“I am not a coward. I do not hide. I’m not afraid”.
That’s how blunt it shows Montserrat Caballero, the mayoress of Tijuanawho after a series of threats has been living in a military barracks for a month and a half with her 9-year-old son.
The phrase is addressed to those who criticize his decision, arguing that the rest of the population of this border city, one of the most violent in Mexico, does not have that option.
He will repeat it throughout a day in which he will tour the municipality to lay the first stone of an industrial park, congratulate the “graduates” of a rehabilitation program, inaugurate a paved street on a hill and listen to the comments and demands of community leaders over a late breakfast at a restaurant.
Six frantic hours in which this charismatic woman, petite and dark-haired, will read and improvise speeches, attend to the press, make them have lunch twice, pose for selfies and will shake the hand of everyone who extends it.
And all surrounded by bodyguards, as you get on and off your Humveefollowed by a couple of vehicles of similar size and two pick up of the National Guard with eight uniformed men each and individual machine guns pointed into the air, closing the procession.
And he will only qualify it when he arrives at the military installations with the tasks done, and changes the role of politics for that of a mother: “Actually, there is something I fear. I am terrified that something will happen to me in front of my son’s eyes.
But that confession, the changes it generates in the city and how it changed our protagonist’s life, we’ll see all of that later.
Because now her day is just beginning and she receives BBC Mundo in a beauty salon.
know the city
We are in the middle of the “red zone” or “of tolerance”, a stone’s throw from what is considered one of the largest brothels in Latin Americathe Hong Kong Gentlemen’s Club, in an area that our accompanying photographer will aptly describe as “where everything Tijuana is known for is concentrated”.
Vehicles from the security convoy guard the street, parked in a row along the sidewalk; two bodyguards guard the door.
Inside, while Luisa and Thalía, two trans women, put on her false eyelashes, define her eyebrows with a brush and wave the ends of her black hair, the 41-year-old politician points to a trait they share.
“They are migrant women, who came from Michoacán, from Chiapas in search of less discrimination and a better life, they faced adversity and got ahead,” explains the mayoress as the aforementioned nod.
She, in a way, is also a migrant. Her mother, originally from Oaxaca, moved to Tijuana when she was two years old and had two brothers. Then three more would be born.
Despite poverty, Caballero would study, finish law and enter politics, first as a state deputy for Morena (President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party) and later as the first female mayor of this city that borders the Californian San Diego.
“This is a place of sharing and sisterhood,” she says of the beauty salon. “And since you can’t make public policies if you don’t know your city, what happens in its streets, I like coming to this establishment.”
It does it practically every weekday since 2021. And the fact that last May 17 one of his escorts was attacked on the route from his house to the hairdresser did not make him change his habits. He was lucky. He was alone in the vehicle and suffered injuries only from the glass that the shots broke.
The councilor instructed all municipal government agencies to continue with their work “ignoring the intimidation,” her press office reported in a statement.
And he closed the day with a message transmitted by Facebook: “I’m fine. I feel fine. This doesn’t stop us because our hands do not tremble to attack organized crime as we have done”.
After the attack, the threats
Local media and several politicians have questioned whether the last target of the attack was the municipal president. What happened on that Wednesday morning is still being investigated by the Baja California Attorney General’s Office, the state to which Tijuana belongs, and due to this, all information related to the case is under confidentiality, according to what the entity told BBC Mundo.
However, in the following weeks, posters alluding to Caballero appeared in different parts of the city and a man tried to enter his home after assuring that he had permission to do so. “I also received messages on my cell phone”remember.
“At first I did not pay attention to them, until the intelligence of Mexico and the United States determined that it was not something that any burlesque citizen could have written, but that they were real threats against me”.
We already know the outcome of that: Caballero’s move to a housing unit of the 28th Infantry Battalionlocated in the southern part of the city, and the reinforcement of its protection with members of the National Guard, a civil force created in 2019 as part of López Obrador’s strategy to combat organized crime.
“It was a recommendation from the federal Executive and I accepted it”explains Caballero, already groomed and ready to start the workday.
AMLO confirmed it on June 13 during Mañanera, his morning conference: “She is being protected, for about 15 days, because yes has received threats and it was decided to protect her. He talked to her and an agreement was reached to help her, protect her, and we will continue to do so ”.
The mayor says that she does not know who is behind the intimidation, but she is convinced that they have to do with the results in terms of security since she took office in 2021.
“We are the police that has seized the most weapons nationwide; we have requisitioned 1,800, and we have captured 160 homicides in flagrante delicto, many of them belonging to cells of different cartels. That is an indication.”
She adds that if she had ties to the drug trafficker, she would be well protected, and she quickly goes out into the street and disappears into her white van, which we will have to follow at full speed through half the city.
“Extreme” and controversial measure
All those consulted for this article agree on the extraordinary nature of the measure adopted by Castillo.
“Here there are many people who have an escort. In the Rio area, the most modern in the city and where my office is also located, it is very common to see trucks with escorts and tinted windows,” Víctor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights, told BBC Mundo.
He himself was protected for 18 years. “He had six police officers and two patrol cars, but it was from 1994 to 2012, because I made many complaints of corruption in the Attorney General’s Office (now the Prosecutor’s Office) of police officers and others,” he recalls.
“But moving to a barracks is an extreme measure that (it is adopted because it is) considered that personal security is in grave danger and that additional protection is required”.
However, not everyone in Tijuana sees it favorably and criticizes the message that it sends to the public.
“All rulers have a responsibility and the number one of the mayor on duty is to provide security to the people of Tijuana,” Roberto Quijano, president of the Baja California Citizen Council for Public Safety, tells BBC Mundo.
The organization, belonging to civil society, defines itself as a bridge between citizens, the business sector and the authorities, and promotes improvements in the matter.
“But if the authority itself is saying ‘I have to go to a barracks to take care of myself’, imagine the rest of the citizens, that we don’t have those armed escorts. Two million Tijuanenses who cannot go to lock up a barracks. How are we going to protect ourselves?”.
And it is that in the border city not a day goes by without a homicide being registered.
The coveted Tijuana
“All the cities that border the United States -Tijuana, Tecate, Mexicali, Sonoyta, Ciudad Juárez, Matamoros or Reynosa- have a very similar security problem,” explains José Fernando Sánchez González, Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, to BBC Mundo. Municipality of Tijuana.
“There will always be criminal groups that try to cross various narcotics or people illegally from south to north, and arms trafficking and the resources obtained from the sale of drugs in the United States will return from north to south. The border cities are always going to have this complex dynamic due to the criminal groups that try to position themselves to commit these crimes”, he continues.
“And to that we must add that Tijuana is the most economically thriving and dynamic city, and that adjoins the richest state in the richest country (California)”. That makes it one of the most coveted places, with the trail of blood that this has left for decades.
“Violence has been building and worsening since the early 90s when the drug cartel was established. Arellano Felix brothers”, also called Tijuana Cartelexplains Clark Alfaro, from the Binational Center for Human Rights.
“Acts of violence began to be recorded that those of us who were born in Tijuana and have lived here all our lives had never seen, drugs hitherto unknown on the border, such as crystal, methamphetamines, began to appear on the market.”
At the beginning of the 2000s, new actors entered the scene, the Sinaloa cartel first and the C. Jalisco New Generation Artel (CJNG) soon after, and in 2007 a new narcotic was added to the equation, the fentanyl.
This synthetic opioid, 50 times more potent than heroin, has long been considered a true epidemic in the US and the leading cause of record overdose deaths in the country (more than 100,000 a year).
However, in recent years its use has also taken hold on the Mexican side of the border, in what is considered a serious health crisis.
We hear about the ravages of this drug –and those mentioned above– in the testimonies of those who were addicted, lived on the streets and now participate in the “Integrating Lives” program of the Therapeutic Community for the Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration of the Addict.
Attending their graduation is on Mayoress Caballero’s agenda for the day, who after listening to them and congratulating them, modifies the speech she had written and from the theater stage of the Casa de la Cultura, exclaims:
“If you could get out of addiction, I can get out of that barracks every dayto fight together against organized crime”.
The struggle between different criminal organizations to control the local drug market and cross-border trafficking, and the associated revenge, once made Tijuana the city with the most homicides in the country. Today it has consolidated in fifth place.
“But that doesn’t make a difference. We went from having five or six homicides a day to four or five. The social perception continues to be that we live in a terribly violent city,” says Clark Alfaro.
Until June of this year, there were 1,061 violent deaths, according to figures from the Municipal Citizen Security and Protection Secretariat. In 2022 there were 2,037.
We pass by one of those homicides that will add to the statistics of the day: a man in a vehicle with a shot. We watch him through the car window on the way to the mayoress’s next event.
“It’s like that every day. Last night they found four dead: a couple, a decomposing body and another with signs of violence.say my companions, a reporter and a photographer who say that they cover less and less this type of story in a city where journalistic practice can also cost your life.
Reflecting on this, we arrived at an elevated area overlooking the Santa Fe neighborhood, for an event that makes it clear that the strategic location of Tijuana is not only a magnet for drug trafficking, but also for foreign investment.
Caballero dons a reflective vest, grabs a shovel and dumps some dirt, symbolizing the laying of the foundation stone for a $90 million, 24-hectare industrial development by a subsidiary of Australia’s Macquarie Group.
Alterations and crashes
“Yeah, there have been threats, but I do not hide. The proof is that I am here,” Caballero will tell anyone who asks.
The scene will be repeated in Mirador Capistrano, a neighborhood on the slopes of Cerro Colorado where he will go to inaugurate a paved street, or in the restaurant where he will listen carefully to leaders from different neighborhoods and insist on the need to create community.
There we will also witness the disturbances and blockages that your security convoy causes in traffic and how much attention it attracts.
“That’s why I try to gather all the activities in a couple of days of outings and reserve the rest for office work in the Municipal Palace”, he says after 3 in the afternoon, already at his home in the barracks in the south of the city.
With bricks painted white, a yellow stripe on the façade and a reddish roof, it is exactly the same as the adjoining houses, inhabited by families of soldiers of various ranks.
— And what have you given up to live here?
-—to my freedom! I only go out for work. I no longer go to tacos, to the movies, to take a walk with Pepe…
Pepe is her “perrijo”, a pug playful black man who pounces on him as soon as he enters the door.
She says that she recovers part of that freedom on the weekends she spends with her son and her husband, an Iranian who lives in the US, on the other side of the border, in San Diego, and who asks her to move permanently.
— And have you not considered governing from a distance, like many in Mexico, or leaving it directly?
— I’ve considered letting go rather than rule at a distance, because that way you can’t take the pulse of the city. But I have a commitment that I must face.
We have heard him say that throughout the day in different ways. “They won’t take me out”, “I won’t leave”. Her term ends in 2024 and she has already anticipated that she will be a candidate for office again.
— And what would you say to those who assure that all this, the barracks, security, is a media movement, with an eye on the elections?
— That I am someone with values and principles. What kind of person puts political office before their child’s safety?
We turn off the camera.
Someone behind us claps.
It is his 9 year old son. Polite and friendly, he makes us a tour for the three rooms, the office, the cleaning room and the kitchen. She introduces us to Doña Norma, who has been helping with the housework for four years, and to the ferrets Brownie and Güerito.
He says he likes his new home, and what he misses the most is his house in San Diego. “There’s the Xbox.”
“I see my son happy,” says his mother. “Because of his young age, I can still shape their experiential experiences a bit”.
Asked for details, she adds: “He knows that his mother is the municipal president of a city as complex as Tijuana. I speak to him with the truth, but without delving into the violence, without normalizing it, so that he is not afraid to go out and play”.
It is obvious that he does not have it. A neighbor his age has come looking for him to play and can’t wait to get out the door.
“Let him run around. It’s what every child needs.”
Even if it is in a barracks, surrounded by walls, barbed wire, watchtowers and soldiers at each entrance.
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