Show Notes
Border City is a new LA Times Presents podcast from The San Diego Union-Tribune. From Sandra Dibble, a reporter who spent more than 25 years covering the border, comes a story about beauty, violence and belonging in Tijuana, one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Dibble arrived in Tijuana in 1994 expecting to stay a year, maybe two. Instead she found herself drawn into the diverse worlds that intersect at this crossroads of the Americas.
Journalists. Migrants. Artists. Drug gangs. Tijuana is a place where paths converge, often in unexpected ways.
More from Border City
We know what’s good for us. We still do the opposite. How do we close that gap?
A random accident forces Sandra to slow down and embrace her life on the border. New waves of migrants arrive in Tijuana, pushed by violence, poverty, and political upheaval and fueled by dreams of reaching the United States.
Artists, chefs and ordinary citizens point the way to a revitalized Tijuana, even as the city faces new challenges. Sandra faces challenges too. Two deaths in her own family.
Doctors in their white coats protest the violence, while some young musicians refuse to stay home, and an arts promoter opens a new gallery. Sandra feels caught between two worlds as she flies back and forth to Washington to care for her ailing mother.
The Arellano cartel grows weaker as its top leaders fall, but the violence continues. Threats strike new fears in the highest echelons of law enforcement. The Tijuana opera hosts an inaugural performance. Sandra’s mother flies in from Washington, D.C. and meets Sandra’s friend Angela.