Murders in Mexican resort of Tijuana top 1,700 in 2017 as rival drug gangs battle for control

After reaching a new high last year, the bloodshed in Tijuana has continued at an unrelenting pace in the first days of the new year as two powerful drug trafficking organisations battle for control of the city’s lucrative street drug sales.

As murders soared to unprecedented levels across Mexico in 2017, Tijuana registered one of the steepest increases in the country. The tally for the year was a record 1,744 murders – almost double the record of 910 homicides set in 2016, according to figures from the Baja California Attorney General’s Office.

The long-established Sinaloa cartel and a newer, aggressive group known as the cartel Nueva Generacion Jalisco, often abbreviated as CJNG, are fighting for supremacy in Tijuana.

“The main issue right now with the power struggle is Sinaloa and the CJNG battling for street dealers, narcomenudeo,” said an official of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, speaking on condition of anonymity. “You have got to understand, the money that they make in Tijuana, that’s as much as crossing the border” with smuggled drugs.

Though bullets have struck bystanders, the killings have been largely targeted and carried out in the city’s impoverished and working class neighbourhoods, authorities say. Close to 90 per cent of the victims are low-level operatives in the local drug trade, they said.