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<p>Tijuana saw its previous record murder rate, set in 2008, toppled in 2016.</p>
<p>The State of Baja California’s Attorney General reported 910 homicides within Tijuana’s city boundaries, surpassing 2008’s 844 reported murder cases, and easily going over 2015’s 652 murder cases.</p>
<p>December saw the more murders than any other month in 2016, with 112 in total. This October, Tijuana recorded its 653rd murder, officially marking 2016 as a deadlier year for the city than 2015.</p>
<p>The cause for the uptick in last year’s murder rate, 46 per 100,000 people, is attributed to many factors, most notably a power struggle between the upcoming Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel for control of the city’s trafficking routes.</p>
<p>These events come at a time in which Tijuana is living through a renaissance brought on by a thriving culinary scene, a boom in craft brewing, reclaiming of public spaces, and through an uptick in the manufacturing industry.</p>
<p>Last week, the New York Times named Tijuana in its top 10 cities to visit in 2017, citing the city’s dining culture, which has been in a constant rise since 2010, as a major attraction.</p>
<p>But despite the distinction, local authorities worry that the constant negative headlines might mitigate the city’s newfound prestige.</p>
<p>According to David Shirk of USD’s Justice in Mexico initiative, leaders need to make a change from focusing on the drug war to improving the economy.</p>
<p>“The key challenge for Tijuana’s authorities and city leaders is that they’ve spent a great deal of effort in trying to establish Tijuana as a safe and vibrant city,” said Shirk in an interview with KPBS. “It’s very disheartening to see those efforts sullied by a resurgence of this violence.”</p>