As a boy I had a skyline calendar that declared San Diego as “America’s Finest City.” At the time, I didn’t understand the positionality that San Diego enjoyed in order to maintain that exceptional designation. Minutes away across the border, is Tijuana. A place that has a rich and complex history, and one that has been traditionally over exploited for the gain of the American enterprise. A metaphorical Tijuana Yin for the San Diego Yang.

Now, It’s mere days before Trump’s second inauguration. The touristy downtown Zona Rio of Tijuana is awash in colorful flags flapping in the cool breeze of winter. Squadrons of Marines patrol on foot while Mariachi ensembles play on. A Haitian couple crosses the street under the iconic Downtown Arch. Underneath the sombreros and trinkets, realities here are starting to shift again.

Rainbow colored papel picado flutters in the wind, framing the iconic Tijuana Arch.

Urban Historian Lewis Mumford has shown that cities are places of conscious construction, where their “complex and enduring structure”1 is one that reveals the historic process. Contemporary Tijuana is not immune from these processes. This photo essay aims to highlight the polarized conditions of the city and region at the start of 2025, as this area has become a ground zero for the intersections of capitalistic globalism, urban development and new waves of migration.

Tijuana National Guard Soldiers
A squadron of National Guard soldiers patrol the Zona Rio.
Businesses compete for attention on a street in the Zona Rio.
Tourist sombreros for sale underneath the
iconic Tijuana arch.
A sign advertising male enhancement drugs frames a fully armed National Guard unit.
Souvenir marionettes of various Mexican tropes hang for sale.
Colorful new buildings crowd downtown with vibrant nightlife options.

Afternoon traffic has snarled Paseo de los Héroes, a major arterial route through the city. A man walks with urgency trying to sell his wears. The traffic is absolutely stopped, and he’s covering as much ground as he can with the time that he has.

Tijuana Informal economies
A Haitian man sells washing covers and water dispensers in the middle of traffic.

Since the 2010 Haiti earthquakes and continuing political dissolution of the country, many Haitians have become refugees.

A migrant stands in a shelter with a sweater that reads “Never Look Back.”

Global migration at the forefront, the reverberations of slavery and colonization are still tearing through the present. Urban theorist Mike Davis points out in Planet of Slums, that “Cities, indeed, have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since 1950”2

A mother walks her children home after school.
Smoke rises in the distance as people crowd a hillside next to the USA/Mexico border.

With the advent of Remain in Mexico and other policies, Haitian some refugees once seeking safe haven in the USA have often chosen to stay in the bustling city.3

An individual rides a bike next to a Haitian barber shop.

These new citizens have been laying down the next layer of urbanism in the city. As Pedro Ochoa, director general of the Centro Cultural Tijuana, notes “Every citizen, either Mexican or foreign, has given the city an international flair and transformed it into a mosaic of varying outlooks on life and ways of seeing the world.” 4

A storefront stands in the heart of new “Little Haiti,” a new urban center for Haitian migrants.
Laundry hangs to dry above a migrant shelter.
Barbed wire frames a mural of multi-racial hands on the side of a migrant shelter.
A multi-cultural mural covers a wall at a church that doubles as a refugee shelter.

Amongst this contested landscape where wrought iron bars cling to windows, a neatly arranged and carefully maintained migrant shelter stands walled off from the rest of the community.

A Haitian refugee shelter sits behind an iron gate with a sign that suggests respecting the dignity of our brothers.
A refugee feeds birds outside of a shelter.

These are the ripples of the urban change, manifesting in real time.

Infamous traffic snarls the streets at rush hour, as the city’s infrastructure cannot handle the growing population.
Tijuana Masonic Lodge
A Chinese inspired Masonic Lodge in the urban fabric.
A palm tree grows on a hillside covered in used tires in an attempt to stop erosion of the fragile soil.
A man plays harmonica and sings for tips alongside the USA Mexico border.
Mexican Army Troops militarize downtown streets.
A person in a wheelchair situated on a pedestrian bridge looks out over the congested landscape.
A downtown overpass loaded with stopped evening traffic, with a vibrant marketplace underneath.
Informal settlements crowd the crumbling hillsides of Tijuana.

Alongside the new residents, the gears of capitalism continue to grind away. As Mike Davis pointed out in Evil Paradise, “dynamic, ever-growing social inequality, moreover, is the very engine of the contemporary economy, not just its inadvertent consequence.” 5

A freshly flatted hillside, makes way for new industry in the form of a new maquilladora building, poised to capitalize on lower labor costs of the region.

In a post NAFTA world, the Tijuana landscape is being bulldozed again. Parts of the rolling hillsides are being shaved away to make way for more shrines for cheap human labor, while informal housing covers the hillsides. Professor Paul Ganster observed “Adequate housing and supply of urban services have been ongoing concerns for governmental authorities” and that “An integrated urban development plan has not been followed for large and important parts of the city.” 6

Paved road turns to dirt, as new skyscrapers rise and settlements pack into the distance.

As Davis highlights in Magical Urbanism, “In the neoliberal utopia of a border economy capitalized on Mexico’s catastrophic national level of unemployment, real wages bear little or no relationship to workers’ productivity or the local cost of living.”7

Fresh corn cobs on sale pack the rear of a pickup cab.
An electrified fence surrounds a new development, with graffitied erosion protection below.
Barbed wire and a particularly sharp fence element divide residences.
Graffiti covers an overpass while palm trees decorate the downtown area.
A woman walks by graffitied medical offices.

And it’s all hemmed in by the border wall, snaking its way towards Playas, ironic in its almost playful forms here- created here too by the complex geologic realties of the hillsides.
There’s much competition for attention here: Indigenous cleansing rituals, monuments marking original borders, vendors hawking a dynamic array of goods.

The USA/Mexico border wall twists and turns to the contours of the hilly terrain.
Having just serenaded the visitor with his arms held wide with a conch shell, a man embraces indigenous practices and sages him with smoke.
Scrawled on the bars of the USA Border Wall, graffiti suggests that the United States is conceived on stolen land.
A sombrero clad ballet folklorico dancer looks out over the Pacific ocean.
A man prepares a seaside table for visitors in front of the USA/Mexico border wall.
New luxury beachfront residences crowd the Las Playas district.
A vending cart carries the ingredients for “Cocos Loco,” an alcoholic coconut beverage, as waves crash on to the border wall.
A radiant ballet folklorico dancer performs a traditional Mexican dance.

Driving south, this world is reshaped. More skyscrapers emerging along the crashing waves, Folkloricos dance in the sunset while Mariachi’s belt out classic rancheras. Remains of the colonial Spanish invasion still dot the landscape, an echo of the past as the Tierra starts to morph yet again.

The new mission church surrounded by modern agricultural enterprises, is adjacent to the Spanish Mission that attempted to subdue the Kumeyaay population in 1810.
A new luxury condominium development rises next to the oceanfront.
A statue of Jesus Christ rises over waterfront mansions.
An automatic rifle wielding National Gaurd unit patrols the streets of downtown Tijuana.

As Mumford asserts, “In order to defeat the insensate forces that now threaten civilization from within, we must transcend the original frustrations and negations that have dogged the city throughout it’s history. Otherwise the sterile gods of power, unrestrained by organic limits or human goals, will remake man in their own faceless image and bring human history to an end.”8

People gathered around a table finish off a feast at a seaside restaurant.
Alongside the border, vendors selling joyful play objects comfort each other.

A beautiful seaside retreat for some, an open air prison for others.

  1. Mumford, Lewis. “Retrospect and Prospect.” The City in History, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, New York, 1961, p. 576. ↩︎
  2. Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums. Verso, 2017, p. 1. ↩︎
  3. Slovick, Sam. “The Haiti Factor.” Red Canary Magazine, 6 Nov. 2024, redcanarycollective.org/magazine/haitian-immigration/. ↩︎
  4. Crosby, Harry W., et al. Tijuana 1964: Una Visión Fotográfica E Histórica. San Diego State University Press, Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias, 2014, p. V. ↩︎
  5. Davis, Mike, and Daniel Bertrand Monk. Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism. New Press ; Turnaround Distributor, 2008, p. XI. ↩︎
  6. Crosby, Harry W., et al. Tijuana 1964: Una Visión Fotográfica E Histórica. San Diego State University Press, Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias, 2014, p. 64-68. ↩︎
  7. Davis, Mike. Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US City. Verso, 2001, p. 29. ↩︎
  8. Mumford, Lewis. “Retrospect and Prospect.” The City in History, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, New York, 1961, p. 576. ↩︎