Federico Campbell offers a rare, uplifting story of a city’s emergence from the violence of Mexico’s drug war. Similarly, Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, has held up Tijuana as a model for his government’s counternarcotics strategy.
But the numbers tell a different story. True, there were an unprecedented number of homicides in Tijuana in 2008. But after a brief lull, the grotesque violence has resurfaced, with 2010 on pace to be one of the city’s deadliest years yet.
What’s more, the Mexican military and police, whom Mr. Campbell praises for making Tijuana safer, have committed widespread human rights abuses, including more than 100 credible accusations of torture documented by Human Rights Watch, undermining the very security they were sent to restore.
Sadly, if anyone can lay claim to Tijuana it is the cartels, who have never lost control over their illicit trade.
Nik Steinberg
New York, Oct. 19, 2010
