Tijuana, Mexico, is in turmoil. While no strangers to drug violence, the city's residents are experiencing something new. It's called terror. The innocent are being terrorized by violence, and the toll that these acts take on tourism and cross-border commerce is incalculable.

Our neighbors say they can't remember when the violence in the city has been so bad, public safety so precarious, and the economic situation so desperate. One is always tempted to assume the violence is targeted, and that the casualties are limited to bad actors involved in the drug trade. Violence is never that precise. People rightly worry about becoming victims of the collateral damage.

Every day, there is another bloody headline and more corpses left behind in new and creative ways intended to send messages from one gang to another. On Friday morning, six bodies were found in Tijuana — five in a single location. That brought to 33 the number of bodies found in the city for the week. Even in a bad economy, business is good for undertakers.

But for just about everyone else in Tijuana, it's a dark and depressing time financially. Typically an economic powerhouse, the city is experiencing hard days. Migrants from all over Mexico are still coming into the city. But, with less expectation of being able to find work in the United States, they're trying their luck in Tijuana and not finding much work.

That is to be expected. The Mexican economy is hopelessly intertwined with the economy of the United States. When we do well, Mexico does well. Employers hire Mexican immigrants, and those immigrants sent home more than $25 billion last year. And now that the United States is struggling with rising unemployment and diminished consumer confidence, Mexico is suffering right along with us. This year, with fewer immigrants working, remittances are down significantly. As for tourism, many Americans are staying away and spending their dollars on this side of the border. That only makes the economic situation more desperate, which leads to more violence as drug dealers fight over turf to increase profits, which makes the situation more desperate, and so it goes.

There is something else that is intertwined: the destinies of two nations that, as neighbors and friends, are more dependent upon one another than they like to admit. Mexico's drug war is our war, too. Not just because it is Americans' appetite for illegal drugs that pays for the guns and the bullets, but also because the United States cannot afford to stand idly by as its neighbor lapses into chaos.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has waged a heroic battle against the drug cartels, but he can't fight it alone. He needs reinforcements. In June, under intense pressure from President George W. Bush, Congress approved the so-called Merida Initiative, which appropriated $400 million to help Calderon fight the cartels. But the money has yet to be handed over. That should happen immediately.

And once the money arrives in Mexico, let's hope some of it goes to the front lines in Tijuana. Until then, the chaos will continue at great cost to all concerned.

REPRINTED FROM THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.