Violence in Mexico has increased recently, the U.S. State Department advised in a Travel Alert on Friday. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Last year, the number of murders in Mexico doubled from the previous year. In December, the country closed out a year that also saw an increase in kidnappings with the abduction of a well-known U.S. security expert.
Despite this bad news, the number of tourists visiting Mexico in 2008 actually increased by almost 6 percent over the previous year. It might be that the declining value of Mexico’s peso has given American’s an incentive to ignore their neighbor’s crime woes.
Photo by velmab
Automatic Weapons and Grenades. The State Department explains that the “violence” it is referring to includes drug cartels along the U.S.-Mexico border armed with automatic weapons and grenades.
“During some of these incidents, U.S. citizens have been trapped and temporarily prevented from leaving the area,” the alert states.
Millions Visit Mexico Each Year. But the State Department also offers some reassurances about visiting Mexico. The alert notes that “millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year (including thousands who cross the land border every day for study, tourism or business).”
Trouble can be avoided by taking some common sense precautions such as visiting businesses and tourist destinations during daylight hours, the alert says.
While most of the violence is attributable to Mexico’s crackdown on drug cartels, the huge spike in the country’s murder rate is hard to ignore. More than 5,600 people in Mexico died last year as a result of drug-related violence — double the number from 2007, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Kidnappings. Kidnappings are also up. “As of late November, there had been 943 reported kidnappings in the country, up from 630 in November 2007,” according to the Chronicle. In December, a well-known U.S. kidnapping consultant was abducted while he was mid-way through dinner in a restaurant.
As alarming as this sounds, the chances of being murdered or kidnapped on your next trip to Mexico are actually quite small. Criminal justice expert David Shirk who directs the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego told the San Francisco Chronicle that “The bigger concern for American citizens – for whom the odds of getting kidnapped or killed are still extra-small, something like the odds of getting struck by lightning – are the increases in other incidences of crime: small-scale robbery, assault, rape,”
Increase in Number of Tourists Visiting Mexico. Over the past year, tourists have weighed the odds in Mexico’s favor. The number of foreign tourists visiting Mexico surged to 23 million in 2008, up 5.9 percent from the year before, the Associated Press recently reported.
The declining value of the peso against the dollar gives Americans extra incentive to ignore the crime wave. On Friday, the peso weakened to a record 14.89 to the U.S. dollar, the AP said.
on Mar 3rd, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Amen and well-said. I got three emails in the last hour from people who were afraid to go to Cancun for spring break. I have a page on the relative safety of Mexico on my web site and actually get hate mail because of it. I forwarded your article to them and will copy it with credit and a link on my site. Below is an excerpt from my new book on Mexican society, due out at the end of the year.
BTW, there have consistently been around 700,000 kidnappings reported in the USA each year for the last five. Most of those were children, but kidnappings of persons over 18 were around 170,000. The number of homicides in the USA for 2007 (latest full statistics available) was 14,831.
Using the statistics of the US State Department, between 2002 and 2005, there were 113 Americans who died in Mexico from homicides in the whole period. That’s 28 per year. Twenty-eight. 28! How many millions and millions of tourists went to the country in that time? 20 Americans per year died in Mexico from drowning. Eleven per year were suicides. How many people were gunned down in the entire USA in that time? (Excepted from the book, ‘Modern Mexico Through The Eyes of Modern Mexicans.’ University of Texas Pan American Press, 2009.
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Thanks Mike. I was looking at the book A People’s Guide to Mexico on Amazon the other night and noticed that someone basically highjacked the Web page with all of these comments about how dangerous Mexico is. It seems like there are better things to argue about than whether Mexico is dangerous or not.