Tijuana shows its pride with two-week-long fest

TIJUANA, Mexico – Look who’s coming to Tijuana. The world’s richest man. Four Nobel Prize laureates (including Al Gore!). A pair of Mexican film stars. An astronaut.

This border city is throwing itself a grand festival, the Tijuana Innovadora, and the star-studded cast is the kind of publicity muscle the city is hoping will knock Mexico’s drug wars from the headlines.

“It’s a happening,” said Alejandro Bustamante, a prominent businessman and one of the organizers. “We want to show the world what this city is capable of.”

But within a few days of the Oct. 7 kickoff, as if on cue, three beheaded bodies were hung from overpasses, a severed head was left on the side of a freeway, and at least 10 other people were killed, all in a three-day span. They were the grisliest slayings in Tijuana in almost a year.

Still, this show must go on, and much of the city seems determined to shrug off the violence in favor of enjoying a rare moment of civic pride. Mounted by business and civic leaders, the Innovadora is part conference, convention, musical and dance event, meant to showcase Tijuana as a center of manufacturing, art and innovation.

The fact that Tijuana can stage an undertaking of such scale while other border cities seem paralyzed by drug war violence is seen by many as a positive sign.

“It’s reflective of a civil society which is not rolling over and giving up. They are fighting back to reclaim the city,” said Jim Gerber, director of the International Business Program at San Diego State University.

Tijuana’s cultural center is filled with slickly produced exhibits from some of the city’s 500 or more manufacturing centers and companies. Tijuana produces many of the television sets sold in the U.S. market, manufactures headsets used by astronauts, medical devices and pacemakers, as well as thousands of thermometers, Toyota cars and solar panels.

That manufacturing muscle has been the central feature of efforts to repair the city’s image. This time, organizers thought they needed a bolder approach to give the event prestige. When Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales and Twitter founder Biz Stone met in a dressing room, it was hailed as the first meeting of “two giants of Internet innovation.” Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is scheduled to speak next week.

Gore got a rock star-like welcome from a standing-room-only audience at the cultural center, his speech capping Thursday’s seminars on sustainable energy.

Others used the occasion for good news. Welch Allyn, a leading maker of thermometers for the U.S. market, said it would add 100 jobs to its Tijuana factory. San Diego-based telecom giant Qualcomm announced a project to better track diabetes patients through its wireless technology.

Organizers have fought to keep attention off the violence and on the exhibition, which has drawn more than 50,000 visitors. The festival’s grand finale Wednesday will feature a mass dance event with plans for thousands doing a choreographed routine at shopping malls, schools and factories.