Tijuana Earns Honor As Most Violent City In The World

Just how dangerous is Mexico?

Apparently, pretty fucking dangerous…especially if you’re in the drug biz. 

A new report, released by the group Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, found that five of the six most violent cities in the world are in Mexico. 

Tijuana was number one. In 2018 there were 2,640 homicides committed in Tijuana. The number is staggering considering that just ten years ago Tijuana saw only 843 murders, a period of time that was noted for being especially violent as the Sinaloa Cartel waged war against its rivals.

Last year in Tijuana there were 138 murders for every 100,000 citizens. That number is up from 125 murders per 100,000 people in 2017. 

Acapulco was second on the list with 110 murders per 100,000 people. Caracas, Venezuela, was third with nearly 100 murders per 100,000 people (although with 2,980 murders, more people were actually killed in the civil war-ravaged capital). Mexican cities Victoria, Juárez and Irapuato rounded out the top six.  In total, there are 15 Mexican cities out of 50 on the list.

Is this mythical right reeler worth running the Tijuana gauntlet? Uh… Say the words. 

The escalating violence in Mexico is largely tied to the federal government’s militaristic approach to combating drug cartels. In 2006, the government declared war on the biggest traffickers, which took some of the big players like El Chapo out of the picture, but left a vacuum in which smaller operators tried to capitalize.

The war on drug cartels and the subsequent battle for power has had horrific results.

Newly elected Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed to turn the gory trend around, but time will tell. He campaigned on halting the war on traffickers, but just dispatched a battalion of soldiers to Tijuana.

Adversaries of the militaristic approach point to a broken justice system that’s underfunded and drastically underperforms. According to a L.A. Times report, “Government statistics show only about 7% of all crimes are properly investigated and about 2% result in convictions.”

At the end of the day, the fact of the business is that Americans love to do drugs and Mexicans are willing to slaughter each other to get them across the border. 

Should this stop you from heading south of the border for the next swell? Probably not, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.