Tijuana:
La Boom
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Clips:

Program Open 1:07

Dignity :38

Curruption 1:04

Making History :53

Local Emmy Winner from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Pacific Southwest chapter. 2002.

No matter which language you say it in, Spanish or English, Tijuana’s phenomenal growth over the last decade is best characterized by one word: boom. KPBS Television’s Full Focus series takes an in-depth look at our neighboring city’s explosive growth in a half-hour special, “El Boom.”

Tijuana is growing by 75,000 people a year and 8 acres a day. Its population of nearly 1.3 million will double by the year 2020. No longer a quaint border town, Tijuana is a major international manufacturing hub where new factories—maquiladoras—can sprout up in a matter of weeks. KPBS Reporter Carrie Kahn asks how will this international city, in a developing country, cope with an explosion of migrants? Can ambitious city planners manage to get ahead of squatter communities that spring up overnight? Does plenty of jobs mean economic well-being for the majority of Tijuana's workers? What role has NAFTA, enacted in 1994, played in development? How are San Diegans impacted by this neighboring boomtown? Tijuana has the energy of a new boom town... but can it survive its boom?

Kahn probes the answers to these and other questions through interviews with civic leaders, city planners and through the eyes of two Tijuana families—the Escobedos, residents for more than 50 years; and the Hernandezes, who came to the city in the infancy of its growth almost 15 years ago.

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