Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tijuana is the most populous city of the Mexican state of Baja California, on the northwestern Pacific Coast of Mexico, just south of California and adjacent to the Mexico-United States border. As of 2024 its population reached 2,297,000, making it the most populous city in northern Mexico and the westernmost city in the country.
Tijuana takes its name from Rancho Tía Juana, which Santiago Argüello Moraga established in 1829 on a Mexican land grant. Historians generally hold that Tía Juana derived from the Kumeyaay word Tiwan, meaning by the sea, rather than from the Spanish phrase for Aunt Jane.
Tijuana's founding is recognized as the 11th of July 1889, the date when descendants of Santiago Argüello and Augustín Olvera agreed to begin developing the city. Urban settlement began that same year.
Tijuana became a manufacturing hub after the Mexican federal government launched the Border Industrialization Program in 1965, drawing foreign assembly factories called maquiladoras. In the past decade it became the medical device manufacturing capital of North America, surpassing Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and at its 2001 peak it held roughly 820 maquiladoras.
Tijuana is the birthplace and base of the Tijuana Cartel and regularly ranks among the most violent cities by homicide rate. Homicides peaked in 2010 with 844 killings, and in 2018 OECD data recorded 2,253 homicides, equal to 129.8 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Tijuana has an active independent art scene that Newsweek called one of the most important new cultural meccas, and it is the birthplace of the Nortec and Ruidoson electronic music styles. It is also known for Baja Med cuisine, the Caesar salad, and the Tijuana Cultural Center, known as CECUT, which opened in 1982.