The man who took bullets waging war on Mexico’s cartels is now taking on politics
On Julián Leyzaola Pérez’s watch as police chief, murder rates in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez plummeted – now after surviving a murderous attack, he’s trying to become mayor of Tijuana
When I interviewed him in 2008, Julián Leyzaola Pérez strutted with a military gait. As he should: a former lieutenant colonel in the Mexican army, he had been summoned to command the police force, then head public security in Tijuana, at the time Mexico’s second-most dangerous city. We met on his first day in the job.
But now, he arrives in a wheelchair to talk.