The San Diego Union-Tribune’s April 13 report that three shootings in February and March that left two people dead and three wounded in San Diego County involved feuding of Mexican drug cartels was an unnerving reminder that while such violence in our county is thankfully rare, it remains a constant threat.
The shootings occurred at upscale apartment complexes in University City and Otay Ranch and a Chula Vista strip mall. That one of those who was wounded was James Bryant Corona — described by a Mexican prosecutor as the “main generator of violence” in Tijuana, a powerful cartel figure with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship — suggests the feuding could be escalating. Cartel bloodshed has grown even worse in Tijuana in recent years, with an average of more than five fatal attacks a day in Tijuana since the start of 2022. Given how many cartel are believed to regularly cross the border — and have homes here or live here — the potential for a spillover is plain.
On this side of the border, local, state and federal authorities must do all they can to monitor identified cartel in the San Diego region — and to cooperate with Mexican law enforcement officials as much as possible to tly address the cartel scourge. While U.S.-Mexico relations have improved since the departure of Mexico-baiting President Donald Trump in January 2021, the relationship has still had ups and downs.
On Mexico’s side of the border, it would be a very welcome development if the carnage in Tijuana became a significant issue in the current presidential campaign in which former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, a member of termed-out President President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party, and Sen. Xóchitl Gálvez, who leads a coalition of opposition parties, are the front-runners in the June 2 election.
It may reflect American naivete to think this could happen. For decades, most senior elected leaders in Mexico have avoided challenging cartels directly — the presumption being this was either because they feared for their safety or were on cartel payrolls or both. When The New York Times reported in February that López Obrador was suspected by high-ranking U.S. officials of receiving millions of dollars from cartels, it occasioned shrugs on both sides of the border.
But as San Diego and Tijuana have become more economically and culturally interconnected, many San Diegans have come to realize that we have a stake in what’s going on in our neighboring metropolis. This includes hoping that the next president of Mexico declares the current status quo in Tijuana to be completely unacceptable.
The same, of course, holds for the United States when it comes to the random gun violence — and carefully planned mass shootings — that remain disturbingly common across our nation. Yet whatever fear and angst that have been created among San Diego residents by the recent cartel violence here is a tiny fraction of what Tijuana residents endure every day.
