A Storm Of Violence

Surfing through natural disasters and escalating drug wars in Southern Baja

- Kyle Denuccio

Two days after Tropical Storm Lidia hit Southern Baja this past summer, my girlfriend and I drove into San Jose del Cabo from Los Cabos International Airport. This was the only way into the city at that point, as Lidia had washed out the coastal roads to the north and south. Everywhere in the city still showed its hangover from the storm, which had killed at least six people, destroyed hotels and homes and cut off much of the area’s power and water supply. Many of the roads in town were still so flooded or covered by sand that you couldn’t tell which were paved and which were dirt. At the beachfront apartment complex where we stayed, palm fronds and sand covered the bottoms of the pools.

This was the worst storm at that point in the year, but Lidia was arguably not the most destructive force at the time in Southern Baja, where Mexico’s drug wars had fully arrived. Although the area was previously a sanctuary from other states plagued by the drug wars, by mid-summer Baja California Sur had the fifth highest murder rate of Mexico’s 32 states, even as homicides in the country as a whole hit record levels. Tourists remained shielded from these killings by design, but even at the doorsteps of the secure beachfront resorts frequented by surfers, this reality had become difficult to ignore completely. It revealed itself in unexpected glimpses rather than with the broad force of a natural disaster like Lidia.