What drives Tijuana's next mayor? - Jorge Astiazarán to take office Dec. 1
From The San Diego Union Tribune
By Sandra Dibble
TIJUANA - "Few are as familiar with Tijuana's vast contrasts as Jorge Astiazarán Orcí.
The man expected to be the city's next mayor routinely treats some of the wealthiest residents of this city of 1.7 million at his office near the
Campestre golf course. But there is little he loves more than volunteering for the Red Cross--driving ambulances through some of Tijuana's poorest
colonias, or overseeing the care of the injured and critically ill patients who arrive at its emergency room.
The 51-year-old physician, member of a prominent Tijuana family, is the apparent winner of Sunday's mayoral race, and slated to launch a three-year
term on Dec. 1.
"The challenge is big," Astiazarán, a member of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, said in an interview last week, his victory a
virtual certainty but still not official. He is undaunted, he said, by the task ahead.
People need jobs - the city's unemployment is now six percent, he said, a far cry from the days of near-full employment more than a decade ago. The
top complaint he heard on the campaign trail was about crime, he said. Forty- five percent of the city's streets are unpaved; "this is unacceptable,"
Astiazarán said.
Still, things have been looking up lately in Tijuana. The high-impact drug crimes of a few years ago have plummeted, and Tijuana has been experiencing
a revival - with new restaurants, arts venues, cultural offerings, athletic events.
Astiazarán wants Californians to return - and said one of his first moves as mayor will be to open a Tijuana booth at the San Diego Convention Center.
"San Diegans have to come here with a different attitude, not thinking they're going to find what they find in San Diego," he said.
Those who know Astiazarán say his down-to-earth, optimistic and energetic nature can do much for the city. "He's like a whirlwind, he comes and he
moves everything around, and makes sure that everything is operating as it should," said Fernando Esquér, former head of ambulance services at the
Tijuana Red Cross. "He's very committed to his work, and that rubs off on everyone around him."
Astiazarán "is a guy who represents a side of Tijuana that a lot of people don't necessarily see," said José Larroque, who grew up in close contact
with Astiazarán's family and is a partner with the Baker & McKenzie law office in Tijuana. "He's a real person from Tijuana, and an example of a
successful guy. You don't see them because they just go about their business and do things."
Astiazarán has never held an elected position, but between 2004 and 2007 served for more than two years as head of city social services under
then-Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon. Astiazarán said that Hank, the wealthy owner of the Grupo Caliente off-track betting empire, is both his patient and his
friend--but that the latter had no role in his being selected as a candidate.
Astiazarán won the election due to reputation as a man concerned about social issues, said political analyst Benedicto Ruíz.
"He seems to be a man with good intentions and an open attitude as far as listening to people's concerns," said Ruíz, a columnist at the Tijuana daily
newspaper, Frontera.
"But good will is not enough to solve the problems of the city," Ruíz said, a city "with many complex social problems and a series of conflicts, with
urban growth, issues that require political skills and understanding."
Tijuana's rapid population growth has long challenged city administrations. Even as the rates have slowed--from 4.4 percent in the 1990s to an average
of 2.11 percent 2005 through 2010, that still means absorbing 35,000 people a year, according to Tijuana's Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
Astiazarán compares governing a city to being an orchestra director - or an internist - leading a group of experts focused on a common task:
"Governing is common sense, you need to surround yourself by people that know more than you do, people who are honest, who are prepared to help the
city and not help themselves," he said. He has pledged "a more efficient and less obese" government, that would stretch the city's $346 million annual
budget, and will work with business leaders to select a police chief and director of economic development.
Astiazarán's family first moved to Tijuana in the 1940s from neighboring Sonora. His father, an accountant, started Grupo Uniradio chain now run by
brothers Luis Carlos and Ricardo Astiazaran, with radio stations in California, Baja California and Sonora.
Astiazarán said he has been interested in politics since his youth, and wanted to become a physician for as long as he can remember, and first
volunteered with the Red Cross at age 11.
Like many Baja Californians of his class and generation, Astiazarán speaks fluent English and moves easily on both sides of the border. He was born in
the United States, under unforeseen circumstances that occurred when his mother fell ill while visiting his grandfather, then the head of the Mexican
Consulate in Los Angeles, he said.
The location of his birth came back to haunt Astiazarán years later, when a Mexican electoral tribunal ruled against his mayoral candidacy in 2007 on
the grounds that he had not met the legal requirement of establishing his Mexican nationality ten years prior to running for the position.
Astiazarán has lived in Tijuana all his life--save for medical studies in Monterrey and time spent in Mexico City specializing in internal medicine.
Tijuana is where he met his wife, Elia Manjarréz, then a television reporter, and Tijuana is where where they are raising their three daughters, ages
16, 15 and 10, though the two oldest are slated to attend private school in Chula Vista later this year.
The family purchased a small townhouse in Eastlake a couple of years back, for weekend stays, but "I never left Tijuana," Astiazarán said. "I always
felt safe, because I was in the Red Cross, I knew everybody, the good and the bad, they all came."
As mayor, he plans to stay in touch with the city the way he always has--driving to its remotest colonias, and meeting its citizens. "The mayor isn't
just going to sit in his office, signing papers," he said. "He'll be on the streets listening to people and what they have to say. They're going to
see me a lot."
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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