Tijuana: Narcoviolence, Tourism and the Economy

Tourism in Tijuana has dropped 90% from a high of 4.5 million visitors in 2005 to approximately 450,000 today.—Downtown merchants association

"Unlike in Ciudad Juarez or Medellin, where the people stay in their homes, we go out. We live in the city. We confront [the violence]. It's part of the spirit of Tijuana." —Rafa Saavedra, nightlife writer

"The future is focused on the locals because Tijuana is getting bigger every day." —Sergio Gonzalez, bar/restaurant owner

"There are a lot of artists who are doing really cool stuff in TJ right now and ... there’s not a lot of places where they can sell their stuff." —Lorena Cienfuegos, owner of HAHA store and Indiego! bar

"I don’t really think artists and intellectuals right now have visibility. I think it’s probably more the spectacle industry that’s visible now." —Felipe Zuñiga, artist/curator

"Artists in Tijuana are definitely responding to the violence, but are responding in ways that are unusual. Some are not responding at all, which is also interesting." —Lucia Sanroman, assistant curator, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art

Artists Under Siege

Tijuana — with anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 million residents — is one of the fastest-growing cities in Mexico. The city is permanently busy with residents and tourists coming and going, criss-crossing physical and cultural borders. But the news headlines tend to stop both Mexicans and foreigners in their tracks.

A young woman’s body found hardened in a block of concrete. A stocky, middle-aged man hanging naked from a bridge. Two rows of male figures laid out like matchsticks, belts unbuckled, jeans pulled down to their knees, genitals exposed.

The violence in Tijuana — largely a result of narcotics traffickers clashing with police, the army and other narcos — has become a gruesome, stylized ritual. This aesthetic of violence now overshadows what had, just a few years ago, been a booming arts scene.

"I don’t really think artists and intellectuals right now have visibility. I think it’s probably more the spectacle industry that’s visible now," says Felipe Zuñiga, a prominent artist and curator in the city.

The “spectacle industry” of ritualized public violence that has terrorized the city is a relatively new phenomenon. Tijuana has long had a seedy reputation, but that didn’t prevent a vibrant arts and cultural community from thriving.

Art Scene Comes of Age

In fact, some would speculate that Tijuana's vibrant arts and culture scene is a direct result of the city's historically seedy reputation and placement along a man-made border that separates it from the wealthiest nation in the world.

Ever since Prohibition, when Americans flocked across the border to drink and gamble along Avenida de la Revolucion, Tijuana has entertained tourists seeking cheap thrills. However its contemporary arts scene didn't come of age until the mid '90s when Nortec — a Tijuana-born hybrid music (blending techno, norteño and banda) and aesthetic — captured the rhythm and intensity of the city.

Nortec helped define the city's reputation as one big postmodern, globalized, trans-border experiment. Artistic production in the city soared, and captured the attention of journalists, curators and international culture vultures.

Newsweek named Tijuana one of the world's "eight most creative centers of culture and vitality" in September 2002. Galleries, artist co-ops and exhibitions continued to proliferate, and fascination with the city's mostly self-taught contemporary artists culminated in the 2006 “Strange New World: Art and Design From Tijuana” exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.

In the world's eyes, Tijuana — once a den of sex, drugs and any vice to be had at a good price — had transformed seemingly overnight into a cultural Mecca.

Trouble Brews

In 2008, Tijuana's murder total reached 843 — more than double the 337 the year before — as a bloody wave of narco violence swept across the city. Tourism plummeted. The U.S. financial crisis further battered the local economy. And topping it all off was a sensationalized swine flu scare.

Today, Avenida de la Revolucion — still the main drag in downtown Tijuana — is lined with empty bars and restaurants and vacant storefronts. A downtown merchants association estimates business along the strip has dropped 90% since 2005. Locals say well over half the shops are shuttered.

In the face of all this, the local population in Tijuana continues to grow — rapidly. This growth has inspired the city's young artists and entrepreneurs to reclaim their city, revitalize their downtown, and — in the absence of American tourists — serve the city's local residents instead.

Artistic Revival

"The future is focused on the locals because Tijuana is getting bigger every day," says Sergio Gonzalez, 32, sitting at the bar of La Mezcalera, a popular downtown spot he opened at the height of the violence a little over a year ago.

For Gonzalez, it's about giving something back to the city that raised him. He says his generation is the first to be born in Tijuana, with their parents mostly having immigrated there from other regions of the country. Tijuana, Gonzalez says, needs its creative young people to invest in their hometown by adding boutiques, coffee shops, museums and theaters, as well as parks and other green spaces, which are severely lacking.

"For a lot of years our parents didn't do that at all," he says. "I don't think they had the vision to actually develop a beautiful city. They were just interested in making money."

Gonzalez isn't alone. Less than year after he opened La Mezcalera, his friend Lorena Cienfuegos opened a gallery-boutique called HAHA in a ritzier part of town. Both places have been getting buzz in international hipster circles.

"There are a lot of artists who are doing really cool stuff in TJ right now and in Baja California, and there’s not a lot of places where they can sell their stuff," says Cienfuegos. "So we’re trying to help give them space and really an importance to their work."

Pablo Llana, a visual artist whose pop-culture paintings hang at HAHA, says Tijuana's artists often leave the city for more established art scenes in Mexico City, Guadalajara or Monterrey.

He feels young artists — if they stay — have an opportunity to "rescue and clean the image of TJ" by presenting other experiences of the city beyond the violence.

(Update: A few months after being interviewed for this story, Cienfuegos moved to Guadalajara and Llana to Mexico City.)

Confronting the Violence

Should artists in Tijuana be addressing, dissecting and interpreting the violence that surrounds them?

"Not all art is activist art and not all art is interested in what is going on in the society," says Lucia Sanroman, associate curator at Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, and a Tijuana resident. "Artists [in Tijuana] are definitely responding but are responding in ways that are unusual. Some are not responding at all, which is also interesting, because it's not about 'I don't care about the world.' I think it's a much more complicated question and answer if you live here and choose not to think about it, or to think about it in different ways."

Daniel Ruanova is one of the few artists who regularly confronts Tijuana's epidemic of violence in his work. At least he used to.

"That’s still when I thought violence was something unnatural, artificial," Ruanova says. "Now I really think it's like our yin, our dark side, the beast — everybody has to control it."

However they confront it, the violence has altered the daily lives of the artists and everyone else in the city.

"I think what's most difficult for me… is the fear and the psychosis and the imagination running wild and somehow you become a target of kidnapping," says Sanroman. "That is tough. That is an effect of horrible people doing horrible things."

Despite the paranoia that's become an everyday fact of life, she and others in the arts community are committed to staying in Tijuana.

"We still live here and we make a choice to live here," she says.

Sergio Gonzalez has no plans of leaving Tijuana either.

"For me Tjuana at this point is my girlfriend," he says, "and I'm really in love with the city."