Joy, the blogger for El Blog de Joy is traveling from Mexico City to Tulum, a beautiful seaside town about two hours south of Cancun; the woman behind the blog Canuck in Cancun is having mixed results with her son’s solar system project for preschool; and the mom who writes the Moving Kids to Mexico blog is proudly recounting how both of her young sons served as translators at an international day expo. 
Are each of these expat bloggers completely oblivious to the fact the entire country of Mexico is in a state of turmoil?
Or, is the drug cartel crisis there not as wide spread as the U.S. media has made it out to be?
My money is on the bloggers. I’ve just booked a 10-day trip to Mexico in mid-June with my wife and kids.
While I don’t read blogs for the latest news from Mexico, they offer an interesting perspective about what life is like there for the ordinary person. If the violence is as wide spread as some of the reports by the U.S. media imply, I doubt Joy would be heading off to Tulum or that Canuck in Cancun would be writing about her son’s nursery school project.
What are the journalists located in Mexico blogging about? The last two posts for the blog Uncovering Mexico by Jeremy Schwartz, a reporter for Cox Newspapers, have been about Lance Armstrong’s visit to the country.
All of these blog posts strike a dramatic contrast to the U.S. media’s reports about Mexico, especially a report on NPR’s Website entitled CIA and Pentagon Wonder: Could Mexico Implode? In a story that is as sensational as it is vague, NPR says:
It seems that every night in Mexico there are reports of drug-related violence — murders, kidnappings, armed battles with police, narco-traffickers who outgun even the Mexican army with their rocket-propelled grenades.
Unlike the most recent U.S. State Department Alert about the drug cartel crisis, NPR does not bother to specify that much of this activity is limited to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Photo by joseloya (Via Creative Commons)
on Mar 1st, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I’m heading to Mexico City later this month and traveling beyond. If I listened to state departments alerts on many of the countries I have been to I never would have gone.
on Mar 1st, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I think the media coverage of many places is the same way. Much of the world is portrayed as much more dangerous than it actually is.
on Mar 2nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Thanks Señor Ojos. Really and truly, things are quite calm around here. Life is normal, we’re not living in a state of fear, we just go about our business like you would anywhere else. We took a trip out to the hotel zone yesterday and were happy to see tourists out and about and smiling, nary a gun or grenade in sight. Even the police were helpful and kind. The media is having a field day with this, the scare tactics and fear mongering about Mexico come and go every once in a while. (I think it’s the fault of the Florida tourist board, haha).
on Mar 2nd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
@Wendy: So glad you’re going to Mexico City– my second hometown is incredible– and so overlooked by travelers!
@Steve: The problem with mainstream media coverage (even my favorites–NPR and NY Times, which had a front page Mexico violence story yesterday) is that it never looks at a country as a whole. It isolates a single issue or problem and magnifies it to the point that it becomes the sole issue… dangerous for locals and foreigners alike. Thanks for bringing attention to this issue– and thanks for traveling to Mexico.
on Mar 2nd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
If travelers read the U.S. State Department travel warnings for Italy or Spain, they’d have secnd thoughts about going. The current news cycle is the dangers of Mexico. It will last until the next headline hits in another area. Who know the damage that will be done to Mexican tourism in the meantime.
on Mar 2nd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Good point. Most the stories I’ve seen are painting with a very broad brush. Fortunately, from what I’ve seen most people are not heeding the “warnings.”
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Great point, Steven–I’ve had family members and people who are planning on coming to Oaxaca write me asking, “Is it safe there? Are you/we going to get kidnapped?” And I have to say that no, while it is intense, most of the violence is happening between drug traffickers and law enforcement officials, and it’s happening in isolated areas. And the U.S media loves to distract from it’s own issues by sensationalizing whatever crisis abroad. Not that Mexico doesn’t have issues–but it seems to me convenient to suddenly shift the focus to an “imploding” Mexico as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved to be disasters.
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
The media’s poor coverage of this situation highlights the power of the Internet. If this was 1989, most people wouldn’t even have access to the State Department’s Alert –they’d just have to take the media’s word for it that the entire country was under siege.
Also, the blog posts from people living in Mexico are a great source of information that we didn’t have before.
on Apr 8th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
[...] spring-breakers safe. Consider reading a few blogs that cover travel in Mexico too including Travelojos for a balanced view on the situation [...]