Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero eluded her escort and was alone in the gym at four in the morning; other times he would go out for tacos or walk his dog down the street. This life of apparent freedom is over. On May 17, one of his bodyguards was attacked while driving the vehicle, he was alone and lucky. Threats by phone and on billboards have increased in recent weeks, and recently a person tried to break into her home, claiming he had council permission. Too much. The National Guard proposed a change of address and this weekend saw the finishing touches to a military home belonging to the 28th Infantry Battalion. Caballero moves into barracks with his nine-year-old son while the storm, which at times thunders louder than usual in Tijuana, abates. The mayor is anything but understanding, but has received severe criticism: “You called me a coward that I was moving to a luxury suite,” she puts her hand in the air as if to say, “and more and more.” ” EL PAÍS spoke to Caballero at the town hall of one of the most violent cities in the world and visited the still-empty house of controversy, where this Thursday workers pulled the power cables, put back patches of grass in the street and a derelict kitchen in dire need of renovation It will only be temporary: “Prolongation of this situation would result in my resignation, but for the time being I will not do so.”
There’s not a single day of the year that Tijuana doesn’t record a homicide. What one, two and three and four. Last year the list closed with 2,753 violent deaths. It is war on a frontier where the main trades are guns, drugs and prostitution, the most lucrative in the world. University students are used to hearing gunshots from the school when the cartels decide to enforce their law and thus overturn order. There was a time when this Pacific city, twinned with San Diego across the Wall, was a promising land. The mayor’s mother, who is from Oaxaca, was fed up with being beaten by her father, brothers and later her husband. She moved to Tijuana when the girl was two years old and had two brothers. Over time, six little bodies slept in beds in a row in a home living in extreme poverty. “But I didn’t know. My mother taught us that poverty is a spiritual cause.” A Yes We Can activist, the woman picked up trash by cleaning houses and by her third birth was transformed into a beautiful law graduating girl , was a member of parliament and now has to deal with incessant violence as mayor. And with the old debts, he said this Thursday in the plenary session that brought together the city councilors. At the end of the session, a cloud of journalists surrounded the city’s first woman mayor, who today is wearing a dark blue dress with white dots and a flared skirt. He has beautiful indigenous features, but he says that has earned him nothing but racism and classism from a section of the population.
Journalists surround Mayor Caballero at the end of a town hall meeting June 15 at Tijuana City Hall.Guillermo Arias
It’s not a question of the drug dealer what you’re wearing or the color of your skin. What interests them is that the bisnes are quiet, meaning no one comes to poke their nose into their business. Caballero claims it was his fight against violence that brought organized crime with violence and axe to the surface. He reiterated to the press that 60 murderers were arrested and 1,700 firearms confiscated during his tenure, which began in 2021. “They seem few, but they are enough to outfit a regiment,” he says. In fact, it’s not many considering that Tijuana is home to two million people, increasing the number to three million due to the fluctuating population. Nobody can count them, but it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that there are a hundred times more guns in the city. Or many more, who knows. In any case, as Caballero recalls, it is not the job of the local police or the mayor’s office to fight organized crime. He complains sharply against the public prosecutor’s office, which releases the detainees, he criticizes. Two men were arrested this week after a van was discovered with seven bodies. They’re already on the streets, much to the mayor’s chagrin.
How can anyone think about being the mayor of this city, being a lawyer, a greengrocer, or… a plastic surgeon who isn’t bad off this side of the border either? “When I was young, I studied law because I wanted to defend my family, then I studied criminalistics and the police, but politics is everyone’s defense.” And also because he wanted to make a living from it, anyone who says he’s just lying in politics, to help others without helping yourself,” says Caballero in his community office, who smells the scent of incense as he enters.
A sink in the living room of the house where Caballero will live, at the 28th Infantry Battalion Headquarters in Tijuana.Guillermo Arias
A man doing renovation work inside the house. Guillermo Arias
The kitchen of the house where Montserrat Caballero will live to protect himself from the threats received. Guillermo Arias
For this woman, who is married to an Iranian living in the US, the border is now the only escape route on some weekends. “He tries to convince me to move there, but I tell him to think about his country, about the women he could save from the martyrdom they are facing, and then he agrees. Of course I’m scared, I’m not plastic, but I’m also hopeful. I don’t owe anyone anything, and if I had ties to the cartel, as some allegations have it, I would be well protected. “The weapons seized in those years are from all the cartels, not just one, but look who they released in the prosecutor’s office, the equation is simple,” he challenges. Everyone knows he doesn’t have the best of connections with his Baja California state governor, Pilar Ávila Olmeda, but his arrows are primarily aimed at prosecutors. Whom he trusts is “the President”. [Andrés Manuel López Obrador] and in the army,” and on his friends list is Ken Salazar, US Ambassador to Mexico, with whom he often chats. “I’m not saying that past mayors or leaders colluded with crime, but many just turned a blind eye,” he claims. “When I say these things, they answer me that I am not a politician because it is not good for anyone to tell the truth. “I’ll be the one with the plague who says at home that her stepfather raped her,” she compares.
A private elevator takes her up and down from the parking lot to her office, where a sign prohibiting the handling of firearms is posted before entering. She is always surrounded by bodyguards, the number of which has multiplied these days. The armor of his company car is so thick that it takes muscles to close the door. Two other transporters of the same size shield their journey. And after that the entourage is closed by two National Guard vehicles with open trays loaded with uniformed men with machine guns pointed at the four cardinal points. Quite a spectacle to walk around. Dozens of agents take turns protecting her. “I can’t open the window of my truck,” he will say in an interview.
The mayoress gets out of her armored van. Guillermo Arias
“They say I’m a coward, but there was a security minister on that council who lived in a barracks and they called him brave,” he says. There were also Tijuana aldermen who moved their homes to the United States, just a few miles from City Hall. In any case, the mayor’s apartment had too many windows and she was warned of the difficulties of ensuring security with these transparent walls. deluxe suite? “I had to buy other furniture because some of the existing furniture didn’t fit in the new house. When I was MP, I moved from a poor house to a more luxurious house, skipping the middle section. This shack is now exactly that, the apartment I dreamed of as a child, a normal house. I’m used to living in modesty, but nobody wants to live in barracks.” If anyone had any doubts about his private life, he will now check his cell phone and military surveillance will guarantee he is not tampering with the cartels, he says.
The barracks of the 28th Infantry Battalion is like a small town with uniformed streets, like any military colony, pleasant if you will but devoid of personality. The roofs are the same, the floors are the same, the sidewalks are the same [aceras] They are equal. This is not a luxury urbanization where decorator competition reigns behind every wall. There is no other wall here than the one at the border, the mayor’s door faces the street. No garden, no pool, no flowery vine fence with bees. Nowadays, quite a number of workers worked to clean up an empty place. In the living room there is still a migrant sink, tool boxes, stepladders. Three small bedrooms, two ordinary bathrooms in dire need of a change of dishes, and a small run-down kitchen that needs to be demolished and rebuilt without hesitation. This space is relieved by a patio with a concrete floor covered with old Uralit. Most charming and endearing are the sloping wooden ceilings. Too bad they are painted with brown acrylic. The floor is laid out in beige tiles in all rooms and the baseboards, like everything else, need to be bricked and painted. Maybe with some modern furniture… The house is surrounded by trees and in the distance opens the forest where the soldiers do target practice, which sometimes ends in fires. Below you can see Tijuana but not from the window, you have to go to the street to enjoy this view. But you can go outside to play, ride a bike and walk the dog. Less gives a stone, but a luxury suite, nothing at all, not even close to a suite, whatever that is.
“It’s practically a place to sleep, but my son can go outside to play,” says Caballero. And repeat it to anyone who wants to hear it. “I will not go, I will not leave my office.”
Montserrat Caballero in the official armored vehicle, on June 15, 2023.Guillermo Arias
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