Now
Contrast that world of 30 years ago to the one today. Mexico is urbanized no longer rural and farm based. The population is over 130 million with rapid growth of cities along the border. Most residents earn their living working in a job. Services is the dominant occupation with manufacturing, mining and oil field work as much smaller domains. Tourism is an important source of jobs with about 62 percent of all residents working in service jobs with many in tourism. Manufacturing is second with just over 20 percent. This job structure represents how important having tourists is to the Mexican economy as well as the impact of globalization that brings jobs to low-wage economies like Mexico. Earnings from Mexicans working in other countries is significant with about 5% each year coming from funds earned in other nation’s and sent to Mexico. Most of this comes from the United States.
Mexico’s transition from a rural, farming and ranching world to an urban world involved in trade, tourism and manufacturing has been a journey of the last 50 years or so. One of the headaches in this transition is developing a government that meets its responsibilities and has the respect of the population. That transition has slipped in the last two decades with national governments as the long dominant PRI lost two national elections (6 year terms) to a more conservative party, the PAN, returned to power in 2012 and then a sharply leftist party appeared in 2018. It was created by the current President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and is named Morena. The Mexican economy has stagnated during the last decade and violence has increased across the nation. A clear measure of effectiveness of government is the rate of crime.
Compare this disturbing measure: the rate of homicides. El Paso is on track to have a record number in 2022 of 65. Juarez will have about 1,000 in 2022! The population estimated for El Paso is 975,000 and 1,600,000 for Juarez at the end of 2022.
This puts the immigration on the border into a broader picture. Mexico is a very violent land and some of the extremes are along the border with the United States. Here is a regularly updated graph of violence in all the states of Mexico and many individual communities: https://elcri.men/en/violence-map/
There is a similar pattern at the other large twin city in the far west in California and Baja California.
City Population Homicides
San Diego 2,000,000 60
Tijuana 2,200,000 1,000