Tijuana Police Department

The Tijuana Police Department is represented in the novel by local officers working amid the crowd at Luis Donaldo Colosio’s campaign stop in Lomas Taurinas. Its role is practical but politically charged: the local force is expected to help secure the candidate, yet when he is wounded, Antonio Ramos’s effort to take control of his custody collides with the authority of the presidential guard. The episode makes the department’s presence visible at the point where protection becomes a contest over who can act—and who can decide what happens next.

Local Police at the Campaign Stop

The security arrangement combines federal and local personnel. Fifteen plainclothes soldiers from the elite Estado Mayor flank Colosio, while a special squad of former Tijuana police officers has been hired to provide security at local campaign appearances. The ex-police officers are interspersed through the crowd rather than separated from it, placing local security inside the same unruly gathering it must manage.

The campaign stop takes place in Lomas Taurinas, a poor settlement of improvised shacks and huts in a ravine near the Tijuana airport. Its steep, bare hillsides funnel the crowd into a natural amphitheater at the bottom of the ravine, where Colosio speaks from the bed of a pickup truck. The setting matters to the police task: Ramos watches from the slope while his Special Tactical Group personnel are stationed at points around the bowl. Their positions give them a view of the gathering, but the large, noisy crowd is difficult to control.

Ramos and the Problem of Protection

Ramos anticipates danger in the crowd’s movement. People have already mobbed Colosio’s red Chevy Blazer as it made its slow way along the neighborhood’s single street. Ramos fears that the same press of people will obstruct the candidate’s departure. The local officers’ problem is therefore not simply guarding a speaker at a fixed point; they must also manage the passage of a candidate and his vehicles through a congested, unstable scene.

When Colosio finishes speaking, he does not return to his car. The change in plan intensifies the disagreement between Ramos and Reyes, a member of the Mexican general staff and second-in-command of the presidential bodyguard. Ramos warns that if Colosio proceeds on foot, the local force cannot protect him. Reyes rejects that claim and asserts that protection is the bodyguard’s responsibility, not Ramos’s. The exchange exposes a divide inside the security operation: local officers are close enough to see the immediate risks, but the presidential guard claims superior authority over the candidate.

Colosio overhears the argument. That detail sharpens the scene’s institutional tension: the dispute about how to protect him takes place in his presence, while the people arguing are meant to keep him safe. The local police are not merely observing the presidential security apparatus; their judgment about the crowd and the route is directly at odds with the guard’s claim to command.

Custody After the Shooting

After Colosio is shot, an ambulance reaches the scene. As Ramos approaches a black Suburban, he sees Reyes and emergency medical technicians lift Colosio into the ambulance. He also sees a second wound in Colosio’s left side, confirming that the candidate has been shot twice. The ambulance leaves with Colosio, but the Suburban begins to depart as well, carrying an army major in its front seat.

Ramos points Esposa at the major and identifies his authority as Tijuana police. The major answers that he is with Estado Mayor and orders Ramos out of the way. Ramos then demands to get into the vehicle, explaining that he wants Colosio’s wounded companion to reach the police station alive. The major refuses, calling the matter none of Ramos’s business. The exchange turns a protective operation into a direct confrontation over custody and access: Ramos invokes local police authority and the need to keep a man alive, while the presidential guard invokes its own status to block him.

Institutional Significance

The episode presents the Tijuana Police Department through a narrowly focused crisis rather than a broad account of its organization or routine work. Its local role is clear: former officers are placed among the campaign crowd, and Ramos deploys the Special Tactical Group around the amphitheater. But the department’s practical presence does not settle who has authority when the situation becomes consequential. The presidential bodyguard’s refusal to yield shows how competing security forces can turn a question of protection into a struggle over control.

The scene also distinguishes proximity from power. Ramos and his officers have been watching the terrain and anticipating the crowd’s movement, yet Reyes can dismiss the local warning because the presidential guard claims responsibility for Colosio. After the shooting, Ramos’s demand that the wounded man reach the police station alive is likewise checked by the guard’s control of the vehicle. The department’s importance lies in that unresolved gap between local knowledge and institutional command: its officers are present at the crisis and attempt to intervene, but the scene does not establish that they can compel the more powerful security unit to cooperate.