out-
side Angela’s little house. We’d
watch the children play, their
ABOVE: Sandra Dibble voices rising with chatter and
attends a birthday laughter.
party with members of Birthdays. Weddings. Gradu-
Angela Rangel’s family. ations. Children’s Day.
Dibble was welcomed Sometimes we celebrated just
into the family’s circle. because it was Sunday.
Angela made sure I was wel-
come.
BELOW: Dibble learned
She watched after me, as
more and more about
though I was one more sister.
Angela Rangel’s
One day, Angela asked me to be
(pictured) life, history
La Gris’ madrina, or godmother.
and survival from
I accepted, of course.
uterine cancer when
That made me Angela’s co-
Dibble drove her home
madre. It’s a Mexican form of kin-
each week after her
ship that can bind even unrelated
cleaning job.
people tighter than blood.
Still, we used the formal usted
when we addressed each other. It’s
an old-fashioned sign of respect.
When Teresa’s baby was born,
they called her Sandrita, or “little
Sandra.”
Nobody said she was named for
me. But it seemed to be so. And I
was flattered.
POVERTY AND HOPE
When I look back on my early
years in Tijuana, I realize how little
I understood about the city where I
lived and worked.
About the political, economic
and dark underworld forces that
were playing out even as ambitious
outsiders — like Angela and her
sisters — were arriving from Mexi-
co’s interior.
At the time, it all seemed excit-
ing to me, like the Wild West.
I imagined those young families
as modern-day pioneers, coura-
geously building shanty towns and
persisting through flooding, land-
slides and cold weather.
They often lived without run-
ning water or paved streets.
They raised tarps to create
classrooms for their children —
then they demanded that the state
send teachers.
Their lives seemed difficult, yet
far from hopeless.
I didn’t see then how hard it
 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 9

would be for them to realize their

dreams. That their bravery might
not be enough. That the communi-
ties they were trying to build would
someday become violent battle-
grounds — places where neighbor-
hood drug dealers competed to
supply local addicts.

HOME
Y tú, dónde naciste?
And you, where were you born?
I’ve always dreaded the ques-
tion. I usually answer Egypt. Then
I brace myself for the follow-ups
that are sure to come.
For someone who makes a
living peering into other people’s
lives, I’ve always been reluctant to
reveal much about mine.
My father was a U.S. foreign
service officer who met my mother
when he was posted in Alexandria,
Egypt. She was Swiss and Greek, a
member of the city’s large Europe-
an expatriate community.
My two brothers and I accom-
panied our parents on postings to
Turkey, Austria, Switzerland and
Syria. In many ways it was a glori-
ous childhood that allowed us to
see the world and learn foreign lan-
guages.
Yet when we returned to the
United States, we often felt foreign
ourselves. I was never quite sure
where I fit in.
I think this is part of what led me
to the border — the idea that I
might find a place for myself in a
city where so many people are re-
cent arrivals or on their way to
somewhere else.
My brother Charles? Well, he
has another notion.
On a visit to a market in Tijuana,
I asked him if he thought I was the
oddball.
“Yes, I think you were,” he said.
In what sense?
“You were contrarian, and you
probably still are,” Charles said.
I asked him if he thought I came
to Tijuana because I’m a contrari-
an.
“No, I think you like struggles,”
he answered. “You like challenges,
and Tijuana, I’m sure, is a chal-
lenge.”

FRIENDSHIP AND MUSIC

One September night, my
friend Norma and I went to a con-
cert at El Lugar del Nopal. It’s an
independent arts space near
downtown Tijuana.
A group called Cuarteto Esp-
landian performed a hauntingly
beautiful song composed by Mexi-
co City-based musician Gerardo
Tames. Its title — “Tierra Mestiza”
— speaks of Mexico’s mixed Span-
ish and Indigenous heritage.
After the concert, I met one of
the guitarists, Francisco Guerrero.
His friends called him Paco, and
that’s what I called him, too.
Like me, he came to Tijuana in
search of something he couldn’t
really define.
“It was like casting a bottle into
the ocean, because the truth is
that things were going very well for
me in Mexico City,” Paco said. “I
was playing in a duo with piano
and guitar. I had a guitar quartet.”
Paco was born in Oaxaca, a
state with deeply rooted musical
traditions.
His family migrated to Mexico
City, where he graduated from the
National Music School.
He began teaching and per-
forming.
But Paco said something was
missing.
And when he was offered a
position at a newly formed guitar
center in Tijuana, he wasted no
time accepting.
“My mother was very upset. She
said, ‘What are you going to do
there, why are you leaving?’ But
there was something in my heart
that attracted me very, very, very
much.”
Paco’s story reminded me of my
own impulsive decision to move to
Tijuana.
“The truth is that I didn’t
think,” Paco said. “I didn’t even
take the time to evaluate the work
conditions. The moment they told
me, I came very quickly, like a
girlfriend who doesn’t even have
the ring yet, but she’s already said
yes.”
Music with Paco and get-to-
gethers with my other new friends
became lifelines.
Gentle hooks that bound me to
Tijuana.
But every time I felt I was finally
settling in, something happened to
remind me that I was far from
home.
When my grandmother died in
Switzerland, I drove to Hidalgo
Market. I bought tomatoes, car-
rots, onions and parsley — ingredi-
ents of the delicious sauce she used
to cook.
I poured it over rice. And I ate it
alone in my apartment.
COMMANDER KILLED
In 1996, a brutal crime rocked
Mexico’s law enforcement commu-
nity and once again put Tijuana in
the national spotlight. It made the
Arellanos seem more powerful
than ever.
That August, a new federal
police commander came to Ti-
juana.
He vowed to bring down the
cartel and to purge his agency of
the corrupt officers who served it.
His name was Ernesto Ibarra
Santes.
He traveled around the city
with eight heavily armed body-
guards. Yet somehow he seemed
fearless.
Most law enforcement officials
avoided speaking openly about the
Arellanos. But Ibarra Santes told
reporters that he knew the where-
abouts of the cartel’s leaders.
He knew the names of their
accomplices.
And he knew how they laun-
dered money.
My reporter-friend Dora Elena
was shocked and intrigued. She
requested a one-on-one interview
with Ibarra Santes.
To her surprise, he said yes.
“I went there pretty skeptical,”
Dora Elena said. “I thought, he’s
not going to say much, but it is still
worth a try.”
She met Ibarra Santes in his
heavily guarded office in the city’s
Rio Zone.
“He says, if you assure me that
you’re going to publish what I’m
going to say, I will talk. So he starts
to mention the Arellanos. He
speaks above all about their finan-
cial connections. And when we’re
finished, I tell him, ‘You know, be
careful. They’re going to kill you.
And he laughs and says, ‘You think
so?’ I say, ‘The truth is, what you
are saying is very delicate. Are you
sure you want us to publish this?’
He says, ‘Publish.’ ”
Less than a week after that
interview, Ibarra Santes and two of
COURTESY OF SANDRA DIBBLE
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
TOP: Classical guitarists
Francisco Guerrero (left)
and Alberto Ubach stand
with actress Laura Ibarra
in 1998. Sandra Dibble
befriended Guerrero,
who was drawn to
Tijuana.
CENTER: Enjoying
music with Francisco
Guerrero (with guitar),
known to friends as
“Paco,” and others was
an important lifeline for
Dibble in her new city.
BOTTOM: In an inter-
view with reporter Dora
Cortes (shown at center),
Ernesto Ibarra Santes
spoke openly about the
Arellanos. Less than a
week later, he was
ambushed and killed.
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
his agents flew to Mexico City.
They were headed to a meeting at
their agency’s headquarters.
It was late when they arrived
and they got a cab at the airport.
On their way into town, they were
ambushed. Gunmen sprayed the
taxi with bursts of automatic
gunfire. Ibarra Santes and every-
one else in the cab were killed.
Including the driver.
“More than anything,” Dora
Elena said, “I felt anger and indig-
nation. I was saying, this isn’t
right. I felt that a courageous man
suffered this consequence be-
cause he spoke out. I asked my-
self, if I hadn’t published, perhaps
this would not have happened.
But he was prepared to talk. He
would have perhaps said it to
someone else. He even challenged
me and said if you publish, then I’ll
give you more information.”
By now, the Arellanos were
leading one of the most powerful
drug trafficking organizations in
Mexico — some said the most
powerful.
Their biggest rival was the
Sinaloa cartel. Its leaders tried
many times to unseat the Arel-
lanos but failed.
The government tried to shut
them down, too.
And it also failed.
It wasn’t just the Arellanos’
enormous firepower that made
them a threat. It was also their
money. Massive amounts of
money.
“You know there is over $50
million a year that they were
spending on bribes in Baja Cali-
fornia,” said David Shirk, a profes-
sor at the University of San Diego.
He follows organized crime in
Mexico.
And so whether that’s police
chiefs or secretaries of public
security or even perhaps people at
other high levels of elected office,
they were able to keep the wheels
greased in a way that allowed
them to operate with almost
complete impunity in the 1990s.
“Some of the tactical things
that they did — working with
narco juniors, working with cross-
border gangs — I mean, those
were all key to sort of reinforcing
that power. But at the end of the
day, this is a business. It’s all
about making money and finding
ways to facilitate that,” Shirk said.
THE DRAMA SPILLS
ACROSS THE BORDER
Two weeks after Ibarra Santes
was assassinated, two men were
arrested on the San Diego side of
the border, in the small, wealthy
city of Coronado.
One of the men arrested that
day was Alfredo Hodoyan.
He was the youngest of the
Hodoyan family — Adriana’s little
brother.
They were the Tijuana siblings
10
After 1994, Operation Gatekeeper was launched to try to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants into urban San Diego,
but illegal crossers still took their chances. These men were waiting on the Mexico side of the border fence for darkness.
who grew up down the street from
El Arbol — the neighborhood hang-
out where Ramón Arellano some-
times showed up.
Alfredo was 25 then. More than
a decade had passed since he first
crossed paths with Ramón.
The U.S. held Alfredo on a
weapons charge. But Mexican
authorities wanted him extradited
to Mexico.
They accused him of participa-
ting in the murder of Ibarra San-
tes.
The Hodoyans lived just down
the hill from me. But like most
people in the neighborhood, I was
oblivious to the tragedy unfolding
at their comfortable home.
The family was frantic not just
because Alfredo had been arrested
but because his older brother,
Alex, had disappeared on a trip to
Guadalajara.
When Alex didn’t stay in touch,
the family grew alarmed.
“So I think my mom spoke with
him like the last time on Septem-
ber 10,” Adriana said. “When the
16th of September passed and
Alex didn’t communicate, then she
knew something was wrong.”
Adriana said nobody seemed
able to help them. Not the police.
Not Mexican government officials.
Because the Hodoyan children
were dual citizens — they were all
born in San Diego — the family
turned to the American govern-
ment for help.
Eventually, Alex was traced to
an abandoned military base out-
side Guadalajara.
An agent from the U.S. Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
found him chained to a bed and
blindfolded.
The agent reported what he
found to the U.S. Embassy in Mexi-
co City. But no action was taken.
No one believed he was a U.S.
citizen, Adriana said. “Because
he’s dark-skinned. And because he
spoke Spanish and he didn’t speak
English and he didn’t know the
Pledge of Allegiance.”
Of the four Hodoyan children,
Alex was the only one who wasn’t
fully bilingual — the only one who
didn’t go to school in San Diego.
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
THE OTHER SIDE
In the 1990s, crossing the U.S.-
Mexico border was easy for the tens
of thousands of Tijuana residents
whose lives spanned both sides of
the border. It was almost like driv-
ing to another part of town.
I crossed to shop, see friends,
visit the doctor, meet editors, go for
a swim.
If I avoided rush hour, it took me
about 20 minutes to drive through
at San Ysidro. It’s the busiest land
port in the Western Hemisphere.
I didn’t even show a passport —
I’d just say, “American citizen,” and
most of the time, I was just waved
through.
Crossing was also a comfortable
routine for my friend Maria An-
drade.
She is a dual U.S. and Mexican
citizen who lives in Tijuana and has
family on both sides of the border.
Her dad used to work in San Diego.
To her, San Diego is simply “el otro
lado” — the other side.
“So we used to cross like every
day. My brothers and sisters, they
used to go to San Ysidro just to put
gas (in the car), buy milk or to get a
hamburger because the border was
so available, so fast that we didn’t
have any problem crossing.”
Maria and most of my friends
have documents — U.S. passports
or visas — that allow them to cross
into the U.S. legally. But for those
trying to cross without papers, the
journey was often perilous — espe-
cially after 1994.
That’s when the U.S. launched
Operation Gatekeeper, to stop the
flow of undocumented immigrants
into urban San Diego, where hun-
dreds would sometimes rush across
in a single night.
Gatekeeper worked.
The number of illegal crossings
into San Diego dropped dramati-
cally. But migrants continued cross-
ing — often taking their chances in
the rugged mountain and desert
wilderness to the east.
On a cold winter day in January
1997, photographer John Gibbins
and I boarded a plane in Tijuana
and headed toward southern
Mexico.
In the cargo compartment was
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
the body of 19-year-old Alejandro
Ramos.
Down below, we could see low
mountains wrapped in fog. Ale-
jandro had died just north of
there, in the rugged terrain of
eastern San Diego County while
he was trying to cross illegally
into the U.S.
Now Alejandro was going
home to Ignacio Ramirez, near
the Guatemala border.
It’s a town of dirt roads and
brightly painted houses, of men
on horseback and families who
JERRY WINDLE U-T FILE gather in the shade of palm trees.
San Diego Union-Tribune Alejandro had moved to New
photojournalist John York City when he was 17. He’d
Gibbins in 1997. come home for a family wedding
and was eager to get back to the
Bronx. He had a room waiting for
him there. And a job as a dish-
On a cold winter washer at a fancy Manhattan
restaurant.
day in January
Alejandro and two of his cous-
ins made their way to Tijuana.
Then smugglers led them
1997, photographer through the mountainous terrain
east of the city and across the
John Gibbins and border into San Diego County.
They walked for more than a
I boarded a plane
day through snow and freezing
rain — until Alejandro could no
longer keep up.
in Tijuana and The smugglers didn’t want to
stop. So one cousin stayed at his
headed toward side. The other walked to find help.
By the time the Border Patrol
southern Mexico.
arrived, Alejandro was dead.
I remember two things about
that warm afternoon when Ale-
In the cargo jandro Ramos’ coffin was re-
turned to his hometown.
compartment I remember the dozens of
mourners who held each other
was the body and screamed with a pain that
seemed too much to bear.
And I remember how John
of 19-year-old and I were received — as though
we were returning family mem-
Alejandro Ramos. bers, not strangers intruding on
their grief.
They offered us their bed-
rooms, plates of food, the best
fruit from their trees.
Why are you so nice to us,
I asked Alejandro’s grandmoth-
er. She smiled and answered:
Because you brought him back
to us. ■
 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 11

A prominent Tijuana journalist is ambushed

and a family falls victim to the Arellano cartel.
But another side of the city shines through
in a burgeoning sense of community.

U-T ILLUSTRATION

CHAPTER 3 That’s the federal police com-

mander who was shot to death
soon after he talked publicly about
the Arellanos.
Adriana’s oldest brother, Alex,
A CITY OF CONTRASTS COMES INTO FOCUS was still being held illegally by the
Mexican military. He hadn’t been
charged with a crime, but the army
suspected him of working for the
Arellanos.
wondered sometimes about the fine line that separated safety Alex was 35 by then and the
from danger in Tijuana. As I settled deeper into the city, I began to father of two young daughters.
Fearing for his life, he talked
consider how even ordinary lives could be upended in an instant. about the Arellanos. A video of one
of his interrogations was leaked to a
Maybe it was just a small step — a chance conversation, accepting Mexico City news magazine.
“Killing for them is a party,” Alex
a ride with the wrong person, standing under El Arbol on the wrong reportedly said in the tape. “It’s a
distraction. There’s no remorse,
day. And then, at some point, stepping away from all you have known nothing. They laugh after an assas-
sination, then go eat lobster in
— perhaps at first not understanding the magnitude of what you’ve Rosarito.”
done. In February 1997, Alex was
turned over to the U.S. Drug En-
Is that what happened to the Hodoyan brothers? forcement Administration, which
flew him to San Diego and took him
“First, Alex goes missing, and two weeks later Alfredo gets de- to a hotel. The U.S. also wanted
information about the Arellanos.
tained. And they wanted Alex to testify
against his brother.
“It was like …” Adriana Hodoyan sighed as she talked about her They warned him not to return
to Mexico. They’d heard the Arel-
brothers. “It was a rude awakening.” lanos wanted him dead.
But one night Alex slipped away
By the end of 1996, Alfredo Hodoyan — Adriana’s youngest brother from the hotel and went home to
— was in custody in San Diego. He was fighting Mexico’s attempt to Tijuana.
His sister, Adriana, remembers
extradite him for the murder of Ernesto Ibarra Santes. the night he came back.
“He started knocking on our
door at 4 in the morning and he was
a mess,” Adriana said. He said that
he had to leave because they
wanted him to testify against Al-
fredo and he wouldn’t do it.
His mother, Cristina Palacios de
Hodoyan, took him to a hiding
place for a few days.
“And he started getting com-
fortable, I guess, so he started
making phone calls, and the
phones were rigged,” Adriana said.
One night, Adriana arrived
home from school and saw Alex in
the front room with her parents
and other relatives. They were
drinking and in high spirits.
But Adriana was alarmed.
“I look in the street and there’s a
weird car right there and there’s
another weird ... just weird cars
around the street.
“So I walk into the house, and
they’re all happy because Alex is
home, and I said no, Alex is not
home. Alex is home now, but he
won’t be home tomorrow because
there’s people out there that want
to take him. And my dad says, no,
you know you’re so used to having
all the attention that you can’t
stand him having the attention.”
CHARLIE NEUMAN U-T FILE Later that night, Adriana finally
At her home in Tijuana, Cristina Palacios de Hodoyan shows photos of her son Alex, who was convinced her family that Alex was
abducted in the late 1990s. She became an activist in her quest to find out what happened to him. in danger and that he needed to
return to the U.S.
ILLUSTRATION ABOVE: A Nov. 27, 1997, John Gibbins photo of a Baja State Police evidence The next day, she watched her
technician inspecting the Ford Explorer in which Zeta editor and publisher Jesús Blancor- mother and Alex get ready to leave
nelas was shot and a U.S. Attorney’s office booking photo of Alfredo Hodoyan. the house.
12
“I saw this car started pulling
out, and I said, Alex, you guys are
being followed. Mom, you’re not
going to make it.”
Adriana told them she would
call some friends, but Alex told her
she was being ridiculous.
A few minutes later, Alex and his
mom turned into a parking lot off
Agua Caliente Boulevard, one of
Tijuana’s busiest streets. A blue
van pulled up and four men
dragged Alex inside.
His mother tried to hold onto
him. But she was tiny and helpless
against the four men.
The van sped away with Alex
inside.
“They took him right in front of
my mom,” Adriana said. “We never
saw Alex again.”
Cristina identified one of the
assailants as Ignacio Weber — a
high-ranking federal intelligence
official. She picked him out of a
photo lineup at the federal attorney
general’s office.
“The kidnapping of my son was
real and traumatic,” Cristina wrote
in a letter to the newspaper Re-
forma. “Sr. Weber personally threw
me to the ground. I had him less
than 30 centimeters from my face. I
will never forget his face.”
A MOTHER’S SEARCH
Adriana says her mother was
determined to find Alex, no matter
the cost.
“There were like five or six kids
that were in the same situation as
us, but their parents wouldn’t even
speak of them,” she said. “They
were like, if I don’t speak of it, it
doesn’t happen.”
That was not her mother’s
approach.
“So she left the champagne and
the cards and her heels and she got
some sneakers and her jeans and
she became an activist, and she lost
all her friends,” Adriana said.
“It became our mission, hers
and mine. But my mom was way
stronger than I. She never
stopped.”
At one point, the Hodoyans and
some other families turned to
Victor Clark for help. He’s a Ti-
juana human rights activist who
speaks up for victims of corruption
and injustice.
Clark held a news conference
and mentioned the Hodoyans and
Alex’s abduction. But then he and
his assistant became targets them-
selves.
“I remember the last phone call
that I’d received,” Clark said. “The
men told me, don’t talk anymore in
public about the Hodoyan family
because we’re going to kill you.”
Clark had received death
threats before. He and his family
were already being protected by a
half-dozen city cops.
“If I go to the market, they come
with me. If I crossed into the USA,
they wait for me when I’d return.
And they escort my daughter to
school and my wife. None of my
friends wants to go to dinner...”
This new threat was different. It
was very specific. And while Clark
was brave, he wasn’t reckless.
“So I have to tell Mrs. Hodoyan
and the other families that we
cannot support them anymore
because we are under a lot of pres-
sure because we were receiving
death threats,” Clark said.
The story of the Hodoyans
made headlines on both sides of the
border. It reinforced the idea that
Tijuana was a dangerous place.
But I lived just uphill from the
Hodoyans and I wasn’t changing
my daily habits. Every evening
after work, I met a friend for a walk
through our neighborhood. The
streets were often dark, but we felt
safe.
My friend’s name is Nancy
Leroy. She was a U.S. diplomat
assigned to the consulate in Ti-
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
juana. She lived a few houses down
from me, on the edge of a golf
course.
Nancy understood my world.
She’d lived in several countries.
She even owned a house in the
same Washington, D.C., neighbor-
hood where I grew up.
We exchanged stories of our
lives on the move as we walked
with Nelly, her gentle mutt from
the Tijuana pound. We passed
dogs barking and tugging at their
chains behind heavily gated
houses.
I told her about my job, my
friends, my family — and my con-
flicted feelings about staying in
Tijuana.
And one day she said some-
thing that still sticks with me:
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
It was like a lightbulb came on.
I could move away from Washing-
ton, D.C., but I couldn’t move
away from myself.
In the end, wasn’t it simply my
own limitations I was running
from?
ZETA EDITOR IS SHOT
In 1997, I decided to invite my
Tijuana friends over for Thanks-
giving dinner. It’s an American
holiday, but people on the border
often celebrate it, too.
I hadn’t even put the turkey in
the oven when my reporter friend
— Dora Elena Cortes — called with
news that upended our plans.
Jesús Blancornelas was shot at
9:30 that morning, just a couple of
miles from my apartment. He was
ambushed on his way to work.
The journalist’s reputation for
exposing corruption may have
been the motive for the shooting.
Blancornelas was something of a
legend in Tijuana and throughout
Mexico. He’d founded the weekly
newspaper Zeta in 1980. It was the
first publication that dared to
name the leaders of the Arellano
cartel.
Adela Navarro was a young
staff member at Zeta. She got to
the scene of the shooting just as
paramedics were pulling her boss
from his red Ford Explorer.
“He was conscious and was
telling us he was in pain from his
wounds,” she said.
“It was a miracle that he could
call out, that he was even alive. It
would have been worse for us if he
hadn’t been wearing a black
sweater. Because of the black
sweater, we couldn’t see the
blood.”
I’d met Blancornelas a few
times, and we were cordial but not
close. He was an intense man in his
50s, with a salt-and-pepper beard
and wire-framed glasses. His
weekly column in Zeta was a must-
read for anyone trying to make
sense of what was going on in
Tijuana’s underworld.
“It wasn’t Blancornelas’ goal to
be a journalist who investigated
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
COURTESY OF SANDRA DIBBLE
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
TOP: Cesar Rene Blanco
Villalon, the youngest
son of Blancornelas and
a photographer at Zeta,
rests after responding to
the scene where his fa-
ther was shot to cover
the story.
CENTER: The attack on
Blancornelas indicated
to Sandra Dibble and
other journalists how
dangerous their job was
becoming in Mexico.
BELOW: Jesús Blancor-
nelas was founder of the
weekly newspaper Zeta,
which was the first to
name the leaders of the
Arellano cartel. He was
ambushed and shot in
November 1997.
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
drug traffickers,” Adela said. “How-
ever, he became a national refer-
ence point. In the coverage of drug
trafficking, there is a before and
after Jesús Blancornelas.
“He was the one who named
them. He said, ‘This is the Arellano
cartel, and this is how it’s struc-
tured, and they work with these
police officers, and they’re commit-
ting acts of corruption.’ ”
Blancornelas’ audacity had
exposed Zeta’s small staff to an
enemy so powerful that even they
didn’t foresee the consequences.
“He received threats by email,
by phone,” Adela said. “But they
weren’t delivered face-to-face, nor
from any one specific person who
signed them or took responsibility
... nothing that he considered seri-
ous.”
The state had assigned two
agents to guard him, but Zeta’s
staff didn’t trust them. They per-
suaded Blancornelas to also hire a
private bodyguard.
Two weeks before the attack,
the state agents stopped showing
up. But they tipped off his body-
guard to be careful, that something
was going to happen to Blancor-
nelas.
And then something did.
The bodyguard — Luis Valero
Elizalde — was driving the SUV
that Thanksgiving Day. He was
shot to death as he used his own
body to shield his boss.
One of the assassins died, too,
killed by a ricocheting bullet fired
by one of his own men.
“The scene is really shocking, to
see the assassin dead, still holding
his weapon,” Adele said. “The other
weapon was tucked behind him
into the waist of his pants, it was
the one he was supposedly going to
use to finish him off.”
One of the Zeta editors was so
distraught that he charged at the
assassin’s corpse.
“Some police officers had to
come and hold him back ...” The
dead gunman was a high-ranking
hitman for the Arellano cartel. He
had grown up in San Diego.
By the time I got to the scene,
the bodies were gone. All I saw was
yellow police tape. So I drove to a
nearby hospital and joined a crowd
of journalists waiting for word of
Blancornelas’ condition.
After the shooting, Adela rode
with Blancornelas in the ambu-
lance. Because it was a Thursday —
Zeta’s deadline day — the rest of
the staff focused on putting out
Friday’s edition.
As her boss went into surgery,
Adela returned to work.
“I remember the staff in mourn-
ing, seeing people crying while they
were writing. ... Obviously there
was a lot of pain. But nobody
stopped working. I remember it
was about 1 a.m. when we were
done, finally sitting down ... and
finally giving myself the opportuni-
ty to cry a little bit.”
The bullets struck Blancornelas
in his right lung, liver and spinal
cord. When he left the hospital 20
days later, he was leaning on a
walker.
A GROWING THREAT
Journalism in Mexico was be-
coming increasingly dangerous —
and the attack on Jesús Blancor-
nelas was just a taste of what was
to come.
Violence wasn’t the only way to
silence the press — just the most
extreme. I soon became aware of
more subtle and pervasive ways of
influencing news coverage.
My journalist friends often
worked for media organizations
that relied on government pay-
ments to stay afloat. It was — and
still is — called official publicity.
Some journalists got paid not to
tell stories. Or they self-censored
what they wrote to protect them-

selves. Or they grew far too close to
the officials they covered.
They were underpaid, under-
staffed, under constant stress to
produce copy. Sometimes five
stories a day.
But being part of the Tijuana
press corps could also be a lot of
fun.
Journalists were my constant
companions. I’d run into them at
City Hall. At crime scenes. Over
coffee at the Big Boy restaurant.
We squeezed together into the
tiny sound booth at Radio Enciso
for Dora Elena’s daily radio pro-
gram. Some invited me to their
homes for barbecues or carne
asadas.
If a government official was
reluctant to talk, we became a
human barricade. We blocked
them with our bodies, brandishing
cameras and tape recorders. If I
was too far back to hear, one of my
better-positioned compañeros
would carry my recorder to the
front.
They greeted me as one of their
own, “Buenos días, compañera.”
But I was always aware of the
vast differences in our working
conditions. I got paid a U.S. salary.
I had more time to report stories.
My bosses were not beholden to
Mexican government officials. And
we weren’t being targeted by drug
traffickers.
CREATING CONNECTIONS
As I settled in, I worked hard to
build a life outside journalism.
I took tennis lessons at Tijua-
na’s only public courts. Before
work, I went to an aerobics class at
a cultural center. After work, I
headed to an ecology class at a
private Jesuit university.
I also went to concerts in small
independent arts spaces across
the city.
Sometimes no more than a
half-dozen people showed up to
listen. I felt that I wasn’t just a
spectator. I sat so close I could
almost touch the musicians.
One summer night, I heard four
Tijuana tenors perform opera
arias at a gated community
perched on a hill above downtown.
The melodies soared through the
open windows of the clubhouse
into the warm night air.
It was a fundraiser for Armando
Pesqueira.
He was one of the first musi-
cians I met when I came here. He
was 30 and had a master’s degree
in music performance from San
Diego State University. Now he
was headed to the San Francisco
Conservatory of Music to study
conducting.
Armando was part of a genera-
tion of ambitious Tijuanenses.
They were paving their own paths
— paths that routinely zigzagged
into the United States.
It was on a trip to a San Diego
grocery store with his mother that
Armando got his first classical
album. He was very young — 6 or 7.
“They used to sell a classical
music series. Like each week, a
new LP with a different composer
used to come, and you can buy it,”
Armando said.
In those days, Armando says
crossing the border felt like driving
across town. He saw San Diego
and Tijuana as a single communi-
ty.
“I feel I’m not just a Tijuana
citizen. I’m a binational citizen of
San Diego-Tijuana, just the whole
area.
“I mean of course there’s a
border and of course you have to,
you know, cross a line. … But I
never felt, growing up, there was a
psychological barrier between my
own personal psyche or, how do
you say it, the way I see myself has
always been somebody from Ti-
juana and San Diego.”
Today, Armando leads the Baja
California Orchestra. He’s its first
Tijuana-born conductor.
I was enthralled and inspired by
the stubbornness I saw in these
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
COURTESY OF THE DIBBLE FAMILY
musicians — their determination
to pursue their art, even when their
audiences were small and re-
sources scarce.
I told myself that if they could
persist in their dreams, then I
could, too — no matter how odd
and out of place I sometimes felt
here.
CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION
Growing up, I never liked my
own birthday parties.
But Tijuana changed that.
I can’t remember the year, but I
can’t forget the moment.
I was turning 40-something.
And Angela — the woman who
cleaned my house and made me
part of her family — threw me a
party.
A surprise party.
I heard the muffled voices as I
walked toward her house. And I
spotted a red balloon through the
window. When I stepped inside,
everyone was smiling.
“Feliz cumpleaños!” they
shouted.
Angela was now living in Mari-
ano Matamoros, an eastern Ti-
juana shantytown with higher
aspirations than her old neighbor-
hood. The cement floor was swept,
the toys were put away, the pozole
bubbled in a giant pot.
On the table there was a large,
white cake with my name spelled
out.
There was nothing Angela
loved more than a celebration.
Every party at her house was a
royal event, no matter who turned
up.
Angelita graduated from junior
high school, and suddenly the
house was filled with teenage girls
in knee socks and plaid skirts.
My namesake, little Sandrita,
turned 1 and sat propped up on a
couch while her cousins played in
every corner of the house.
When Angela turned 43, the
celebration overflowed into the
unpaved street. Everyone took
whacks at the homemade piñata
made of eggshells until the candy
came flying out.
Parties here seemed like acts of
defiance, born of a determination
to celebrate what’s at hand rather
than mourn what’s missing.
They reflected a faith that life,
for all the heartache, is worth the
fight.
Angela’s daughter Griselda
took the lesson to heart.
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
BAJA CALIFORNIA ORCHESTRA
TOP: Sandra Dibble was
immersed in the culture
and the stories available
in Tijuana as the only
U-T reporter who lived
there for some time.
CENTER: Armando
Pesqueira, who leads the
Baja California Orchestra,
grew up on both sides of
the border.
BELOW: In 1998, the
Dibble family gathered
at her brother’s house in
McLean, Va., to celebrate
their mother, Cleo’s 75th
birthday.
Parties here
seemed like acts
of defiance, born
of a determination
to celebrate
what’s at hand
rather than mourn
what’s missing.
They reflected a
faith that life, for
all the heartache,
is worth the fight.
13
JOHN R. MCCUTCHEN U-T FILE
“I got that from my mother,”
she said. “I love to spend time with
neighbors, to prepare meals, to
decorate. For everything to be
beautiful. I love to have flowers,
like my mother.
“A party represents love.”
If there was one thing I had
learned from Angela, it was to
celebrate the moment. To leave
behind stresses and family differ-
ences.
And so in August 1998, I had a
chance to do just that.
My mother’s 75th birthday
party.
I flew home for the celebration.
Landing in Washington, I took
everything in — the Pentagon, the
Potomac River, the Washington
Monument. I saw trees and foliage
everywhere — scenery so different
from the dry brown hills of the
border.
Unlike Angela’s family, my
brothers and I weren’t used to
organizing family get-togethers.
But we joined forces to surprise
our mother on this special day.
We invited old family friends to
gather with us on the back patio of
my brother Philo’s house in Mc-
Lean, Va.
He lived there with his three
daughters and his wife, Liz, who
was also a foreign service officer.
It was a humid summer after-
noon, and we were stressed.
My younger brother, Charles,
who lived nearby in Washington,
had done all the cooking. And
somehow he’d locked himself out
of his apartment with all the food
left inside.
But then my mother arrived in
a blue dress, smiling and holding
hands with one of her grand-
daughters. So happy to be sur-
rounded by people who knew her
and loved her.
In the end, nobody cared that
the food was a little late.
UNCERTAINTY REMAINS
After four years in Tijuana, I
was beginning to long for some
sort of boundary between my
personal and work lives. I was still
the only Union-Tribune reporter
who lived in Tijuana, so I was
usually the one to run to crime
scenes. Especially if the crimes
were on weekends or in the middle
of the night.
Even when I wasn’t working, I
saw stories everywhere I turned,
heard news tips in every conversa-
tion.
I drove to eastern Tijuana for a
party and noticed a new housing
development. Should I write
about that?
At my favorite taco stand, I ran
into an engineer from the water
commission who’d been avoiding
my calls. Should I stop and inter-
view him there — with a tortilla in
my hand?
I needed some distance from
my work.
I went home to Washington
every chance I got.
I stayed with my mother, saw
my brothers, called old friends,
visited my hairdresser, took walks
along the Potomac River, and
dropped in at my favorite book-
store.
When I went back to Tijuana, I
was so busy most days that I
didn’t have time to ruminate
about my life.
But at night, alone in my apart-
ment, I’d watch the city lights
down below and I’d wonder about
my life there. That feeling that I
was only passing through still
hadn’t left me.
I imagined moving back to D.C.
— but didn’t. I’d taken a leap, and
there was no leaping back into the
life I left behind.
One night, I wrote in my diary:
“I’ve lit two candles, and I feel
better. Dogs are barking, cars are
rolling up my street, lights outside
shimmer. I am lonely — but writ-
ing makes me feel less so.
“As though I am keeping my-
self company.” ■
14 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022

The city is shaken by the assassination of another

police chief and the arrest of a powerful drug
suspect. But even with uncertainties about safety
and security south of the border, life, work —
and art — carries on day by day.

U-T ILLUSTRATION

CHAPTER 4 They opened fire and sprayed

the Suburban with 100 rounds. De
la Torre crashed into a tree.
It was clearly a hit, the work of
organized crime.
VIOLENCE HITS CLOSE TO HOME But why was the chief targeted,
and by whom?
Migrant smugglers? Drug traf-
fickers?
My heart raced as I changed
ne Sunday morning in February 2000, my guitarist friend Paco into work clothes and rushed to my
and I decided to ride our bikes across the border to San Diego. car.
I knew the place where the chief
It was a perfect winter day with temperatures in the 50s. And had been attacked. It was across
the street from a Ford dealership
it was peaceful — even the major avenues were free of traffic. and a convenience store.
By the time I arrived, the crime
I was pulling on my black spandex riding shorts when my scene was crawling with cops and
journalists. De la Torre’s body was
phone rang. gone, but the bullet-riddled Subur-
ban was still there.
Tijuana’s police chief had been shot dead. The chief ’s spokesman was
Alfredo de la Torre was the second police chief to be assassi- standing nearby. He was sobbing.

nated since I’d moved to Tijuana six years earlier. He was gunned ON THE SCENE
Lauro Ortiz was the first person
down just 2 miles from my apartment. to reach de la Torre. He was a re-
porter for the news magazine Zeta
De la Torre wasn’t a faceless victim in another news story. and had been on his way to an
assignment. He’d stopped for
He was someone I knew. coffee at the convenience store.
“And at the moment of paying, I
De la Torre was traveling alone that winter morning because hear bursts of gunfire and then a
crash. So then the girls that I was
he gave his bodyguards Sundays off. He was on his way to work, paying hide behind the counter.”
driving along one of the city’s major highways. Gunmen armed Lauro ran across the highway.
He approached the Suburban.
with high-caliber weapons pulled alongside him. “I see someone completely
bloody and still breathing. ... I
recognize Alfredo de la Torre.”
Paramedics arrived moments
later. By then, the chief was dead.
Lauro ran back to the store to
call his boss, Jesús Blancornelas.
He was the Zeta editor who’d sur-
vived an assassination attempt a
few years earlier.
I was shaken by de la Torre’s
death.
We’d met a couple of years back
when he was in charge of the over-
crowded La Mesa State Peniten-
tiary in Tijuana.
It was known as El Pueblito —
the little city — and it had its own
economy. Prisoners ran their own
food stands. Wealthy inmates hired
poorer ones as bodyguards and
servants.
One time, I needed de la Torre’s
permission to interview an inmate
for a story I was writing.
I remember his thick, brown
mustache and the way he sat back
in his chair and eyed me carefully.
De la Torre paused before he
said yes. The kind of pause that lets
you know he’s in control.
Half a dozen men soon con-
fessed to killing the chief and 14
other people. They admitted to
JOHN GASTALDO U-T FILE working for the Arellanos’ archrival
Bystanders watch as the Suburban that had been driven by Alfredo de la Torre, Tijuana’s police — the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
chief, is pulled from a ravine after he was killed in February 2000. Two of de la Torres’ own officers
were allegedly in on the plot, but
ILLUSTRATION ABOVE: The booking photo of Jesús “Chuy” Labra Aviles of the Arellano cartel, both escaped.
an AP photo by Gregory Bell of President Vincente Fox and his children en route to his inaugura- One of my Union-Tribune col-
tion in Mexico City on Dec. 1, 2000, and a Getty image of sheet music by Beethoven. leagues interviewed U.S. law en-

forcement officials about his mur-
der.
According to their informants,
the chief had been working for the
Arellanos.
BRACING FOR AFTERMATH
I began to accept that there
were forces in Tijuana that I would
never fully grasp. The terrible
power and violence of the drug
trade had infiltrated every level of
society — apparently even my own
apartment building.
My downstairs neighbor was a
courteous young man who drove a
Lexus and kept a pair of pet mon-
keys. One day, looking down from
my balcony, I spotted an AK-47 on
his table.
I was shocked. In Mexico, only
the military is allowed to own such
powerful weapons. Criminals man-
age to get them, of course. Often
from the United States.
When I saw my neighbor’s rifle
that day, I immediately stepped
back inside, with my heart pound-
ing. I said nothing.
Eventually, that young man
disappeared. Years later, my land-
lady told me he had been found
dead.
Whenever a high-ranking offi-
cial was killed or a dangerous drug
suspect was arrested, I braced for
the aftermath.
I was never sure where it would
come from.
But something would happen. I
was sure of that.
A few days after de la Torre was
buried, one of the highest-ranking
members of the Arellano cartel was
captured.
It happened on a Saturday
afternoon at Tijuana’s elite public
high school. In front of teenage
boys playing American-style foot-
ball.
Suddenly, the field was sur-
rounded by heavily armed federal
agents and soldiers in civilian
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
clothes. They headed into the
stands, toward one of the parents.
His name was Jesús “Chuy”
Labra Aviles.
Labra was so dangerous you
wouldn’t even say his name out
loud. He was the financial brain of
the Arellanos.
Labra tried to run away. But
then he stopped on the football
field and gave up.
He kneeled and raised his arms
while a masked soldier pointed a
rifle at him.
Labra’s capture was a major
victory for U.S. and Mexican au-
thorities. For years, they’d been
trying to weaken Mexico’s cartels
by removing the top leaders. It
was known as the kingpin strate-
gy, and Labra was one of the first
to fall.
A few weeks later, the cartel
pushed back with astounding
brutality.
Three Mexican agents were
found dead. They were members
of an elite federal squad investi-
gating the Arellanos. Their bodies
were dumped in La Rumorosa — a
mountainous area about an hour
east of Tijuana.
José Patino was their leader.
He was a quiet, unassuming
federal prosecutor in his late 40s.
Married, with four children. For
years, he’d been working with U.S.
law enforcement agents to take
down the Arellanos. His U.S. col-
leagues trusted and respected
him.
The Mexican agents’ work was
so dangerous that they’d been living
in San Diego. One morning they
crossed into Tijuana for a meeting —
but they never showed up.
Video footage showed a black
Suburban following their white
Chevrolet sedan.
Two days later, the agents’
bodies were found thrown from
their car. It had been rolled down a
steep, rocky cliff.
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 15
Steve Duncan is a retired Cali-
fornia law enforcement agent. He
was a member of the Arellano Félix
Task Force, the U.S. group that
worked with Patino and his men.
They called Patino “Pepe.” They
trusted him. Considered him a
friend.
A few days after the killings,
Duncan and task force members
met with FBI and DEA leaders who
told them that Pepe had been
tortured before he was murdered.
The bosses reported that Pepe’s
body looked like it had been “put
through a meat grinder,” Duncan
said.
And it meant that whoever had
murdered the men probably had
every bit of confidential informa-
tion that the U.S. agents had
shared with their Mexican counter-
parts.
“So we were very upset,” Dun-
can said.
Dora Elena and I drove to La
Rumorosa that night. We spent
hours driving up and down the
steep, winding road, searching for
the ravine where the bodies were
discovered. But it was dark, and by
the time we pinpointed the exact
location, the police were gone.
We peered down from the preci-
pice, but all we could see was the
faint outline of the agents’ car.
As we drove away, we didn’t
have time to think about what had
just happened.
The best we could do was report
the pieces of a puzzle that was still
being formed.
ARE WE SAFE?
That summer of 2000, Mexican
voters stunned the world by ending
70 years of domination by the Insti-
tutional Revolutionary Party.
The new president was Vicente
Fox. He was a former Coca-Cola
executive and a member of the
National Action Party.
People poured into the streets
of Tijuana and across the country
to celebrate. Mexico was finally
transitioning into a modern
democracy.
The Union-Tribune’s editors
began to worry about the three of
us who worked in Tijuana. The
paper was the only U.S. news or-
ganization with a bureau there, and
reporter Anna Cearley had arrived
to cover crime. She was great at
cultivating sources in law enforce-
FRONTERA NEWSPAPER VIA AP ment and even the city’s under-
world.
Were we safe in our little office?
I thought my editors’ concern
was overblown. To tell you the
truth, I thought it was stupid.
The people most at risk were
our Mexican reporter friends, not
us.
“They lived down there, they
worked down there, their families
were there,” said John Gibbins.
He’d been the Union-Tribune’s
photographer here since 1979. Our
Mexican friends called him Juan, or
Juanito.
“And they are the ones that
touch the sensitive nerves with the
cartel people. And they are the
ones that are threatened and
abused. And they’re very, very
courageous for what they do down
there every single day. We, as
American journalists, visiting
journalists, we kind of pop in and
out and we can cross the border to
safety every day.”
Still, our bosses in San Diego
took steps to protect us.
They hired a security firm to
examine our office. One of our
landlines had been bugged, but
PEGGY PEATTIE U-T FILE they didn’t know by whom.
They installed an alarm in the
office and a video camera in the
place where we parked our cars.
They also sent us to a defensive
driving class taught by the Cali-
fornia Highway Patrol. We learned
to vary our routes — how to make
sharp turns to deflect a kidnapping
attempt.
“Well, at the time, I thought it
was a little bit dramatic,” John
said.
“In hindsight, it was a very
smart thing to do. As everyone
knows, the violence situation in
Tijuana and along the border got
much worse.”
EL MEXICANO VIA AP TAKING THE STAGE
TOP: Jesús “Chuy” On a warm August night in 2000,
Labra Aviles, one of I headed to one of my favorite
the higher ranking spots, the Tijuana Cultural Center.
members of the Most people call it the Cecut. Some
Arellano cartel, raises call it La Bola or the ball — for the
his arms in the air as giant sphere that houses its IMAX
he is arrested in theatre and planetarium. Music,
Tijuana in March 2000. theater, dance, book readings and
His capture was cultural festivals all take place in
considered a victory this sand-colored building.
for U.S. and Mexican On this night, there was opera.
authorities. And I would be on the stage.
I hadn’t had much formal music
CENTER: Mexican education — less than a year of
presidential candidate piano classes. When I was a little
Vicente Fox greets girl and asked to sing, I’d hide
supporters in Mexicali. behind the living room curtains. I
In 2000, he was elected, didn’t make the cut for my high
ending decades of school chorus.
domination by the But in Tijuana, music took on a
Institutional Revolu- whole new meaning for me. My
tionary Party. friend Humberto invited me to join
an amateur chorus. It would be led
by Ignacio Clapés. He was once one
BELOW: Tijuana Police
of Mexico’s top tenors.
Chief Alfredo de la
I thought, why not? For me and
Torre was ambushed
so many others, this was a city of
on his way to work on
second chances.
Feb. 27, 2000. Gunmen
We rehearsed in the lobby of a
sprayed the vehicle he
small medical office — the husband
was driving with 100
of one of the sopranos donated the
rounds, and he crashed
space.
into a tree, dying soon
Some were accomplished musi-
after.
cians. Others were beginners.
To my great relief, I learned I
could carry a tune.
16
The Tijuana Cultural Center, also known as La Bola for the sphere that houses an IMAX theater, is a cultural hub.
And then the chorus was in-
vited to sing with the Tijuana
Opera at its debut — to perform
scenes from Gaetano Donizetti’s
“Elixir of Love.”
José Medina was the opera’s
artistic director. He also sang the
lead role, Nemorino. The San
Diego Opera loaned him the set,
and the Bellas Artes Opera in
Mexico City loaned the costumes.
For his own outfit, José raided
his mother’s closet.
“My costume from Mexico City
didn’t fit. I was probably fatter
than I am now. So I used my moth-
er’s pants.”
José has sung in Italy, Spain,
Germany and at Lincoln Center in
New York City. He’s been a stage
manager and set designer for
operas around the world.
But he lights up in a special
way when he looks back at that
August weekend when Tijuana’s
opera was born.
“Like we say it in Mexico: La
primera piedra, la primera
semilla.”
That translates to the first
stone, the first seed.
He says his city needed the
opera.
“The thing is that Tijuana is in
the middle of two worlds,” he said.
“And that’s why we’re here. To try
to do something for it. To get
better.”
He said that at the end of the
1990s, Tijuana was a conflictive
city, but it had talented singers.
I asked what he meant by con-
flictive.
“Well, we all know the drug
dealing and the immigration
problem and all of this. So that
makes it a difficult city, conflic-
tive. Very, very difficult you know.”
As I entered the Cecut stage
that night, I could scarcely believe
it was me up there.
Rushing around with a white
apron tied around my waist and a
red kerchief on my head. Singing
before more than 1,000 people.
I forgot about drug traffickers
and violence. About deadlines and
newspapers.
On that night, I wasn’t just an
observer, but a participant. I had
an onstage family and friends in
the audience. All I heard was
music and my heart soared.
A TURNING POINT
Still, I wondered about my
place in Tijuana. Even after living
here for seven years, I’d have
pangs of homesickness at the
strangest times.
I felt unsettled. I wondered
where my life was headed.
I was 47 and had never owned a
place of my own. And my profes-
sional life seemed to have overtak-
en my personal one.
Even on weekends and holi-
days, I’d drop everything to cover
the latest breaking news story.
And then came the 2000 U.S.
presidential election — the year
that Al Gore narrowly lost to
George W. Bush.
I signed up for an absentee
ballot. But it didn’t arrive until the
election was over.
I didn’t feel like a citizen of
anywhere.
I was a nobody in Mexico.
And a nobody in the United
States.
My reporter friend Dora Elena
talked about my dilemma.
“It’s like suddenly you were
filled with nostalgia for going back
to your country,” she said. “I
thought, Sandra is making a mis-
take, because she has many advan-
tages here. ... Sometimes you’d say
that you might want to go back to
Washington, which seemed totally
out of line. Because you were now
rooted here. You are from here.
You’ve been here for longer than
other places where you’ve lived.
And if you go back to Washington,
you’ll feel out of place.”
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
In the end, I decided to move.
Not back to Washington, the
place I had always called home.
But to Imperial Beach, the small
coastal city in San Diego County
whose southern tip hugs the bor-
der.
I bought a condominium in a
modest neighborhood. It was just
7 miles from my house to the bor-
der. It was by a bike path, near the
ocean — so close to Tijuana that
at night I could see the lights on
the city’s hillsides.
The decision wasn’t easy.
Most of my friends were in
Tijuana, including Angela, whose
family had become part of my life.
And there were logistical
things to consider, too.
I had to join the lines of drivers
who squeezed through the inter-
national port of entry to go to and
from work. Each day, more than
80,000 commuters poured north
through San Ysidro. The same
number crossed in the other direc-
tion.
The crossing wasn’t too diffi-
cult in the summer of 2001.
At the peak of rush hour, the
northbound wait was often under
an hour. And my waits were usu-
ally shorter because I drove
against the rush.
To speed things even more, I
signed up for a U.S. program
called SENTRI.
It allowed me to use a fast lane
reserved for frequent border
crossers. The program was open
to anyone who passed a back-
ground check, had a U.S. passport
or visa and could pay a $129 annu-
al fee.
I adapted quickly. I found I was
comfortable living in two worlds.
And, for a while, it all seemed to
work. My Tijuana friends crossed
to see me, and I crossed to see
them.
And then, overnight, the world
changed.
On Sept. 11, 2001, a few months
after I moved, the easy binational
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
PEGGY PEATTIE U-T FILE
lifestyle that so many Mexicans
and Americans enjoyed came to
an abrupt end.
The terrorist attacks left al-
most 3,000 people dead and
plunged the United States into
war.
When I drove into Tijuana
that morning, I found a ghost
town.
The usual lines of cars and
pedestrians waiting to get into
the United States had vanished.
But hours later, the northbound
border lines began forming again.
They had to.
Crossing the border — or
going to el otro lado — is so much
a part of life here that it couldn’t
COURTESY OF SANDRA DIBBLE
be totally stopped. Waits
stretched for hours because of
ABOVE: José Medina tightened security.
was artistic director Casual shoppers and visitors
of the Tijuana Opera stayed home. But binational
when it made its debut, workers and students and busi-
performing scenes from nesses had no choice. They had to
Gaetano Donizetti’s continue.
“Elixir of Love.” Sandra Two weeks after 9/11, I picked
Dibble was part of the up some U.S. friends at the bor-
chorus for the produc- der. We were on our way to a
tion that night. concert that I’d helped plan. It
was at the home of my Tijuana
BELOW: Dibble and friends Humberto and Norma.
Tijuana journalist Dora Their house is high on a hill.
Elena Cortes seated Through their big picture win-
together in a Tijuana dow, we could see the lights of the
restaurant. city all the way to the border.
We sat together on red folding
chairs, waiting for the music to
begin.
In the end, I The pianist was Jim Chute,
the classical music critic for the
decided to move. Union-Tribune. The guitarist was
my friend Paco, who was still
teaching and performing in Ti-
Not back to juana.
They played Bach, Beethoven
Washington, the and Vivaldi. Then a duet by the
18th century Italian composer
place I had always Luigi Boccherini.
Paco said they were in sync
that night.
called home. But “I didn’t speak English and he
didn’t speak Spanish,” Paco said
to Imperial Beach, of Jim, “but when I gave him the
music sheet and we began to play,
the small coastal we didn’t need to communicate in
any other way.
city in San Diego
“I liked his very calm way of
playing the pieces. ... We were in
musical agreement. We didn’t
County whose need any other language.”
The moment felt magical and
southern tip hugs intimate. A gentle counterpoint
to the horrific images of burning
the border.
towers and terrified victims of
Sept. 11.
“The host was just so hospita-
ble, and everybody was so wel-
coming and friendly,” Jim re-
membered.
“There was no awareness that
there was any border here. There
was no awareness that there was
something separating people. We
were just all there together.” ■
 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 D 17

The Arellano Félix organization grows weaker as

its top leaders fall, while threats strike new fears in
the highest echelons of law enforcement.
Everyday Tijuanans feel the effects of violence as
they mourn loved ones gone missing.

U-T ILLUSTRATION

CHAPTER 5 Some cops try to pull them over for

a routine traffic stop. And the
shooting begins.
The other story has the officers
working for the Sinaloa cartel.
U P H E AVA L A N D B R U TA L V I O L E N C E H I T T H E C A R T E L S In that story, Ramón’s death is a
hit, not a twist of fate.
We’ll probably never know what
really happened that day. Like so
many crimes involving the under-
n a sunny Sunday afternoon in February 2002, Ramón Arellano world of drug traffickers, there’s no
Félix — the No. 2 man in the Arellano Félix drug cartel — was tidy public resolution.
But the next blow to the cartel
shot dead. Photographs show his corpse sprawled outside a — the hit from which it didn’t re-
cover — is well documented.
pharmacy in the Pacific coast city of Mazatlán. A semiautomatic A month after Ramón’s death,
Mexican soldiers surrounded a
pistol lies a few feet away, with the numeral 2 painted in red on two-story house in a quiet cul-de-
sac in the central city of Puebla.
the handle. Nearby is the body of the cop who shot him. Ramón’s older brother, Benjamín
— the cartel’s CEO — was there
Ramón Arellano’s death and the shocking events that followed visiting his family.
that year would eventually lead to the collapse of one of the Sometime after midnight, 15
men in combat fatigues burst
world’s most feared drug cartels. through the door.
They found Benjamín in bed
But that kingpin theory? The idea that drug trafficking and with his wife. She pulled a gun. He
persuaded her to put it down.
violence would end once the cartel’s leaders were gone? The man who founded the cartel
and oversaw its operations for so
It turned out to be wrong. many years surrendered without a
struggle.
Instead, the violence in Tijuana was about to escalate.
There are two stories about how Ramón Arellano was killed. PLATA O PLOMO
Sometimes it seemed like I was
One has him traveling to Mazatlán to kill a rival in the Sinaloa reporting from two cities.
The Tijuana where I spent so
cartel. He and his men turn the wrong way down a one-way street. much of my free time — where
people raised families, celebrated
holidays and dreamed of a brighter
future. And the Tijuana where the
bloody rivalries of drug traffickers
spilled onto city streets, where
shifts of power in the hidden under-
world pierced the surface in unex-
pected and often shocking ways.
It wasn’t always apparent, but
in the mid-2000s, danger hovered
over Baja California like a dark
cloud.
Antonio Martinez Luna was the
state attorney general at the time.
He routinely received death
threats.
“Every day, every day, every
day,” he said.
At one point, Martinez Luna got
a tip that 150 people were coming
to kill him. He had a half-dozen
bodyguards, who couldn’t possibly
hold off such a large group.
So he created a hideout in his
office.
“The rooftop or the top of the
ceiling of my room had those
boards, those squares, and I got a
ladder,” he said.
He removed two squares in a
closet ceiling and figured out how
to climb in, pull the ladder up after
him and replace the ceiling
NOROESTE / MAZATLÁN squares.
Officials gather near the bodies of Ramón Arellano Félix (background) and Sinaloa state police “So I slept there for three nights
agent Angel Antonia Arias after a shootout in February 2002, in Mazatlán, Mexico. until we were able to determine if it
was true or not. I had to assume it
ILLUSTRATION ABOVE: A Reuters/Mexico attorney general office’s photo of brothers Benjamín was true.”
(left) and Ramón Arellano Félix and a Getty Images engraving of a tigríllo, the nickname of With his two older brothers out
brother Francisco Javier Arellano Félix, “El Tigríllo.” of the picture, the youngest Arel-
18
lano brother, Francisco Javier
Arellano Félix, was now leading the
cartel. He was called El Tigrillo —
the jungle cat.
But the cartel’s hierarchy had
weakened, and El Tigrillo was
starting to lose control. Rivals from
Sinaloa were jockeying for power.
The criminal underworld infil-
trated every level of law enforce-
ment. Nobody knew whom to trust.
Drug traffickers paid or pres-
sured police to share critical securi-
ty information, guard drug ship-
ments or carry out kidnappings
and assassinations.
I learned a new expression:
plata o plomo. Silver or lead. In
other words: Take the bribe or take
the bullet.
Steve Duncan, the former Cali-
fornia law enforcement agent who
served on the Arellano Task Force,
understood the challenges his
Mexican colleagues faced.
“It’s a different reality down
there,” he said. “They’re not as
well-equipped as a drug trafficker.
So they can’t take them on like we
take them on here in the United
States. They don’t get training;
(the) average education is prob-
ably sixth grade.”
He said Mexican reports and
evidence were unavailable, and
Mexican officers would not testify
in the United States unless they
were coerced or wanted revenge.
They were afraid they would be
killed.
“Most (Mexican) city and state
cops live in the areas that they
serve,” Duncan said. “The traffick-
ers know where they live, where
their kids go to school, where their
wives work. And when you’re tak-
ing on 10 armored vehicles with
guys totally tacked out in tactical
gear, you have to pick your battles.”
Talking with Steve Duncan
reminded me of a personal en-
counter I had with a police officer
soon after I moved to Tijuana. My
car had been stolen, and the soft-
spoken patrolman consoled me as I
wept in his car.
He talked about his family and
his love for sports.
Did he, too, end up in the grips
of drug traffickers?
FAMILY TIES
By this time, I’d reported on the
border for more than nine years,
but going home still meant trav-
eling to Washington, D.C. That’s
where I went for holidays and birth-
days. It was a special occasion if my
family came out here.
When my brother Charles vis-
ited from Baltimore, I’d take him to
Hidalgo Market to buy tamales.
Charles loves to cook. We’d join the
crowd of shoppers and squeeze
past covered stalls filled with the
foods and fragrances of traditional
Mexico.
I asked him if he told people
back east that he had a sister who
lives in Tijuana; he said he did.
What’s the reaction?
“They look a little worried,”
Charles said. “I tell them it’s great.
Tijuana is fabulous. They should
go.
“It’s nice to be in a foreign coun-
try that’s so close to the States. I
mean, you just sort of cross the
border and you’re in another world.
That’s fascinating to me.”
In 2003, my 80-year-old mother
flew in for a visit.
Cleo Dibble was a diplomat’s
wife who had traveled all her life.
She’d taken me skiing in the
Swiss Alps. Swimming in the Medi-
terranean. Wandering through the
ruins of the ancient Greek Acropo-
lis. Now I was showing her a place
that I had come to love — a gritty
Mexican border city that she never
imagined visiting.
For breakfast one day, we met
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
my reporter friend Dora Elena at
La Espadaña. It’s in the upscale
Rio Zone and is filled with touches
of old Mexico.
Handmade corn tortillas. Cafe
de la olla, flavored with brown
sugar and cinnamon. Eggs bathed
in spicy brown mole sauce.
My mother and my friend
didn’t speak the same language.
But they somehow reminded me
of each other — both strong, inde-
pendent women who embraced
life and didn’t back down.
Dora Elena remembers that
breakfast.
“She seemed like a very elegant
woman, very refined,” she said.
“She seemed like a woman who
was very sure of herself. ... I felt like
you were very happy that she had
come to visit Tijuana. ... I had the
impression that you felt more
protected with your mother here,
like you were returning to your
childhood, no?”
She laughed at the thought.
My mother and I ended that
day in eastern Tijuana, off a dirt
road at my friend Angela’s little
house. She prepared a special
treat for us: potato tacos, deep
fried and served with lettuce,
avocado and salsa.
My mother usually held fast to
her exacting European tastes. She
hadn’t tried much Mexican food,
but she thought Angela’s tacos
were delicious.
Food builds bridges, it seems,
even across the most distant
borders.
HOPE TURNS TO RESOLVE
It had been six years since
Adriana Hodoyan’s oldest brother
went missing. Alex was abducted
as his mother was trying to drive
him to safety in San Diego.
Cristina Palacios de Hodoyan had
been searching for her son ever
since.
Adriana said one day her
mother got a call.
It was an agent with the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Adminis-
tration. They wanted Cristina to
go to San Diego for a meeting.
It had been nearly two decades
since the youngest and oldest
Hodoyan brothers had fallen
under the grip of the Arellanos.
Alfredo was now in a Mexican
prison, sentenced to 50 years for
killing a federal police commander
who dared to speak out against
the Arellanos.
Alex hadn’t been heard from
since he was dragged from his
mother’s arms. The family as-
sumed he was dead. But Cristina
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
PEGGY PEATTIE U-T FILE
HOWARD LIPIN U-T FILE
held onto a flicker of hope that he
still might be alive.
Adriana went with her mother
to the meeting in San Diego. Alexis,
Alex’s daughter, went too.
“Alex was swimming with the
fishes,” Adriana said, quoting a
federal agent who talked to them.
Adriana said her mother
couldn’t absorb the news at first.
“I guess it was probably like a
month or two months later that she
came to realize that he was gone,”
Adriana said.
Without hope for herself,
Cristina found solace in helping
other families search for missing
relatives. She marched alongside
AP
them as they walked silently
TOP: Workers prepare through the streets, holding pic-
for the day at Tijuana’s tures of their loved ones.
Mercado Hidalgo filling She cut a dramatic figure in the
bins and cleaning chiles, crowd — a tiny chain-smoking
sweeping around their woman with big glasses and a mane
stalls and hanging pi- of thick gray hair. Her days as a
natas. Shoppers can find country club matron were long
all they need for tradi- gone.
tional Mexican cooking. I covered several of those silent
marches. I remember one in par-
CENTER: Francisco ticular, when hundreds of people
Javier Arellano Félix, carried sunflowers in honor of a
the youngest Arellano 27-year-old television executive
brother, is escorted by who had been gunned down in
the U.S. Drug Enforce- front of her home. It was just
ment Agency after being around the corner from the Hodoy-
captured on his yacht in ans’ house.
in 2006. Six months earlier, her brother
had been shot to death — in the
BELOW: Francisco Or- same spot.
tiz Franco, a journalist
for the newsweekly Zeta, A JOURNALIST IS KILLED
was killed by gunmen in On June 22, 2004, the Tijuana
June 2004. His brother newsweekly Zeta was the target of
suspects it was in retali- another brutal crime. That’s the
ation for an article he investigative publication whose
wrote on the Arellanos. editor — Jesús Blancornelas — was
badly wounded in an attack in 1997.
This time, it happened across
the street from the Big Boy Restau-
rant where I met friends and
sources for coffee.
Lauro Ortiz was in the Zeta
office that day writing a story when
the call came in.
A staff member had been shot.
Lauro immediately called his older
brother Francisco, who was out of
the Zeta office on sick leave.
Francisco didn’t answer.
Blancornelas sent a photogra-
pher and Lauro to the crime scene.
“As we get out of the car, we can
see several reporters, and just with
their expressions, they tell me
everything,” Lauro said. “I walk a
few more feet and I see the car, and
my heart starts racing.
“An agent tries to stop me, but I
push aside the yellow tape, and I
keep walking. ... I walk once or
twice around the car. I’m doubting,

Families of those gone missing in Tijuana sometimes held silent marches, where people wore white and held photos of their relatives.
not quite understanding. But I see
that it’s my brother there.”
Lauro said he immediately
called Blancornelas.
“I tell him, it’s Pancho,” he said.
Pancho was the nickname Lauro
used for his brother.
News outlets reported that a
masked gunman shot Francisco
Ortiz Franco after he had buckled
his two children into his car. He
was shot in the chest, head and
neck by .38-caliber bullets fired
through the car window. His 10-
year-old son and 8-year-old daugh-
ter jumped out of the back seat
and ran until someone pulled them
to safety.
Francisco was one of Zeta’s
founders. His death hit Blancor-
nelas especially hard.
Adela Navarro was in the office
that day. She’s now the news-
paper’s co-editor.
“Blancornelas wept, he broke
down. He was on the verge of clos-
ing this newspaper,” she said.
“He said to me, Adela, Adelita
— he called me Adelita — I want to
shut it down because what do I
want? What follows? That they kill
you? No, no, no. I have to under-
stand that in this country there are
no conditions for the kind of jour-
nalism that we are doing.”
Francisco was the third staff
member killed since Zeta was
founded in 1980.
“I remember trying to find
strength somewhere because we
were all profoundly affected that
day,” Adele said. “We told Blancor-
nelas that we have to continue, you
cannot close the newspaper, we
have to push forward, for Pancho,
for Hector, for Luis, for everything
that has happened to us.”
Lauro believes his brother was
killed because he wrote an article
that angered the Arellanos.
“He was revealing how drug
traffickers, people from organized
crime, were using ID cards from
the Attorney General’s Office,” he
said. “What he did was tell of the
process of when they went to get
their photographs taken, where
they were taken, and how much
they were paid.”
Lauro warned his brother
against putting his byline on the
story. But Francisco shrugged him
off.
“He did not realize that he was
in very dangerous terrain,” Lauro
said.
Adela said Francisco’s murder-
ers have never been named, much
less brought to justice.
‘LIKE A VOLCANO’
Julián Leyzaola was keeping
track of what was happening in
Tijuana. And he didn’t like what he
saw.
“It was like a volcano,” he said.
“From the outside, it looked peace-
ful. But inside, the lava was cook-
ing.
In 2004, Leyzaola was leading a
state police force of 400 officers. He
was a trim, athletic man in his
mid-40s. He’d spent 25 years in the
Mexican army. He retired young
and started working for the state.
There was something about the
way he talked. Softly, but with
intensity and conviction. Like
someone who expected to have his
orders obeyed.
People still called him by his
military title — teniente coronel —
lieutenant colonel.
Leyzaola was outraged to see so
many crimes going unpunished in
Tijuana.
“I remember how terrible it
was,” he said. “I knew how the
armed groups moved, the convoys
for pickups, five or six pickups. ... I
would drive around at night pursu-
ing them. But I never ran into
anyone because the municipal
police would advise them that I
was there.
Leyzaola remembers the first
threat he got from the Arellanos.
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
“I remember toward the end of
2004. That’s when I got my first
threat from the Arellanos, about
December 2004. They sent me a
message that I should calm down
because I was hurting interests. ...
that it was not worth my interfer-
ing, that I should allow them to
work, and if not, they were going to
kill me.”
Leyzaola trusted very few peo-
ple. He thought many of his col-
leagues in Baja California’s law
enforcement world were corrupt.
Or too scared to confront the
criminals.
“It was very difficult because
the Tijuana municipal police
worked directly with criminal
groups,” Leyzaola said. “They
protected them to the extent that,
when they went to kill or were
going to kidnap someone, the
lookouts were the police. It was
terrible.”
LOST AND FOUND
I rarely got lost in Tijuana. But
one autumn evening, in the midst
of all this turmoil, I lost all sense of
direction.
I was driving to my friend Ange-
la’s house. She had moved again,
this time to El Pipila, a poor neigh-
borhood on the eastern outskirts
of the city.
Night was falling, and the dust
was so thick that I couldn’t see
where I was going.
In those few moments of uncer-
tainty, my fear gave way to some-
thing harder to define — a connec-
tion to a city that I couldn’t see —
but that I felt all around me.
When I went home that night,
this is what I wrote in my diary:
It is Tuesday, and I am alone in
a city that is not my own. So many
dreams rise here, so many hearts
beat, so many lights, but all I see is
dust, like a fog rising, rising lights
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
DAVID MAUNG AP
ABOVE: Julián Leyzaola
led a state police force of
400 officers in 2004. He
was discouraged by the
unpunished crimes
happening in Tijuana
and also received threats
from the Arellanos.
BELOW: Forensic experts
work at the scene where
Francisco Ortiz Franco
was shot through the
window of his car in 2004
after buckling his chil-
dren into the back seat.
On stage that
night, I listened
to Juliet sing
the famed aria
“Je Veux Vivre.”
I want to live.
The words just
made me want
to cry.
19
LAURA EMBRY U-T FILE
PEGGY PEATTIE U-T FILE
of little houses surround me,
longing rays of hope. Where am I
going? I love it here and I am not
sure why. The lights rise and fall,
as cars drive up and down. I can’t
see the faces, or even cars. Just
lights and dust.
CANCER RETURNS
For months, Angela hadn’t
been feeling well. She didn’t com-
plain much to me. But she was too
tired to cross the border. She told
her youngest daughter it was as
though her stomach was on fire.
She couldn’t keep down food.
The family took her to doctors,
but she didn’t improve. I was
worried.
Angela had survived uterine
cancer long before I knew her. But
she’d been skipping her checkups.
I asked a friend for advice. She
headed a nonprofit that focused
on women’s health. They sent
Angela to one of the city’s top
oncologists.
A few weeks later, I ran into
that friend at the Cultural Center.
I was getting ready to go on stage
for another performance by the
Tijuana Opera. This time it was
Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet,”
and I was a noblewoman.
Angela’s cancer had returned,
my friend told me. And it had
spread. There was nothing to be
done.
On stage that night, I listened
to Juliet sing the famed aria “Je
Veux Vivre.” I want to live. The
words just made me want to cry.
The next time I saw Angela, we
talked about her visit with the
oncologist. But we never men-
tioned the subject of death.
Angela weakened as the days
passed. I went to see her as often
as I could.
A month after her diagnosis, I
drove to her house to celebrate
New Year’s Eve.
She had enough energy to
prepare pozole, a stew made with
pork, chiles and hominy.
There was warm, sweet ponche
— a cinnamon-scented punch
with fresh and dried fruits.
And there was music — joyful
norteño rhythms from a popular
group called Los Tucanes de
Tijuana — blasting from a port-
able radio.
That night, Angela dropped
her usual reserve and laughed as
she danced with her husband. I
was in awe as I watched them. She
wasn’t worrying about the future
or regretting the past. She was
dying — but she was teaching me
about living.
A few weeks later, Angela could
no longer move from the bed that
20
Tijuana experienced a real estate boom in the mid-2000s, with rows of tract homes taking over what used to be olive groves.
filled most of the bedroom she and
her husband shared.
Her children, grandchildren
and sisters visited constantly. I
did, too.
On my last visit, I sat by her bed.
I struggled to find the right words,
but there was really only one thing
to say. You know I love you.
She was too weak to speak.
She nodded yes.
Angela died three months into
the new year. She was 50 years old.
Six months younger than I was.
Angela’s daughter Angelita
likes to remember a song her
mother used to sing when times
were tough. It was popular in the
1960s, made famous by Los Her-
manos Carrion.
“ ‘Release your sorrows to the
wind,’ she would always say, ‘the
wind will carry them away.’ And
she would start singing and danc-
ing. I always remember the song.”
CARTEL CAPTURE
In August 2006, the Arellano
cartel’s latest leader — El Tigrillo
— was captured.
What got him was his passion
for deep-sea fishing.
DEA agents had been on El
Tigrillo’s trail for more than a year.
Finally, they managed to put track-
ers on his 43-foot yacht, the Dock
Holiday.
Then they waited until the boat
crossed into international waters.
El Tigrillo was chasing marlin
when the U.S. Coast Guard inter-
cepted the Dock Holiday off the
coast of Cabo San Lucas.
With the three most powerful
Arellano brothers either dead or in
prison, the cartel got a new leader,
an Arellano nephew named Fer-
nando Sanchez. The violence
escalated because Fernando
Sanchez had trouble controlling his
deputies.
One of the rogue deputies was
Teodoro Garcia Simental. Every-
one just called him El Teo.
El Teo was a longtime assassin
for the cartel, but he’d also begun
targeting families for extortion and
kidnapping.
The violence that was once
limited to criminals and cops now
spread to a new class of victims —
middle-class and well-to-do mem-
bers of Tijuana society who had no
connection to organized crime.
REAL ESTATE BOOM
In the mid-2000s, Tijuana was
growing in every direction.
In the eastern part of the city,
rows of tiny tract houses took over
former olive groves. Far to the
west, along the scenic drive over-
looking the Pacific Ocean, the
landscape also changed. Housing
prices had skyrocketed in the U.S.,
and Americans were taking cash
out of their homes to acquire prop-
erty on the Mexican coast. Condo
towers rose almost overnight.
One crisp fall day in 2006, I
passed a billboard showing the
smiling face of real estate magnate
Donald Trump.
Trump Ocean Baja Resort was
advertised as the region’s biggest,
most luxurious oceanside devel-
opment. It was going to be built on
a cliff with spectacular views.
Hugo Torres watched the proj-
ect carefully. He owns the Rosarito
Beach Hotel, just a few miles down
the coast from the Trump project.
“I thought there was going to be
a big competition,” Torres said,
“because Trump is a well-known
developer.”
The Rosarito Beach Hotel has
been in Torres’ family since the
1920s. It’s just a half-hour drive
from the border, and Americans
have been vacationing there for
generations.
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Not one to be left behind, Torres
built a high-rise condo tower next
door to his hotel.
In late 2006, Torres attended a
sales event for the Trump project
held at a luxury hotel in San Diego.
Eighty percent of the condos in
the first tower were snapped up
that day, even though it hadn’t
broken ground.
I asked him if he bought one.
“No, I certainly did not. I didn’t
buy,” Torres said. “No, I just went
to see how well they did because we
need to compete.”
The Trump project drew inter-
national attention to the stunning
Pacific coastline. Who better than
a flashy New York real estate mag-
nate to tell the world that Baja
California was a savvy investment?
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
PEGGY PEATTIE U-T FILE
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
But an opposite trend was also
taking place — far more quietly —
out of the public eye.
Wealthy Mexicans were buying
homes in San Diego because they
no longer felt safe in Tijuana.
The violence could no longer be
ignored.
The anti-crime marches grew
larger. The biggest drew tens of
thousands of demonstrators. They
dressed in white and marched for
16 days across the state.
Members of the state legisla-
ture called for the military to be
sent to Tijuana.
THE MILITARY ARRIVES
On the second day of 2007, I
took a break from covering the
violence and drove to the port of
San Felipe on the Sea of Cortes. It’s
about four hours from Tijuana.
I was there to report on an
endangered Mexican porpoise —
the vaquita marina. I felt revived
by the desert air and the starkly
beautiful landscape.
But then I got a call from my
reporter friend Dora Elena.
Mexico’s newly elected presi-
dent, Felipe Calderón, had sent
3,300 soldiers and federal agents to
Baja California. They called it
Operación Tijuana.
It was a huge development.
I found an Internet cafe and
wrote a quick story. Then I headed
back to the city to do more report-
SANDRA DIBBLE ing.
I had seen federal operations
ABOVE: Mexican sol- come and go but never anything of
diers stand guard out- this magnitude.
side a police station in The military disarmed the
January 2007 after Presi- entire municipal police force. Sol-
dent Felipe Calderón diers set up checkpoints through-
sent the military to the out the city.
city to disarm the munic- When Calderón visited Tijuana
ipal police force. a couple of months later, even the
most prominent guests had to pass
BELOW: Flowers adorn through metal detectors to hear
Angela Rangel’s grave. him speak.
The uterine cancer she I took notes from the press
had survived returned section.
and spread, and she died “Either we act now, or we will
at age 50. lose Mexico,” Calderón said.
“What’s at stake is the future of the
nation.”
Back then, I didn’t have time to
consider the magnitude of the
moment. I was just trying to make
deadline. ■
 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 21

As the violence deepens and the fatigue of the

recession starts to weigh on them, Tijuana
residents fight back against the gloom — from
doctors staging walkouts to artists reclaiming
venues to young people venturing out.

U-T ILLUSTRATION

CHAPTER 6 Great Depression swept across the

world. Tijuana was hit hard. The
maquiladoras cut back production.
Fifty thousand jobs were lost. The
real estate bubble burst.
A CITY ON EDGE AND UNDER SIEGE A darkness descended on Ti-
juana, and the dawn felt so very far
away.
On a Friday morning in April
2008, I headed to the state govern-
hen I look back at my time reporting in Tijuana, ment building in Tijuana to cover
the latest anti-crime demon-
one period stands out — the three-year window from stration. When I walked in, I saw
2008 through 2010. It was a period of violence and ter- protesters crowded into the inner
courtyard. They looked angry and
ror on a scale the city had never known. scared — but also determined.
At least 20 doctors had been
The Arellano cartel was growing weaker. A break- kidnapped that year, including the
head of a major hospital.
away faction was now allied with the Sinaloa cartel. Now they were demanding that
the government do its job — pro-
Public displays of brutality were common. tect them.
Dr. Eric Rosenberg headed the
I’d never set out to be a police reporter. But almost medical society back then — just as
he does today. He led the doctors in
every day, I found myself covering a shootout or a po- their 12-hour walkout. His thick
lice funeral or a dramatic arrest. cloud of graying curls made him
easy to pick out in the crowd.
Police were so scared that they wore black ski Not long ago, I met up with
Rosenberg at his wife’s medical
masks and traveled in caravans. Heavily armed sol- office in the Rio Zone, the city’s
bustling and upscale business
diers in brown camouflage seemed to be everywhere. district.
Rosenberg’s wife is a doctor, too.
But it wasn’t just the violence that was putting the He told me about a call she got
back then — right in the small room
city on edge. where we were sitting.
In 2008, the worst economic downturn since the “There was a young girl’s voice
saying, ‘Mother, I’ve been kid-
napped. Help me,’ ” Rosenberg
said. His wife called their daughter,
and she answered her cellphone.
“She was at school.”
Rosenberg described the call as
typical of the time. He said people
started hearing that some doctors
were so afraid they were leaving the
city or that other doctors paid
ransoms to free family members
from kidnappers.
The Rosenbergs made a plan in
case they became targets.
If one of them were kidnapped,
“then we wouldn’t pay ransom. We
agreed on that.”
I asked why.
“The moral aspect of the situa-
tion, and it would break us finan-
cially,” Rosenberg said.

A BATTLE OF THE CARTELS

A week after the doctors’ pro-
test, a gunbattle off a major
thoroughfare took the violence to a
frightening new level.
By this time, Lt. Col. Julián
Leyzaola was in charge of the Ti-
juana police.
Leyzaola was a retired army
officer who had gone on to com-
mand a state police unit.
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE He’d believed for years that
The Mexican military joined with police to try to regain control of the violence that had organized crime had infiltrated
consumed Tijuana in the mid-2000s with patrols and crackdowns. Tijuana police. Now that he was
chief, he was determined to do
ILLUSTRATION ABOVE: A David Maung photo of Tijuana Mayor Jorgé Ramos and Police something about it.
Chief Julián Layzaola walking with coffins. Getty Images photos of bullets, raining on the city Tijuana had never seen such a
during a violent time, and a La Paz postcard, the town where El Teo was captured. hands-on police chief. Leyzaola
22
joined his officers in chasing sus-
pects. He even made arrests him-
self. He called drug traffickers filthy
pigs. Cockroaches. Scum.
Leyzaola had received death
threats before, but now the threats
included his family. He moved
them to California, where they
would be safe. To protect himself,
he stayed at the military base south
of downtown.
Leyzaola was asleep at the base
when the gunbattle began just
before 2 in the morning that April.
Noise from his police radio jolted
him awake.
The chief made a rash decision
— to drive across town to the
shooting scene. His bodyguards
scrambled to catch up.
Years later, Leyzaola and I
would sit down together at a busy
Tijuana restaurant overlooking the
Pacific Ocean. I asked him to de-
scribe that day for me. His memo-
ries were still fresh.
“There were dead people every-
where, a mass of bodies, on top of
cars, on the ground, on top of
walls,” he said.
More reports of gunshot victims
started coming in, and Leyzaola
went to investigate those, too.
“I think after those 25 that I saw,
there were more,” he said. “About
40, more or less.”
Later that morning, I rushed to
a news conference at the state
attorney general’s office.
It turned out that a split in the
Arellano cartel had triggered the
gunbattle.
The cartel’s latest leader — an
Arellano nephew named Fernando
Sanchez — was far weaker than his
uncles. So El Teo, the rogue Arel-
lano lieutenant who had been
kidnapping Tijuanenses, was grow-
ing more and more powerful and
forging a relationship with the rival
Sinaloa cartel.
Leyzaola said the two camps
fought it out that day.
“The Arellanos stopped having
strength,” he said. “They were
finished. After that confrontation,
the Arellanos stopped existing.”
Later that day, I drove to the
place where the gunfire began. It
was off a major boulevard in east-
ern Tijuana, near a rustic place
where I’d sometimes buy sugar
cane juice.
Yellow tape kept people from
entering the crime scene, but I
could see bullet holes in the wall
and windows of a nearby liquor
store.
Life was already resuming its
Saturday rhythms.
Families had gathered in a park
just blocks away. They were laying
out food and decorating picnic
tables with balloons and piñatas.
The news from Tijuana that day
was filled with images of blood-
shed. But I still hold to my personal
memory — of families celebrating,
of people who refused to relinquish
their hard-won moments of happi-
ness.
GROWING TOLL
The U.S. and Mexico signed an
agreement in 2008 known as the
Merida Initiative. The goal was to
weaken the grip of drug traffickers
and organized crime in Mexico and
Central America. It was a huge
commitment — $1.9 billion.
Mexico got money to reform its
judicial system, to improve police
training and to buy high-tech
equipment. And U.S. and Mexican
law enforcement agencies worked
more closely than ever to capture
cartel leaders.
El Teo was one of their targets.
El Teo’s brutality often played
out in public. His underlings
opened fire in broad daylight. On
busy streets. In popular restau-
rants. Bodies were mutilated,
dissolved in lye, hung from highway
bridges.
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Early one Monday in Septem-
ber, 12 corpses were discovered
outside an elementary school.
Some had their tongues cut out.
The youngest among the dead was
15.
On a Sunday in December, nine
decapitated bodies were discov-
ered near some power lines in
eastern Tijuana. I knew the spot
well — I used to pass it on my way
to Angela’s house.
Three of the dead were cops —
members of Leyzaola’s police
force.
El Teo and his followers started
targeting small-business owners.
At my favorite taco shop, the
young owner who always greeted
me with a great big smile disap-
peared one day. He’d been kid-
napped, I was told.
He was released, but he was
never the same. When I caught
sight of him, he stayed in the back-
ground. And he didn’t smile.
For the first time since I arrived
in Tijuana, I felt burned out.
The news industry was in tran-
sition, and the recession had hit
the Union-Tribune hard. By now, I
was the only one covering Tijuana.
Writing about brutality became
a numbers game.
How many today? Were the
bodies mutilated? Dissolved in
tubs of caustic soda? Strung up
from highway bridges? Dumped
on a rural road?
After work, I’d go home and fall
on my couch, exhausted and rigid
with tension. A friend from Ti-
juana sometimes spent the night
in my extra bedroom. He was
trying to avoid the long lines at the
border in the morning — waits
that could now stretch for two
hours.
He was sweet and chatty, but I
didn’t want to talk. I just watched
“Seinfeld” reruns, night after
night.
Almost everyone I knew was
affected by the violence in one way
or another, including Paco, my
guitar-teaching friend.
“During that period many
people left,” Paco said. “Those who
could went to San Diego. Others
returned to Mexico City. As a
result, in 2008, out of 20 private
students I was left with three. It
was hard, very, very hard. And the
general atmosphere of violence
that you could see in restaurants,
in the streets, there was a certain
thickness you could feel in the air.”
I searched for other topics to
write about — stories that showed
different sides of Tijuana, stories
that were uplifting and hopeful.
I reported on the arrival of 1,000
teenage athletes for an interna-
tional taekwondo competition. I
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
DAVID MAUNG U-T FILE
cycled with a group of Tijuanenses
who took Wednesday night bike
rides, escorted by police.
I rode a roofless red bus through
the city’s tourist district — a poi-
gnant effort to bring back the visi-
tors who had stopped coming.
I needed to tell the stories of
people who kept going. Because
those stories kept me going, too.
DISTANCE AND TIME
Writing about Tijuana had
become so all-consuming that it
was hard to imagine anyplace else
existed. Every time I flew back to
Washington, D.C., for family visits,
I was catapulted into another
reality.
My mother was 85 years old and
having trouble walking. So before
dawn on a chilly May morning, I
drove her through Washington’s
silent streets to the hospital for a
knee replacement. As she was
wheeled away to the operating
room, we both burst into tears.
She recovered quickly and
returned to her townhouse and her
DAVID MAUNG U-T FILE tiny backyard filled with flowers.
But I was worried. She lived
alone. She needed help with er-
rands and shopping.
My brother Philo would soon be
moving to Rome with his family for
a new diplomatic assignment. My
brother Charles lived more than an
hour away in Baltimore.
And there I was at the border,
more than 2,500 miles away.
Over the years, I’d written about
so many people in Tijuana who
were far from home. But I’d rarely
stopped to consider the lives they’d
left behind. The family members
they still carried in their hearts.
The constant ache of being far
away as a parent grows old.
DAVID MAUNG U-T FILE Back in Tijuana, I was more
TOP: People take part careful about venturing out around
in a silent march the city, especially at night. Many
and candlelight vigil of my friends were more careful,
in Tijuana in 2008 too.
to protest crime as But some young Tijuanenses
violence continues, refused to give in to the fear that
holding signs with gripped their city.
photos of kidnapped “We also had fear, but we de-
loved ones. cided not to stay in our houses in
those days,” said Pedro Gabriel
Beas. He played keyboard with
CENTER: Ammunition
Tijuana’s Nortec Collective back
and weapons are
then.
displayed for journal-
The group’s favorite gathering
ists at Tijuana’s main
place was an old-fashioned bar just
military base, where
off Avenida Revolución. It was
news conferences were
called Dandy del Sur, and they
a common occurrence.
called it their office.
They’d stay at Dandy’s until the
BELOW: Some hailed early morning hours. Writers, poets
Tijuana Police Chief and painters hung out there, too.
Julián Leyzaola as a The Nortec Collective won
hero for trying to international recognition for its
clean up the police blend of techno and norteño music.
department, but It helped define a new Tijuana. The
others suspected him sound of a city that was gritty, edgy
of human rights abuses and rough — but also young and
for his aggressive joyous.
approach. Pedro Gabriel composed a piece
called “Dandy del Sur.” And sud-
denly new faces began showing up
at the bar.
In January 2009, a new bar
called La Mezcalera opened across
the street from Dandy’s.
La Mezcalera was a cantina but
for hipsters. It banned traditional
banda music — the tunes favored
by the criminal underworld.
More bars opened. Gradually, a
quiet downtown street became a
throbbing bar scene alive with the
energy of young people tired of
staying home. One of Nortec’s
songs told the story of this new
Tijuana. It was called “Tijuana
Makes Me Happy.”
TAKING AIM AT POLICE
Even as the downtown crowds
of young Tijuanenses grew, the
battle against drug traffickers
continued.
By this time, the Mexican mili-
tary was openly leading the fight. A
week rarely went by without a news

Arturo Rodriguez converted a warehouse into La Caja, a gallery with hidden doorways and compartments, where he could share art.
conference at the base near down-
town.
I always rushed there, eager to
see the day’s display.
It could be tall bales of marijua-
na as far as the eye could see. Or
tables with rows of high-powered
weapons and ammunition.
Sometimes soldiers paraded
their latest suspects as the news
cameras rolled.
Human rights groups criticized
the military’s growing role. To
have soldiers handling civilian law
enforcement was a recipe for disas-
ter.
But political and business
leaders applauded the unprece-
dented effort. So did many resi-
dents.
They saw Police Chief Leyzaola
as a hero. A man who was coura-
geous and honest. Tough enough
to take on drug traffickers and
clean up a police department
infested with organized crime.
But as the months passed and
more cops were arrested, another
picture emerged.
Families of the detainees said
their relatives were being held
without charges, tortured and
forced to confess to crimes they
hadn’t committed.
Some pointed the finger at
Leyzaola.
On March 27, 2009, Leyzaola
held a routine briefing with his
police commanders. When the
meeting was over, he ordered three
of them to stay behind.
Miguel Angel Mesina was one of
them.
“The chief’s bodyguards come
and take us by force, disarm us,”
Mesina said. “They take us out-
side, they make us board their
vehicles and take us to the installa-
tions of the 28th Infantry Battal-
ion.”
The officers were handcuffed,
blindfolded and interrogated for
hours, even though they hadn’t
been charged with a crime.
Mesina was accused of having
ties to El Teo.
“They said we were working for
one of the drug cartels. I said, no, I
am one of Julián Leyzaola’s men.
No, no, no, tell me whose people
you work for and how much they
pay you,” he said.
“They covered our mouths with
plastic bags to suffocate us. They
beat us, they gave us electric
shocks on our genitals. They made
us think they were going to kill us ...
and they were going to throw us on
some boulevard with a sign so
people would think it was organ-
ized crime.”
I was accustomed to seeing
lineups of drug suspects. But when
I started seeing high-ranking
police officers, it all began to seem
unreal.
Could this be happening?
Where was the line between good
and bad? Were they guilty or being
scapegoated?
Mesina and the others were
flown to a maximum-security
federal penitentiary in the state of
Nayarit, a thousand miles from
home.
They were never tried, and their
cases drew the attention of Am-
nesty International and the Inter-
American Human Rights Commis-
sion.
All of them were eventually
released.
Mesina was paid compensation
for his 17 months behind bars. But
he didn’t get his old job back. He
now earns his living selling second-
hand goods.
Leyzaola has repeatedly denied
the accusations of torture. I asked
him whether some of the officers
might have been innocent.
“Is it possible? It’s possible,” he
said. “The military conducted
most of the arrests of police. The
ones that I detained, it was be-
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
ALEXANDRE MENEGHINI ASSOCIATED PRESS
cause the federal attorney gener-
al’s office gave me the warrant.”
In 2011, Leyzaola was hired to
lead the police in another violent
city — Ciudad Juarez. It’s just
across the border from El Paso,
Texas.
Again, he campaigned against
police corruption. And violent
crimes fell in Juarez, too.
But again he was dogged by
complaints of human rights
abuses.
CAPTURING EL TEO
In 2010, the growing collabora-
tion between U.S. and Mexican
authorities paid off in a big way.
DEA agents had been on El
Teo’s trail for months and had
shared what they’d learned with
their Mexican counterparts.
Finally, electronic surveillance
of El Teo’s telephone led them to
an upscale neighborhood in La
Paz, in the state of Baja California
Sur.
Before dawn on Jan. 12, a team
of Mexican soldiers and federal
police approached the house
where El Teo was staying.
One of the most ruthless crime
bosses Tijuana had ever known
was surprised in his own bed. He
surrendered without a fight.
Almost immediately, the high-
profile kidnappings in Tijuana
stopped. The gruesome displays of
violence disappeared. The open
street battles died down.
But the killings continued.
LIGHTING THE WAY
Despite all this uncertainty,
residents started to push back. It
wasn’t an organized movement.
Just individuals finding their
strength and lighting their own
way through the darkness.
One of them was Arturo Rodri-
guez.
“Everybody was upset. Every-
body was tired. Everybody had the
need of seeing each other again,”
Arturo said.
“So at that point, I think that
that’s what everybody felt, that
they wanted to keep the city alive
and safe.”
Arturo makes his living fixing
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
DAVID MAUNG U-T FILE
ABOVE: Antonio
Escalante and two dozen
other artists cleaned up
Pasaje Rodriguez, filled
with abandoned store-
fronts, and created
galleries and studios as
a place to share culture.
BELOW: El Teo was
a major target for
authorities and known
for his brutality. He was
captured in La Paz
in 2010.
Antonio Escalante
and two dozen
other artists were
also reclaiming a
piece of their city.
They focused on
Pasaje Rodriguez,
an old passageway
off Avenida
Revolución, the
street where
American tourists
used to shop.
23
DAVID MAUNG U-T FILE
industrial containers. But his
passion has always been promot-
ing Tijuana artists. In 2008, he
shut down a tiny storefront gallery
he’d been operating near the city’s
racetrack. With the violence esca-
lating, people weren’t in the mood
for art.
But two years later, he re-
launched in an elaborately con-
verted warehouse filled with hid-
den doorways and compartments.
He called it La Caja— the box. It
was clearly a labor of love — and
an act of faith.
Tijuana’s mood was shifting.
Arturo could feel it.
“The common thing about us is
that we wanted to take the city
again by ourselves. And listen, it
wasn’t a thing of a leader or some-
one that was promoted.”
Antonio Escalante and two
dozen other artists were also
reclaiming a piece of their city.
They focused on Pasaje Rodri-
guez, an old passageway off
Avenida Revolución, the street
where American tourists used to
shop.
“When we arrived, it was very
dirty, abandoned,” he said. “We
found syringes left by people who
had come to inject themselves.”
He said the artists quietly
repaired the spaces and created
galleries and studios, “some of
them very special.”
I asked Antonio what he was
thinking at the time. Was he trying
to revitalize downtown?
“Curiously, I wasn’t thinking
anything. I knew something would
happen. It’s like when I step into
my studio to paint. When I go to
the studio, I don’t know what’s
going to happen because I work in
abstract,” he said. “We knew and
could see that something was
going to happen, but we did not
know just how.”
The renewed Pasaje Rodriguez
opened on an April evening in
2010.
“It was raining. I said, ‘This is
ruined, nobody will come.’ And
when I crossed the street to get to
the Pasaje, at the time we had
scheduled the opening, I was
struck at the sight of it being filled
with people. It was full in spite of
the rain. People were enjoying
what we were offering.”
CHANGING FORTUNES
One of the best parts of my job
was still driving the toll road that
leads from Tijuana to the cities of
Rosarito Beach and Ensenada,
the stretch that Trump and oth-
ers once promised would be the
world’s next glamourous destina-
tion.
I’d lower my window and watch
the Pacific Ocean meet the sky.
Shades of blue stretched all the
way to the horizon. I could smell
the air and feel the wind whipping
through my hair.
But for all its natural beauty,
the recession and the violence had
caused a downturn here, too.
Restaurants, shops and hotels
that were once filled with U.S.
visitors sat desolate and empty.
The highway was lined with the
frames of unfinished condo tow-
ers.
And the Trump Ocean Baja
Resort? It was just a hole in the
ground.
The developers had declared
bankruptcy. Trump had cut all
ties to the project and removed his
name. And the buyers were suing
to get back their deposits.
All across the region, so many
lives had been upended — some by
violence, others by the recession.
Tijuana seemed caught in a daily
struggle between hope and de-
spair.
As I drove around and re-
ported stories, I could see no clear
winner. ■
24 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022

The city faces continued challenges with violent

crime at the same time as its budding food scene
emerges and artists, innovators and ordinary
citizens lead the way toward revitalization.

U-T ILLUSTRATION

CHAPTER 7 Once he seized on the idea, he

was unstoppable.
“I gave 200 speeches to Kiwanis,
to Rotaries,” he said. “They want to
believe me. Suddenly everybody
T I J U A N A’ S R O C K Y R E B I R T H wanted to help me. ... It’s like it’s
happening again now. Everybody
wanted to believe in a dream.”
But Galicot couldn’t control the
violent reality of the city’s under-
ormer U.S. Vice President Al Gore came to Tijuana in 2010 for an world. Or the grisly crimes that
event designed to grab a lot of attention. would grab headlines once Tijuana
Innovadora was under way.
It was a two-week mega-production called Tijuana Inno- Tijuana Innovadora came as the
city was trying to turn a corner —
vadora — Innovative Tijuana. when it seemed like the drug vi-
olence might finally be brought
The idea was to counteract the stories about violence and under control.
I’d covered image campaigns
organized crime that had plagued the city for so many years. here before — efforts often led by
Galicot himself. But this was on a
And to stir civic pride and bring back investment — especially scale I’d never seen. It had the feel
in the maquiladora industry. of a huge pep rally, with Galicot as
chief cheerleader.
The event was the brainchild of José Galicot and his friends Celebrities flew in to speak at
the CECUT, the city’s beloved
— people with big imaginations and powerful connections. cultural center.
Al Gore.
“It was very hard in the beginning to convince the people Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
Retired CNN anchor Larry
that it could be done,” he said. “It hasn’t been done ever. And King.
The idea was to expose Tijua-
I didn’t have any credentials of doing something like that.” nenses to new ideas and world-
renowned personalities. And to
Galicot had owned La OH!, the nightclub where the Arel- have the personalities spread
lanos once partied. He had real estate and telecommunica- positive messages about the city.
“Especially nice to be here and
tions businesses — and homes on both sides of the border. to learn about this city,” Larry King
said at Innovadora. “So I promise
you, I will talk about Tijuana.”
Tijuana Innovadora had some-
thing for just about everyone. Gala
dinners. News conferences. Public
lectures on sustainability, technol-
ogy, urban planning, film. Exhibits
that showcased developments in
the maquiladora industry.
Enthusiastic young volunteers
guided VIP visitors through the
hallways of the CECUT.
The building was a hive of activ-
ity, but it also felt like a cocoon.
Outside on the streets, other reali-
ties were playing out.
The opening address was deliv-
ered by President Felipe Calderón.
It had been nearly four years since
he sent troops to Tijuana, and since
then the military’s role had gotten
even stronger. An army general was
now coordinating federal, state and
city law enforcement efforts
against the cartels. The gruesome
displays of corpses, the public
shootings, the kidnappings were
finally coming down.
Calderón told the crowd that
Tijuana was a clear example that
the problems and most difficult
challenges Mexico faced could be
overcome.
GUILLERMO ARIAS ASSOCIATED PRESS But on the sixth day of Tijuana
Former U.S. Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore speaks at a conference during Innovadora, crime returned to the
the Tijuana Innovadora festival in Tijuana on Oct. 14, 2010. headlines as though mocking the
president’s message.
ILLUSTRATION ABOVE: A 1988 Howard Lipin photo of the Tijuana Cultural Center in the Two headless corpses were
Zone Rio district and Getty Images renderings of a dance diagram, a map of Washington, found hanging from a highway
D.C., and cherry blossoms. The Capital is Sandra Dibble’s family home. bridge.

Four men were shot at a bar-
becue.
The city racked up 13 homicides
in less than two days.
But Tijuana Innovadora pow-
ered on. Don Pepe, as Galicot is
sometimes known, made sure of
that.
“Never surrender, like Church-
ill,” he said. “We will fight in the air.
We will fight in the sea. We will fight
in the land, but we will never sur-
render!”
At the closing ceremony, I
watched Don Pepe take his place
on an outdoor stage at the CECUT.
He was straight-faced, like a gen-
eral overseeing his troops.
The thousands of people down
below raised their arms in unison
and began a choreographed dance
to “Pa’ Bailar.” It was a recording
made by Julieta Venegas, a
Grammy-winning singer raised on
the border in Tijuana and South-
ern California.
It had been a tiring couple of
weeks. In fact, a tiring couple of
years. But the beat was contagious
and the crowd was jubilant. It was a
moment of relief and release. If I
hadn’t had to rush off to write my
story, I would have been tempted to
join in.
FINDING A NEW HOME
When I first came to the border,
Tijuana was a well-known corridor
for migrants heading to the United
States.
But by 2010, illegal immigration
from Mexico had fallen to its lowest
levels in decades. U.S. jobs had
dried up during the recession.
Mexico’s birth rate had fallen — so
families were smaller. And the
country’s economy had grown.
There was less pressure to migrate.
Now the flow of migrants
shifted.
Tijuana had become a major
corridor for Mexicans leaving the
U.S. and heading south. Some were
going home voluntarily. They had
lost their U.S. jobs.
Others were being deported by
the U.S. government.
The Mexican government said
more than 133,000 people were
“repatriated” through Tijuana in
2010 — more than 360 per day. An
all-time high.
I’d see deportees walking into
the city, looking lost and alone.
Carrying paper bags filled with
their possessions. Some had lived
in the U.S. so long that they could
barely speak Spanish.
There was little welcome for
them in Tijuana.
Authorities and businesses
complained the newcomers were a
financial drain and a public safety
problem.
Some were addicted to drugs or
suffered from mental illness.
They’d linger near the border,
begging or offering to wash car
windows for drivers waiting to
cross into the United States.
Others came straight from U.S.
prisons after serving long sen-
tences for murder, armed robbery
or other serious crimes.
But a New York Times investi-
gation showed that two-thirds of
deportees during this period had
only minor infractions or no crimi-
nal record at all.
The deportees I randomly met
were ordinary people quietly
searching for ways to rebuild their
lives. They were trying to get their
bearings in an unfamiliar city
undergoing its own turmoil.
Those who spoke fluent English
often found jobs in call centers.
Others drove taxis, worked in
factories and waited on tables.
When Esther Morales was de-
ported to Tijuana, she had no job
prospects, no friends, no family to
cushion the blow.
“A bus arrives at the border, and
you get off, and the gringos say, go,
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
go to your house, to your country,”
Esther said. “I had no money,
nothing, nothing, nothing, noth-
ing, nothing.”
Esther was 50 then. She had
lived in California for 20 years.
“I was sad because I had no
money, I had no friends, I had no
acquaintances, I had no human
being who was close at hand,” she
said.
“It was very sad to be alone in
the middle of crowds of people, to
be all alone.”
Esther had lived outside Los
Angeles in a community so heavily
Latino that she got by without
learning much English. She
worked in factories and restau-
rants to support herself and her
U.S.-born daughter.
But then in 2008, she was de-
ported.
She tried to return a few
months later — she was desperate
to get back to her child. But she
was caught and sentenced to 27
months in a federal prison for
illegal re-entry.
Then she was deported again.
This time, she resolved to stay
in Mexico for good. But instead of
returning to her hometown in
Oaxaca, she settled in Tijuana —
as close as she could get to her
teenage daughter.
Less than a year after her de-
portation, Esther scraped to-
gether enough money to open a
tiny restaurant on a rundown
block in downtown Tijuana. It had
two tables and colorful murals.
She cooked the food herself as her
customers watched.
She was a small, fierce presence
in her white chef’s jacket.
Thoughts of her daughter —
who had been left in the care of
family and friends in California —
kept her going.
“It made me sad, that I was
separated from her,” she said. “I’d
see my present situation, and I’d
crumble with sadness, but I’d also
pick myself up. I didn’t want to
burden her with my sadness. I
wanted to fight and keep what
little we had. That was my
strength, that allowed me to keep
going and going, and leave behind
that immense sadness.”
Esther’s restaurant became a
gathering place for deportees.
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 25
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE
They came for meetings and birth-
day parties. For news conferences
and interviews.
When friends and colleagues
visited me in Tijuana, lunch with
Esther became a required stop.
She’d serve us her delicious spe-
cialty, meat and corn tamales with
her homemade hot sauce.
EVOLVING FOOD SCENE
As Esther was busy serving
traditional Mexican fare, a new
generation of Tijuana chefs was
coming up with dishes that were
innovative and unique to the re-
gion.
They used local ingredients and
blended Mexican, Mediterranean
and even Asian flavors. They called
it Baja Med.
One of those chefs was Javier
Plascencia.
His father had launched Tijua-
na’s first pizzeria in the late 1960s.
The family later opened some of
the city’s best-known, fine-dining
restaurants.
But like other prominent Tijua-
nenses, the Plascencias were tar-
geted by criminals. After the
youngest son escaped a second
kidnapping attempt, 18 members
of the extended family picked up
and moved across the border.
But the Plascencias still consid-
ered Tijuana their home.
In July 2010, they reopened the
historic Caesar’s Restaurant on
Avenida Revolución. It was the
DAVID MAUNG U-T FILE 1920s birthplace of the famed Cae-
sar’s salad.
ABOVE: Tijuana, a Six months later, Javier Plas-
border city with a long- cencia opened a new restaurant
standing reputation as that showcased a fresh and vibrant
a city of crime, has Tijuana. He called it Misión diez y
worked to change its nueve — Misión 19.
image over the past The location itself sent a mes-
decade, including sage: It was in the city’s first green-
developing a notable certified office building.
food scene. Even after all these years in
Tijuana, I was taken aback by
BELOW: Esther Misión 19’s sleek decor and imagi-
Morales makes tamales native menu. The beef short ribs I
at her eatery Tamaleria ordered came wrapped in fig
la Antiguita in Tijuana leaves, bathed in a black mole
on Dec. 4, 2014. Morales sauce and sprinkled with cacao.
was deported from the I sipped a glass of red wine from
U.S. and started her the nearby Guadalupe Valley and
own tamales businesses. watched the traffic on the avenue
down below.
For a moment, I imagined my-
self in a cosmopolitan city any-
where in the world. But when I
lifted my gaze and took in the pano-
rama of hillsides packed with small
houses — this was unmistakably
Tijuana.
Misión 19 drew international
attention. And suddenly there was
an explosion of new restaurants in
Tijuana. Even a new cooking
school.
“And, you know, so it became a
destination without planning it,”
Plascencia said.
“It all happened very organi-
cally. It was very strange. I mean,
we always had great food here. We
always had the taqueros and every-
thing. But it just became — like
from day to night — a big boom.”
International food celebrities
began recommending visits to
Tijuana. As Anthony Bourdain did
on a trip to San Diego.
“No disrespect to San Diego,
there’s a lot of great restaurants
here, a lot of really fine restau-
rants,” Bourdain said. “I personally
would drive over to Tijuana and go
to Misión 19, Javier Plascencia’s
place, and that will rock your
world.”
Tijuana’s story wasn’t just
violence anymore. It was food.
UNBREAKABLE BOND
I returned home to Washington,
D.C., in March 2011. Everywhere I
looked I saw signs of spring —
bunches of purple crocuses and
yellow daffodils, multicolored rows
of tulips. The cherry trees were
about to bloom.
26
Washington had always been
my haven. But this time its beauty
felt almost cruel.
My mother had been diagnosed
with uterine cancer. She was 87
and determined to maintain her
independence.
The next few months were a
blur.
I was with her during visits with
the surgeon. In the waiting room
during the operation.
There was recovery. Then a
complication. I held her hand as
she moaned in pain and had to go
back on the operating table.
After weeks at her side, I re-
turned to the border. But it felt
excruciating to be away. I headed
back to Washington as often as I
could.
My brothers checked in on her
regularly. Philo and his family had
returned from Rome and were
living nearby in McLean, Va.
Charles lived an hour away in
Baltimore with his partner.
But I was the only daughter.
If my mother wasn’t OK, then I
wasn’t either. It was like an invisi-
ble, unbreakable cord.
More than ever, I questioned
my decision to move so far away
I called my mother every day. I
wrote incessant messages. To her.
The doctor. My brothers. Her
friends. My friends. Her neighbors.
But I didn’t move back.
I had a job, a growing circle of
friends. I was building a life of my
own.
After 17 years of living and
working on both sides of the bor-
der, I was starting to belong.
FAMILY GRIEF
Sometimes tragedy moves
slowly.
Other times it strikes suddenly,
and life changes in the blink of an
eye.
Less than seven months after
my mother’s cancer diagnosis, my
family’s life was turned upside
down again. And this time, there
was nothing to be done.
My brother Philo died of a heart
attack just three weeks after he
turned 60.
I’d covered many funerals in
Tijuana. I’d taken careful note of
the caskets with honor guards, the
prayers, the altars filled with
wreaths of flowers. But now I was
part of a family torn by grief, and I
felt small and lost.
The funeral was held on a warm
fall day in Washington’s historic
Georgetown neighborhood.
The chapel of Holy Trinity
Church was packed with Philo’s
colleagues. Many were high-rank-
ing diplomats who had come to
mourn one of their own.
Friends spoke of Philo’s integri-
ty, his sharp wit, his love for his
wife and daughters.
I didn’t share my private mem-
ories. Of the boy who climbed trees
with me. The teenager who sang
folk music in the basement and
studied guitar. The scholar who
read the classics.
After the service, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton shook my
mother’s hand. Just a few weeks
earlier, Philo had played a key role
in negotiating the release of two
U.S. hikers imprisoned in Iran.
When I returned to the border, I
was filled with regrets. My mother
needed me there with her in Wash-
ington. She tried not to show it,
but she was broken.
I couldn’t see myself stepping
back into my old life. Was it that I
didn’t belong there? Or that I no
longer wanted to?
BENJAMÍN ARELLANO
PLEADS GUILTY
Back on the border, work kept
me grounded. Every day brought
twists I never expected.
In April 2012, I took a seat in a
federal courtroom in San Diego.
The once powerful leader of the
Arellano Félix drug cartel was
standing just a few yards away.
After almost a decade behind
bars in Mexico, Benjamín Arellano
had been extradited to San Diego.
That day — at his sentencing
hearing — he didn’t look mighty at
all.
He was close to 60. Thin, his
black hair combed back, dressed in
an orange inmate’s jumpsuit.
He pleaded guilty to racket-
eering and money laundering. He
admitted to orchestrating kidnap-
pings and murders.
But he showed no remorse. The
leader of the most violent cartel in
Tijuana’s history received a 25-
year sentence and agreed to forfeit
$100 million.
By now, Benjamín’s brother
Ramón was dead. His brother
Francisco Javier — El Tigrillo —
had been caught while deep-sea
fishing and was serving a life sen-
tence in the United States. Another
brother was in custody in Mexico
and fighting extradition to the U.S.
The once mighty Arellano
cartel still existed in name, but it
was a shadow of its former self.
The underworld’s bloody battle
for control of the Tijuana drug
corridor had quieted down. An
Arellano nephew, Fernando
Sanchez, was trying to hold to-
gether the remnants of his family’s
business. But the Sinaloa cartel
was now in control.
In 2012, there were half as many
homicides as in 2008. Kidnappings
were all but unheard of. The grue-
some displays of bodies had
ceased. So had the shootouts on
busy streets.
Why the drop in violence?
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Local leaders pointed to the
efforts of military and civilian law
enforcement agencies and the
staunch support of the city’s resi-
dents. Finally, the years of effort
had paid off.
But David Shirk said some-
thing less visible and more power-
ful was at play. He’s the University
of San Diego professor who studies
organized crime in Mexico.
“The official narrative that
somehow the police, the military,
government officials and civil
society all wound up working to-
gether and cooperating and just
solving the problem doesn’t fit. It
doesn’t fit the facts,” he said.
The violence dropped because
the cartels were no longer battling
each other, Shirk said. Just as the
Arellanos had once held the Ti-
juana plaza in their grip, now
Sinaloa was in control.
“Through most of the ’90s, the
Arellano Félix were the dominant
organization of Tijuana and we
saw relatively little bloodshed. But
as soon as they were challenged by
the Sinaloa organization, that led
to a lot of bloodshed,” he said.
“And when the Sinaloa cartel
finally took over and appeared to
achieve dominance in Tijuana,
things calmed down. And it’s very
plausible that the dominant or-
ganization is able to calm things
down in part because they are
working with corrupt authorities
at the state or municipal level.”
Whatever the reason, Tijuana
felt safe again. People crowded
into restaurants, bars, movie thea-
tres and cultural events. The city’s
vibrant nightlife picked up.
In July 2012, I strolled down
Avenida Revolución toward Pasaje
Rodriguez, the passageway local
artists restored a couple of years
earlier.
As I stepped closer, I could see
light coming from the covered
alley. I heard strains of guitar.
Inside, clusters of people were
sipping wine and talking in the
stalls that had been transformed
into miniature art galleries.
The scene on that warm Friday
night filled me with wonder. After
so much darkness, here was more
proof that a new Tijuana was
emerging. A Tijuana that was
hopeful, vibrant and suffused with
light.
LIFE LESSONS
As the city relaxed, I relaxed,
too. Especially on weekends.
On Saturday mornings I’d head
for the CECUT, carrying a pair of
leather-soled shoes that glided
easily on a polished wooden floor.
I was learning something new.
It’s called danzón.
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
OMAR MILLÁN
ABOVE: Javier Plascencia,
owner of Misión 19 in
Tijuana, brought high-end
dining to the city during
the early years of the city’s
food scene revival.
BELOW: Francisco
Guerrero and Lorena
Villaseñor, instructors at
Danzonera de Tijuana,
during a class at CECUT.
The routine
and discipline
(danzón) offered
us certainty —
and community.
And the sheer
beauty of not
just listening to
music but moving
to it with another
person was
something I’d
never imagined.
SEAN M. HAFFEY U-T FILE
The rhythmic ballroom dance
originated in 19th century Cuba. It
migrated to Mexico’s Yucatán
peninsula, then spread to Vera-
cruz and eventually Mexico City.
It’s had a resurgence in recent
years, reaching as far as Tijuana.
It is elegant.
Formal.
Old-fashioned.
Surprisingly playful. Impos-
sibly romantic. And utterly ab-
sorbing.
I’d never danced in my life. I felt
awkward, shy, out of place. I didn’t
have the natural cadence of some
of my classmates. I was tempted
to quit.
But then I would think of my
brother Philo, how he used to
dance to songs by the Supremes.
Now he was gone and couldn’t
dance at all.
I also thought of my mother,
how she still sometimes danced
alone in her townhouse to her
Saturday night radio jazz pro-
gram.
I would learn to dance.
My friend Paco, the classical
guitarist, taught the class with his
wife, Lorena.
She was in my chorus, and they
had married a couple of years
earlier.
Paco and Lorena were perfec-
tionists and strict.
We learned that danzón wasn’t
just a dance, but a discipline with
its own rituals.
“Danzón starts when you are
shining your shoes. I can’t allow
myself to come with dirty shoes or
poorly dressed. These are the first
rites of danzón,” Paco said.
I loved my fellow students.
Some were born in Tijuana, but
most migrated here from other
parts of Mexico.
The routine and discipline
offered us certainty — and com-
munity. And the sheer beauty of
not just listening to music but
moving to it with another person
was something I’d never imag-
ined.
For all its restrictions, danzón
felt strangely liberating.
A FINAL VISIT
My visits to Washington were
growing sadder.
My strong, outgoing, outspo-
ken mother seemed so fragile. She
fell. She leaned on me as she
walked.
But with every last bit of
strength in her, she refused to
leave the house that she loved.
In December 2013, I returned
for what would be my last visit
with her. She was 91 and she had
decided her life was over.
She wanted to die at home.
With her music, her memories and
her flowers. With her two surviv-
ing children by her side. She
stopped eating. She called friends
to say goodbye.
We listened to Bach cantatas,
and I held her hand. She suddenly
spoke Greek, one of her childhood
languages.
She smiled when I told her she
was the best mother I could have
imagined.
So I said it again.
Friends sent bouquets, and her
bedroom bloomed like a garden
even though it was January. And
snowing heavily as she took her
last breath.
Outside, the streets, the
branches of trees, the rooftops of
houses — everything had turned
white. ■
 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 27

New waves of migrants arrive in Tijuana, pushed by

violence, poverty and political upheaval, and fueled by
dreams of reaching the United States. They find
themselves in a growing and increasingly cosmopolitan
city still haunted by its own violence and restlessness.

U-T ILLUSTRATION

CHAPTER 8 And when a pandemic sweeps the

entire globe — the border makes
everything more complicated.
After I broke my ankle, I couldn’t
shop or cook, so I signed up for
A CITY OF RESILIENCE AND HOPE Meals on Wheels and paid a neigh-
bor to look in on me once a day. If
something fell to the floor, it stayed
there until she arrived.
But then friends started showing
t was a random misstep in 2018 that finally forced me to pause and up at my door.
Friends from San Diego brought
ponder my place on the border. food and stayed to visit.
It happened while I was running errands north of the border, Friends from Tijuana crossed the
border to take me to physical ther-
40 miles from Tijuana in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. apy, bring me lunch or make me
breakfast. Or just keep me company.
One minute I was paying for a cup of coffee, the next minute, I Three of my danzón companions
— Mirna, Rebeca and Temoc —
had tripped and was lying in the parking lot, moaning in pain. moved in with me for an entire week-
end. As I lay on the couch, they
My right ankle needed surgery and a metal plate. I’d have to keep cooked, they cleaned, they danced.
Looking back, I still can’t say
it elevated above my chest for at least six weeks. exactly what drew me to the border
Self-reliance had carried me through tough times in the 25 years all those years ago. But here were
the reasons I stayed — these people
I’d been living and working on the border. on both sides of the fence who
picked me up when I stumbled and
But that wasn’t an option now. fell.

I needed help. NEW-STYLE VIOLENCE

Tijuana looked very different in
Time changes everything, everywhere, of course. But here at an 2018 than when I arrived in 1994.
The population had doubled to
international crossroad, changes are often driven by forces far away. nearly 2 million people. The city was
more complicated — and more
A humanitarian crisis in Africa. Poverty and violence in Central cosmopolitan.
America. Drug demand and migration policies in the United States. New condo towers were changing
the skyline.
Sports fans from both sides of
the border packed the Xolos soccer
stadium. Big, boisterous crowds
cheered lucha libre fighters in the
municipal auditorium.
The food scene was exploding —
everything from high-end restau-
rants to trendy food trucks, craft
breweries and fancy coffee shops.
Even traditional street food drew
praise from the prestigious Culinary
Institute of America.
Yet even as the business districts
flourished, violence was spiking in
other parts of the city. Much of it
was driven by the growing street
trade in crystal methamphetamine.
Working-class neighborhoods
were hit hardest — places where
families struggled to raise their
children while low-level drug dealers
fought to control street corners.
Violence hit an all-time high that
year, with more than 2,500 homi-
cides. That was nearly three times
as many as a decade earlier, when it
seemed the violence couldn’t get
any worse.
The state homicide chief told me
only about 12 percent of the cases
were being solved.

ALEJANDRO TAMAYO U-T FILE A NEW WAVE OF ARRIVALS

Club Tijuana takes on Monterrey in a soccer game in February 2017 at Caliente Stadium. Sports In the fall of 2018, I covered a
fans from both sides of the border gather in the city to watch teams compete. story so big that it turned the eyes of
the world to Tijuana for weeks on
ILLUSTRATION ABOVE: A Getty Image rendering of razor wire is superimposed over a Nelvin C. end.
Cepeda photo of pedestrians at the border gate in San Ysidro, a 2016 Union-Tribune portrait of It began when a couple hundred
Sandra Dibble and a portion of an AAA road atlas showing the border region. people gathered in the Honduran
28 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022

city of San Pedro Sula and set out

for the U.S. border. More people
joined until they formed a massive
caravan that moved through Gua-
temala, then into Mexico.
President Donald Trump called
it an invasion. He ordered more
than 5,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexi-
co border.
By the end of November, close
to 6,000 migrants had arrived in
Tijuana.
The first large group arrived on
buses at a soup kitchen near down-
town.
Almost immediately, hundreds
of them set out for a symbolic place
— the beach where the border
fence dips into the Pacific Ocean.
Union-Tribune photographer
Nel Cepeda and I caught up with
them on their 5-mile hike down a
busy highway.
Some carried backpacks. Oth-
ers pushed strollers.
Once they reached the beach,
some teenagers scaled the tall
bollards that form the border
fence.
As a line of Border Patrol offi-
cers watched, some jumped down
onto U.S. soil, then quickly climbed
NELVIN C. CEPEDA U-T FILE
back up the fence.
They seemed so confident. So
hopeful. The migrants grew desperate. ABOVE: A rainstorm THE CAMEROONIANS
They had reached their destina- The Trump administration was left the temporary In 2019, another group of asy-
tion. Almost. accepting no more than 100 asy- shelter flooded lum seekers began arriving in Ti-
Down on the sand, caravan lum applicants at San Ysidro each throughout with very juana. There were hundreds of
members told me about the gangs day — often far fewer. few dry spots for the them, not thousands.
back home that ruled by terror and At best, they’d have to wait for migrants from Central And they came from somewhere
demanded extortion payments. months just to submit applica- America who have I had never expected: Cameroon in
About governments too weak and tions. traveled with the Central Africa, a country of 25
corrupt to protect them. A couple of days after Thanks- caravan and arrived million people. They were fleeing
They said they were poor and giving, tensions rose. in Tijuana. brutal repression and rampant
struggling to put food on the table. Several hundred people violence in the country’s western
They seemed like people with marched to the border near the BELOW: On arrival region as the French-speaking
nothing to lose. port of entry. The idea was to in La Playa Tijuana government fought English-lan-
But they also spoke of their peacefully persuade U.S. author- at the U.S.-Mexico guage separatists.
dreams — and those were bound- ities to speed up the asylum proc- border, many Central I met some of the Cameroonians
less. ess. American migrants at a small hotel close to the border,
A piano teacher from San Pedro But then some of them charged from the caravan where they were staying while they
Sula hoped to hear jazz in New through lines of Mexican police. climbed the fence waited to apply for asylum. They’d
York City. They ran across a concrete chan- while U.S. Border traveled by bus, plane and foot to
A welder from Guatemala nel and tried to force their way Patrol agents observed get here. Through Africa, Europe
dreamed of moving to France. through a gap in the fence. A few on the north side. and Latin America.
Each had a story to tell, an individ- hurled rocks. A man named Kenedy told me
ual reason for leaving home. Helicopters hovered overhead. there was one place where he
One man told me he was a far- Mothers and their weeping thought he could find safety. One
mer and evangelical pastor back in children ran back in panic. place in the world.
Honduras. It hadn’t rained and his Two months later, the Trump “We want to get to the U.S.,” he
crops were dying. administration made it even hard- said.
As the crowd grew, he sang me a er for asylum seekers from Central Kenedy had studied law,
hymn. America. worked in a credit union and owned
For all the excitement of that They called the policy Migrant some farmland. But as tensions
day, it’s that quiet moment that Protection Protocols. But most rose in his country, his life unrav-
still stays with me. people called it “Remain in Mexi- eled. His crops were stolen. He was
Tijuana wasn’t equipped to deal co.” beaten and imprisoned. Fearing for
with so many migrants at once. Even those who managed to his life, he fled Cameroon.
A downtown sports facility was pass the first U.S. screening would He learned later that his wife had
converted into a shelter. But when now have to go back to Mexico been arrested, then released be-
it rained, the shelter became a while their cases were reviewed. cause she was pregnant. His native
sopping, muddy mess and people That meant more months — or village had been burned down.
started getting sick. even years — of waiting. Kenedy led me to a small terrace

outside his hotel room. He pointed
north, toward some buildings we
could see on the other side of the
border and a small U.S. flag waving
on a pole.
“So we get up every morning,
we make sure that flag is still
there,” Kenedy said. “Because
that’s our dream. Moving inland to
the United States.”
I asked Kenedy what gave him
the faith and strength to keep
going.
“The only strength I have is the
courage my wife used to give me,”
he said.
A few days after we spoke, I
watched Kenedy join a crowd of
migrants waiting by the San
Ysidro border crossing. Everyone
was listening intently, hoping to
hear their names or numbers
called so they could walk into the
U.S. and file asylum petitions.
The scene reminded me of a
train station crowded with anxious
passengers fearful of being left
behind.
Then I saw Kenedy step up,
wearing a green sweatshirt and
carrying a large backpack.
He disappeared into the port.
He didn’t look back.
ANGELA’S DAUGHTERS
Most of my encounters with
migrants over the years have been
fleeting, like my meeting with
Kenedy.
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
I interview them in Tijuana and
then they leave. Even if we ex-
change phone numbers, we soon
lose touch.
I rarely know how their lives
play out.
But one family that crossed into
the United States is part of my
personal life — the three daughters
of my old friend Angela, who died
of cancer in 2005.
Growing up, the girls all had
border crossing cards. They allow
Mexicans living in border commu-
nities to enter the U.S. for a limited
time.
The girls usually came to San
Diego to shop or visit me. They’d
never considered moving away
from Tijuana.
But as Angelita, Griselda and
Teresa grew into women and had
children of their own, their circum-
stances changed. Poverty, violence
and bad relationships plagued
their lives. And with their mother
gone, they lost their strongest rea-
son to stay in Tijuana.
So, one by one, the sisters
walked across the border — and
disappeared into the vast U.S.
workforce of undocumented mi-
grants.
They found low-paying jobs in
California factories and packing
plants. At roadside taco stands.
Babysitting. Cleaning offices at
night. And they were profoundly
grateful.
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
NELVIN C. CEPEDA U-T FILE
SAM HODGSON U-T FILE
On Nov. 29, 2018, Central
American migrants line
up for food outside of the
Benito Juarez sports
complex in Tijuana,
which was being repur-
posed as a shelter for
them. They numbered
close to 6,000 by the end
of that month.
29
“Here in this great country that
gave us the opportunity to have a
better life, a new life, I thank God
for everything,” Angelita said.
She works the night shift on an
assembly line. On weekends, she
sells tacos.
Angelita was 14 when I met her.
Now she’s 40 and a single mother of
five. She and Griselda share a two-
bedroom apartment with four of
Angelita’s children. All the sisters
call me madrina. That means god-
mother. Their children do, too.
I’ve joined the family for birth-
days and graduations. To eat cake
and pozole. To honor a connection
that has endured time and dis-
tance, sustained by the memory of
a woman who offered me her
friendship so many years ago.
So when my birthday rolled
around in 2020, it seemed only na-
tural to ask Angelita if I could cele-
brate it with them.
We settled on Saturday, March
7, for the party. I was one of three
guests of honor. When I arrived,
Angelita and Griselda were in the
kitchen, frantically chopping on-
ions and cilantro for pozole and po-
tato tacos — just like their mother
taught them.
Colorful Mexican banners
flapped above a half-dozen tables
they’d set up in the common space.
Angelita’s teenage son was warm-
ing up a big barbecue.
Before long, the courtyard was
filled with chatter and laughter.
The third sister — Teresa —
came with her partner, all smiles
and with a gift in hand.
Teresa’s daughter came, too —
my namesake, Sandrita. She’s a
stylish young woman of 25 now
with two children of her own.
We talked. We sang. We danced.
The teenagers checked their
phones while the little children
laughed and ran between the ta-
bles.
The sisters know their life in the
U.S. could unravel at any moment.
With a traffic stop. A workplace
raid. A complaint from a neighbor.
A child’s misstep.
But even with their lives so
close to the edge, they seize on ev-
ery occasion to celebrate, just as
their mother used to. When I left
that night, we exchanged abrazos.
I promised I’d be back soon for
Sandrita’s wedding in June.
Those goodbyes now seem like
a lifetime ago.
Even as we were celebrating my
birthday, COVID-19 was spread-
ing through the world. Lives every-
where were turned upside down.
Sandrita went ahead and got
married. But it was a small, out-
door wedding, and I didn’t go. I
sent a gift and then sat on my
couch and looked at photos of the
ceremony on Facebook.
PANDEMIC
COMPLICATIONS
COVID-19 transformed lives on
both sides of the border.
Land ports of entry remained
open to essential travel by U.S.
citizens and permanent residents.
But Mexicans with U.S. border
crossing cards couldn’t cross, and
all asylum interviews were can-
celed, even for those who had
already begun the process.
One day, Esther Morales sent
me a text that could have been
written by any struggling restau-
rant owner anywhere in the world.
She’s the woman who opened a
little restaurant in Tijuana a dec-
ade ago, after she was deported
from the United States.
“I am afraid. These streets are
empty,” Esther wrote. “What
happened? Oh, I am afraid, very
afraid.”
Last June, I drove to Tijuana to
interview Esther at her empty
restaurant. I set up a microphone
stand on one of her two tables so
we could stay 6 feet apart while we
talked.
Esther told me that in the first
days of the pandemic, she felt
helpless.
“I said, OK, I’m going to stay
open, because what am I going to
do at home? But there weren’t any
people. The city was terribly des-
erted. There was nobody,” she
said.
But Esther found a way to keep
going.
She stepped up her volunteer
work at the migrant shelters —
places where she’d found refuge
after she was deported from the
U.S. She took them her famous
tamales. And rice and beans from
a sister in Los Angeles.
When a nonprofit called Al
Otro Lado heard what Esther was
doing, it began paying for the
tamales.
“I said, I’m not going to be
defeated. I never liked that, to give
up,” she said.
The day I visited her, Esther
was feeling upbeat. Tijuana had
eased its restrictions on restau-
rants, and she was going to reopen
the following weekend.
I told her I’d be there to record
the moment. It would be one more
example of her persistence and
survival.
But that day, one of Esther’s
friends called with some chilling
news.
Esther had gone to the restau-
rant that morning to set out bou-
quets of roses for the opening.
A distant relative — a woman
who had recently been deported
from the U.S. — came in with two
men, demanding money.
Esther said no.
30 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022

EDUARDO CONTRERAS U-T FILE

The changing Tijuana skyline with a number of high-rise buildings in April 2019 in a view from a rooftop at the Cosmopolitan Group’s City
Center development in the Rio Zone area of Tijuana. From Sandra Dibble’s arrival in 1994, the population of the city has nearly doubled.

The woman grabbed a knife and

stabbed Esther in the neck.
Doctors saved her life by insert-
ing a tube into her throat to help
her breathe. She spent a month in
the hospital.
But here’s where the good part
of the story begins.
The community Esther had
built over the years rallied to sup-
port her.
Her daughter drove down from
Los Angeles. Friends raised money
to help pay her expenses. Al Otro
Lado made sure she got the care
she needed. And a small migrant
shelter — one of the places where
she’d been delivering tamales —
took her in while she recovered.
It all reminded me of something
Esther had said the last time we
talked. About what she’d learned
during her 10-year struggle to
survive in Tijuana.
“It taught me that I have to
work hard, otherwise I don’t eat,”
she said then. “It taught me that I
have to have friends because I am
alone in the city. It taught me that
the struggle is daily, and constant,
constant, constant.”
Tijuana isn’t where Esther
would have chosen to end up. But
it’s where she now chooses to be.
It’s where she rebuilt her life, a day
at a time, and changed the path of
ALEJANDRO TAMAYO U-T FILE
her own story.
“My story is that I was lost, and
here I pulled myself up. And here is “We have that ... loving nature of Esther Morales prepares all-female vocal ensemble. We call
where I celebrate my success, right a Mexican. But we also have that plates to hand out on the ourselves Meraki, a modern Greek
here,” Esther said. individualism or that pragmatism first day returning to the word that means doing something
of an American citizen,” said 19- soup kitchen at Zona with soul and passion.
VIOLENCE FLARES year-old Luisa Ramos. She was Norte on Aug. 6, 2020. Our leader is Daria Abreu, a
As the world focused on the born and grew up in Tijuana but is Morales persevered Cuban woman who now lives in
pandemic in 2020, the violence a U.S. citizen through her father. despite the pandemic Tijuana and leads choruses there.
continued in Tijuana. An aggres- She’s in my kitchen as I write this and a near-fatal knife Because of COVID-19, we can’t
sive new group from Central Mexi- final installment of Border City attack. meet in person, so we rehearse on
co had moved in, challenging the and fix lentils for breakfast. Zoom.
dominant Sinaloa cartel. Rem- “We are not as traditional as Daria sets exacting standards.
nants of the Arellanos were also people at the center of the country Luisa is helping me meet them.
around. With no group in total would be. But we are not totally Even after all these years, the
control, the drug world was in different from them.” border’s broad reach still takes my
disarray.
Mexico’s president — Andrés
Her aunt is journalist Dora
Elena Cortes, one of the first
Here I am, still breath away.
A musician from Cuba. Singers
Manuel López Obrador — had
vowed to take a different approach
friends I made when I arrived in
Tijuana. So when Luisa enrolled at filled with wonder from Tijuana. And now Luisa and I
rehearsing together in my U.S.
to the cartels.
Abrazos, no balazos was one of
Lopez Obrador’s campaign slo-
Southwestern College in San Diego
County last year, it seemed only
natural for her to move in with me.
at Tijuana. And apartment. All of us joined by the
magic of music and the possibil-
ities of this busy crossroad that we
gans. It means hugs, not bullets.
Instead of taking on the cartels, he
Luisa is a vibrant young woman
with thick, wavy hair she’s been
still wondering share.
Here I am, still filled with won-
would tackle the root causes of
crime — poverty and corruption.
wearing cut short lately.
She favors colorful Mexican what comes next. der at Tijuana. And still wondering
what comes next.
But violence is like a fire that blouses. She plays the piano and I came here with no clear pur-
Mexico can’t seem to put out.
For 26 years, I’ve watched the
sings alto. She’s disciplined and
thinks a lot about the future.
I came here with pose. And never intending to stay.
But then I found a story I
flames flare in Tijuana then recede,
only to return with a vengeance.
Maybe she’ll be an environmen-
tal engineer and try to solve Tijua- no clear purpose. wanted to write. And then another.
And another. And suddenly, more

In 2020, homicides topped 2,000
for the third year in a row.
I asked human rights activist
Victor Clark why he thought
killings had gone up so high, and no
one seemed to be able to control it.
He has monitored the shifting
dynamics in the city’s underworld
for decades.
“Because really Tijuana is
na’s sewage treatment problems.
Or maybe she’ll pursue a career
in music.
Luisa and I talked one day at
Dora Elena’s house in Tijuana. We
sat at the dining table while her
mother and aunt chatted in the
next room.
I asked if she wanted to build a
life in the U.S. or in Mexico.
And never
than a quarter-century had
passed.
There’s now a new president in
intending to stay. the White House, Joe Biden, who
has lowered the anti-migrant
rhetoric. But many migrants in
But then I found a Tijuana remain stranded. Their
chances of making it across the
story I wanted to border into the United States seem
no greater than before.

write. And then

under the control not of the au- “I think both of them, like I’m I’ve been following these devel-
thorities but under the control of used to living here and I like it,” opments from a distance because I
the drug traffickers,” he said. Luisa said. “I really like it. It’s just retired from the Union-Tribune in

CROSS-BORDER LIVES
After all these years working
and living in Tijuana and San
Diego, I have to confess that the
border is still a riddle and a puzzle
and a mystery to me.
It’s a heavily fortified barrier
that tears families apart. Yet it’s
also a bridge that connects two
major cities.
People whose lives straddle the
border learn to live with these
contradictions. They’re known as
fronterizos. They navigate differ-
ent legal systems, political tradi-
tions, languages and cultures. For
them, the border isn’t a line, it’s a
region.
my place. Right. And the culture
and everything I’ve ever built is
here. But I know there are other
opportunities outside. And the
United States, of course, has a lot
of opportunities hanging out
there.”
On weekdays, Luisa and I
spend a lot of time in my apart-
ment because of the pandemic.
She takes Zoom classes, does
homework and practices the pia-
no.
I work on the podcast, fix our
lunch, and take long walks to clear
my head.
In our free time, we do some
singing together.
Luisa and I practice for an
another. And 2020.
But I’m still living on the bor-
another.... der, which in a way has become my
own story.
The story of how a restless and
unsettled woman felt embraced by
a restless and unsettled city.
A city that’s continually replen-
ished and challenged. By new
people. By new ideas. And by new
generations meeting the future.
This place has taught me to
keep going. To remain hopeful.
And not to fear change.
I don’t know where the rest of
my life will take me. But I do know
this: that wherever I go, I’m not
leaving Tijuana. I’ve become a part
of it. Just as it is now a part of me. ■
 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022 31

Since the mid-1990s, Tijuana’s population has

more than doubled. The growth of San Diego’s
international sister city to its south has fueled
an explosion of culture, industry and violence.

125

805

Brown Field
5 Municipal Airport

905
11

Otay Mesa border

Port of Entry U.S.-Mexico

UNITED STATES Detail area Tijuana International

RIAL
Airport BVLD. INDUST
International Park

1
Pacific Lomas
Ocean MEXICO Hidalgo
Taurinas Market
2
Autonomous
University of
Baja California
1D
VE

Tijuana
RA

Ti
CR

jua City Hall EL

UZ

na PÍPILA
Ri
PUENTE ve
r CALLE
LA JOYA
PEDREGAL Detail area SEXTA
DE SANTA Parque Estatal MARIANO
JULIA Sierra Morelos MATAMOROS

OBREA
1 R
Trump Baja SU
IB. Cerro
development on L
Tijuana coast 2 Colorado

1 MILE

El Chaparral San Ysidro border

Port of Entry Port of Entry U.S.-Mexico Tijuana River
AV
EN
ID La Caja
A AVIACION Municipal
LU
IS Galería auditorium
Pasaje Tijuana MO
YA
Rodríguez Cultural Center
Campestre Golf Caliente
La Antingua Stadium
restaurant Course
ZONA RÍO
Caliente
LUCIÓN

Dandy's Tij 1
Racetrack
Bar ua CHAPULTEPEC
na Zeta
Riv
er
AV. REVO

La Mezcalera Mission IDA office

MÉR
Restaurant
PEGGY PEATTIE U-T FILE
in Zona Río 9 SECTION Colonia
The Tijuana Cultural Center, or Cecut Hipódromo
Cuartel Morelos Big Boy
military base Restaurant
0.5 MILES 0.5 MILES

Source: OpenStreetMap SANDRA DIBBLE & MICHELLE GUERRERO U-T

2.5 million 2022

2.2 million

2.0

CHARLIE NEUMAN U-T FILE

The tourist center, Avenida Revolución 1.5

1.0

0.5

0
1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020

El Chaparral border crossing

ALEJANDRO TAMAYO U-T
TIJUANA HOMICIDES
2,500
2022
681
2,000

1,500

1,000

500

0
’01 ’02 ’03 ’04 ’05 ’06 ’07 ’08 ’09 ’10 ’11 ’12 ’13 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’19 ’20 ’21 ’22
Through May 24

MARCUS YAM LOS ANGELES TIMES

Arturo Rodríguez at La Caja Galería
TIJUANA GDP PER CAPITA
$25,000 2018
$21,305
20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

0
’03 ’04 ’05 ’06 ’07 ’08 ’09 ’10 ’11 ’12 ’13 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18
TIJUANA VISITORS BUREAU In 2015 USD
The Caliente Greyhound Racetrack Sources: United Nations; Baja California Attorney General’s Office; OCED.Stat MICHELLE GILCHRIST U-T
32 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Journalism under
attack in Mexico
Tijuana journalists memorialize fallen colleagues on Freedom of Expression Day in Mexico on June 7. At center, Eglantina Esquivel,
stands behind a plaque honoring her son, Margarito Martínez, and Lourdes Maldonado in Tijuana’s Freedom of Expression Plaza.
JOHN GIBBINS U-T FILE AGENCIA REFORMA
Margarito Martínez Lourdes Maldonado
IN MEMORIAM
In a single week in January, two Mexican journalists
were murdered in Tijuana. Their deaths once again
focused attention on the corruption and impunity that
make the country one of the most dangerous in the
world for journalists.
Photographer Margarito Martínez Esquivel docu-
mented the grisly murder scenes that have become a
daily presence in Tijuana. He rushed to crime scenes
while the bodies lay in the streets, then sold the
images to local news sites that report the violence
and corruption in the city. The brutal honesty of his
work told the story of a city that recorded nearly
2,000 homicides last year. He was shot in the head
outside his home on Jan. 17.
The next day, María Guadalupe Lourdes Maldonado
López spoke publicly about the plight of journalists
whose lives are threatened for their work. “I have
eight months with police protection and human rights
protection and I know that they take good care of
you,” she said. “But no one can prevent, not even
under their supervision, that when you leave your
home they will kill you and murder you in such a
cowardly and artful way.” Maldonado had publicly
confronted Baja Norte Gov. Jaime Bonilla and had
complained to President Andrés Manuel López
Obrador that she feared for her life. She was shot and
killed in her car outside her home on Jan. 23
The federal government claims remnants of the
once-powerful Arellano-Félix cartel were behind the
slayings, although critics remain skeptical. Three
people have been charged in each case.
SUNDAY • JUNE 19, 2022
ALEJANDRO TAMAYO U-T
A
war on truth is claiming more casualties in Mexico than in any other
country. Nine journalists were killed in Mexico last year, and 11 have
been killed in the first five months of this year, four in January alone,
two in Tijuana just six days apart. For years, more journalists have
been killed in Mexico than in any other nation on Earth, according
to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists. No nation has more journalist
deaths in the past five years. Only war-torn Syria has more in the past decade.
Since 2011, 95 percent of the cases of journalists killed are unsolved.
The killing of four Mexican journal- faced extreme risk. But Maldonado was
ists in January — each with histories of only one of many journalists killed
reporting on violent drug cartels or despite being enrolled in this program.
government corruption or both — and And despite the decade-old program,
the killing of the latest three Mexican Mexico remains the most dangerous
journalists in May — over a three-day nation for journalists.
span — have only offered the latest The consensus is that the govern-
chances for the nation’s leaders to ment likes the status quo, welcomes
reckon with this. Reporter José Luis journalists feeling constantly intimi-
Gamboa Arenas was stabbed at least dated, and doesn’t want the spotlight
seven times in Veracruz on Jan. 10, then put on local, state and federal officials
three others were shot to death in a who are often working with the cartels
span of two weeks: photojournalist that dominate much of the nation.
Alfonso Margarito Martínez Esquivel in Nothing suggests otherwise. AMLO’s
Tijuana on Jan. 17, online news host hostility to the media rivals that of the
María Guadalupe Lourdes Maldonado 45th U.S. president. “Who’s Who in This
López in Tijuana on Jan. 23, and lawyer Week’s Lies” — an excoriation of journal-
and journalist Roberto Toledo in Mi- ists whose reporting he contends is ex-
choacán on Jan. 31. aggerated or invented — is a regular
Vigils were held in dozens of cities feature in his frequent news conferences.
across the nation on Jan. 25 after Mal- In April 2019, four months after taking
donado’s killing and a 2019 video of her office, AMLO told reporters, “If you go
telling President Andrés Manuel López too far, you know what will happen.” He
Obrador (AMLO) “I fear for my life” later denied that was a threat of physical
circulated widely. But will this year’s violence against those whose reporting
unjust deaths lead to greater protec- displeased him, but in a nation where
tions for journalists and principles of journalists are killed with impunity, it
freedom of the press, freedom of speech sounded like one.
and the power of truth-telling that they Homicides and violent crime in gen-
represent? It’s impossible to predict — eral mar the bigger picture that Mexico
and hard to be optimistic. is a vibrant success story, a nation on the
A decade ago, the Mexican govern- rise that has a wealthier, healthier, more
ment established a program meant to educated middle class than ever. But
provide protections for journalists and without journalists to expose official
human rights activists who faced corruption, there is a limit on what Mexi-
threats of violence. It sounds good — co can become. And until AMLO and
providing journalists with a cellphone other Mexican leaders accept the crucial
app that functions as a “panic button,” role journalists play, and do more to
having police check on their homes and ensure their safety, more are sure to die.
relocating them in a different city if they Es verdad.
Journalists killed in Mexico by year
Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists
outside active war zones. Already this year as of June 14, 10 journalists have been
killed. Since 1994, there have been 148 killed.
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
’94 ’96 ’98 ’00 ’02 ’04 ’06 ’08 ’10 ’12 ’14 ’16 ’18 ’20 ’22
Source: Committee to Protect Journalists MICHELLE GILCHRIST U-T