Tijuana
North America's medical device capital with 7 homicides daily — $40B in manufacturing and cartel warfare occupying the same geography without touching.
Tijuana manufactures more medical devices than any city in North America while recording roughly seven homicides per day. Two parallel cities occupy the same geography: over 600 maquiladoras employing 270,000 workers produce aerospace components, precision medical instruments, and consumer electronics to standards that satisfy FDA and FAA regulators, while cartel violence makes Tijuana one of the world's most dangerous cities.
The manufacturing numbers are staggering. International sales exceed $40 billion annually. $2.3 billion in goods cross the US-Mexico border daily. Medical device exports alone top $300 million per year. Manufacturing accounts for 65% of the city's GDP, and the cross-border trade supports 95,000 jobs on the San Diego side of the fence.
Tijuana builds more medical devices than any North American city and records seven homicides daily — precision manufacturing and extreme violence occupying the same geography without touching.
The violence is real but hyperlocal. Cartel territory disputes between Sinaloa and Tijuana factions produce targeted killings concentrated in specific neighbourhoods, while industrial zones and tourist areas operate largely untouched. This spatial segregation is the mechanism that makes the economics work: San Diego companies get aerospace-grade precision at developing-world labour costs, partially enabled by economic conditions that keep wages low despite the surrounding danger.
Tijuana has climbed the value chain in ways that defy conventional development theory. The maquiladoras of the 1980s assembled simple products from imported components. Today the same zones house software development firms, medical device R&D, and electronics manufacturing that competes on quality, not just cost. This should not happen in a city with a homicide rate of 138 per 100,000.
The cleaner wrasse analogy captures the relationship: a small organism that provides an essential service to a much larger one. Tijuana cleans and assembles the components that San Diego's economy needs, operating in conditions the larger city would never tolerate domestically. The symbiosis is genuine — both sides benefit — but the power asymmetry is permanent.