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How NOT to Get Beheaded in Mexico...
We lived in Mexico - one of the dangerous areas affected by the drug cartel violence, actually - until about a year and a half ago, and I have to say that this is spot on:
I can't even remember when I last experienced the beheading of a close friend. Everyone assumes it must be a weekly, or even a daily event: after all, I live in Mexico. The truth, however, is that you are as likely to have your head removed against your will in my town -- Oaxaca -- as you are to be murdered by roving, machete-crazed gangs in Martha's Vineyard.
You protest: slavering butchers are thin on the ground in Martha's Vineyard. Ah, but we do not have beheadings in Oaxaca. To be honest, they're unconscionably lax about slaughtering tourists in this city. It just doesn't happen. There are whole great swaths of Mexico -- some 95% of the country -- that are untouched by the drug war. In these places, tourists are annoyingly safe.
Take out a map. Mexico is rather large. To avoid all of Mexico because you fear drug violence, is like cancelling your trip to the Napa Valley because you hear that people are flying airplanes into towers in New York City. (I'm sure a lot of Europeans did just that.)
The homicide rate in most Mexican cities is simply not very exciting. People who read newspapers -- they are legion -- will tell you that Mexico City is Elm Street on steroids. No way they're taking their family anywhere near the Mexican capital. Yet these same people do not think twice about hauling their beloved brood to Disney World.
Disney World is in Orlando. Orlando, Florida.
What, you're not trembling? The rate of violent crime in Orlando is really something. At the theme park itself you might not encounter drooling gangs with machetes, but the likelihood of getting slaughtered is much higher in the city of Orlando than it is in Mexico City. The homicide rate in Mexico City is sub-terrifying: 8.3 out of 100,000. The rate in Orlando? Honey, you don't want to know.
If you're truly bent on living dangerously, hit the French Quarter for a shot of faux absinthe. New Orleans is leveling humans at a rate of 58 per 100,000. To be fair, that's an improvement upon the homicide record set in 1994: an awe-inspiring 85.8...
Oh, you do want to know that Orlando statistic? That would be 11.7(28 homicides, in a population of 238,300). Which is better than New
Orleans or Baghdad, but way higher than Mexico City...The internet too offers exquisite advice regarding Orlando. Somehow, I suspect this is hyperbole: "Don't be surprised if your sleeping child has been taken right out of their hotel bed in the wee hours of the morning." I mean, come on. You have my permission to be surprised.In fact, the capital of America is a much more dangerous place than the capital of Mexico: You are 10 times more likely to get beheaded on a school trip to the Lincoln Memorial than you are strolling through downtown Mexico City.Okay, I'm lying. You are ten times more likely to be murdered in a drug-related crime. (The rate of actual beheadings is suppressed by travel agents on both sides of the border.)People ask me, regularly, how they can travel safely to Mexico. Here I have impeccable advice: follow this, and you're pretty much guaranteed to keep your head. Taking notes? Good.
Do not, under any circumstances, take a job with a major drug cartel. Just say no. You do not want to be a hit man, or a mule, or even middle management -- that's how people get killed.I mean it: that is how people get killed. Sunbathing, on the other hand, is oddly uneventful. Yes, there are a few places in Mexico that I would avoid, unless I were applying for that gig (which I urge you to reconsider). Most border towns are not the destination of choice, except I suppose when brothel-hopping, in which case I'm told a soup?on of danger is bracing (and well-deserved). Acapulco too has declined. It was once a town in which you had a good chance of having a bad time. It is now a town in which you have no chance of having a good time...
[However], "Of 2,500 municipalities (what we call counties), only 80, or fewer than five per cent, have been affected by the drug war..."
Graphic anecdotes are hard to ignore, by design, but they are useless when trying to grasp the nature of a country that is not simply vast, but immeasurably diverse. You know how Los Angeles doesn't have a whole lot in common with an Amish community in Pennsylvania? Well, multiply that difference a thousand-fold when comparing Ciudad Juarez (a genuinely dangerous place) to a Maya village in the state of Yucat?n...
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/douglas-anthony-cooper/canada-attack-resort_b_1232486.html
Re: How NOT to Get Beheaded in Mexico...
Thanks for posting this. My husband is in DF and Guadalajara for work this week and it drives me nuts how many people act like he is taking his life for granted by daring to go to Mexico (when those people are bloody clueless about the geography, politics and crime rates of the place).
MH lived in Guadalajara for a while and loved it. Only once was he nearly beheaded.
For a while, my husband was kidnapped almost monthly, in Guadalajara (those ransoms are killing my retirement fund) but when he is in MC, he has a driver with an armored car, so he's pretty safe.
Listen, I live between Philadelphia and Camden; if that doesn't scare me, nothing will.
All kidding aside, he has been travelling all over the world for 30+ years. Some of those places were pretty scary, and only ONCE has he ever been in danger, and that was on vacation with me (a mugger TRIED but DH got him good!). On the other hand, there are some places (Columbia being one) where, as an American businessman, he is guarded by the locals (he really DOES have an armored car).
Tourists are safest of all.
L'isle Sur la Sorgue, Provence
i pink puffy heart you pumpkin
and just to add my $.02 i've been to cancun and rm every december for 9 years. i leave the resort (almost every day-i do need some pool days in there LOL) and feel safer walking around there at night than in many parts of my own loved nyc (not talking about the south bronx either people although i'm there a lot for yankee games).
Thank you so much for posting.
DH and I spent three weeks in Mexico in 2010 and absolutely loved it. We were mainly in "interior" Mexico, including several days in Mexico City. We had no problems at all and at no time did we ever feel unsafe.
For some reason, it really bugs me when I hear people talking about how they won't go to Mexico as it is sooooo unsafe. I am constantly defending it and encouraging people to go. I will definitely be passing along this article to those who continue to think it is unsafe.
My dream is to live in Guanajuato someday!
I still think the funniest thing I've heard to date was on TK's Honeymoon board where a poster's FI didn't want to go to Costa Rica for their HM because it was too close to Mexico. Talk about ::headdesk::.
H and I went to Cabo for our HM and had a great time. There were parts that seemed a little sketchy, but honestly, even those areas aren't as bad as some of the places in our own city. We are planning to go back later this year.
I figure if people want to be afraid of Mexico, let them. Just means less stupid tourists to give the rest of us a bad name...
Nothing new to add but thanks for posting. I lived in Cuernavaca and Queretaro, visited the DF multiple times along with Cancun and never once felt unsafe.
Sadly, ignorance will always reign in some way.
Maui, November 2011
I think these type of articles are good to bring some prespective to people. H and I are planning a possible trip to Colombia this year and we hear some of the dumbest things. I've also had friends make dumb comments to my trip to the balkans, "Is there still war there?" or "don't get sold into white slavery!" Wtf.
However, at the same time, I feel like if people feel uncomfortable traveling there, that doesn't make them stupid. I have plenty of friends who have family in Mexico, and don't feel safe going there right now. There have been a few reports of Chicago citizens who have been killed while visiting their family down there(most recent being on Christmas eve). Again, that doesn't mean everyone should panic and that the entire country is in chaos, but if they feel that isn't the best time then so be it. Not everyone wants to only travel to Cancun or Cozumel; Some people want/need to go to less tourist areas KWIM?
I still can't understand how violence in some areas equates the whole country needing to be avoided. It saddens me how uneducated some people are. We once even had a poster come on the HM board saying she wanted to go to Costa Rica for her honeymoon, but her FI said no to Mexico because of the violence so they had to avoid Costa Rica too. She of course got ripped to shreds, but it didn't change the ignorance of her original post.
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L'isle Sur la Sorgue, Provence
The funny thing is I still see her posting on the HM board from time to time and she and her DH ended up honeymooning in Jamaica. I felt MUCH safer the several times I've been to Mexico than I did when I went to Jamaica. Would I ever return to Jamaica? Sure.. but for someone to avoid Mexico based on safety and then go to Jamaica which has also had a lot of political unrest and violence especially in their capital just baffles me.
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