Aguilar and Castañeda come to Tijuana to say the war on drugs is a myth

Rubén Aguilar (left) and Jorge Castañeda (right). Photo by Manuel Montoya.

by Fausto Ovalle

Rubén Aguilar and Jorge Castañeda unveiled their new book, El narco: La guerra fallida [The Failed War on Drug Trafficking], on 20 January 2010 at the Tijuana campus of the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIAT).

The president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, used false assumptions to justify his failed drug war, say Vicente Fox’s former presidential press secretary and the former secretary of state. They point out that this war against drug trafficking was something Calderón created in order to legitimate his presidency and that it was not in his platform when he was running for office.

Everyone’s talking about Tijuana

by Guillermo Lozano

During the last year, Tijuana showed up in the news of the furthest and most unlikely parts of the world. Never in the history of the city has it received reporters from so many countries nor ones so distant. From the end of 2008 through 2009, journalists of eleven different nations came to Tijuana in order to file special reports. Sadly, they did not come to write about our restaurants or our sports teams. They came to write about the incidents of street violence.

The efforts of the governmental tourism departments, the city’s visitors and conventions bureau, and the various PR agencies did not achieve such lavish publicity as that created by the Dantean imagery evoked in the wave of violence that followed September 2008.