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Fewer Mexicans travel home for the holidays

Vanessa Lopez, 23, of Napa, and her son, Armando Rodriguéz, 3, did not go home to Nanacamilpa, Mexico, this holiday season because she and her husband can’t afford the plane tickets.

REBECCA HUVAL Napa Valley Register
Sunday, January 2, 2011 12:00 am

Fewer Mexicans in the U.S. and Northern California traveled to Mexico for the holidays due to the sour economy and violence in Mexico’s border states, according to Mexican officials and Latinos in Napa.

“A lot of people decided not to go for safety reasons,” said Rigoberto Castillo, director of the Michoacan Federation of Northern California. “The airplanes are very expensive. And driving is too much of a risk.”

The Mexican government agreed. It advised holiday travelers to drive in convoys after violence recently flared up on border highways.

The number of deaths in Mexico’s four-year drug war surpassed 30,000 this year, the Mexican government announced in December, with 12,456 deaths in 2010 alone, officials have said.

In November, gunmen sprayed bullets on a family driving south in Sinoloa, wounding a girl, according to media reports.

Such reports of violence have kept many Mexicans in California, officials said. Of his Northern California group of about 250 members from the state of Michoacan, Castillo estimates the majority, around 75 percent, decided not to travel to Mexico this year.

“If they drive, they are exposed to thieves and kidnappers,” Castillo said.

Finances have also kept Mexicans in Napa, they said. Vanessa Lopez, 23, of Napa, stayed home this year after 10 consecutive years of visiting her hometown of Nanacamilpa in the state of Tlaxcala.

Her husband has to stay and work at his construction job. They didn’t have enough money for plane tickets this year, she said.

“Next year, we’ll go,” Lopez said. “I miss the food, the family, the parties, the place.”

Even those with money have decided to stay away from Mexico this year, officials said.

It’s unfortunate that people chose to stay away from their home country based on a perception of violence, said Alejandro Orbezo, spokesman for the Programa Paisano, a Mexican government program that escorts Mexicans to their hometowns.

The danger is limited to border states such as Tamaulipas and Chihuahua, he said.

But it has kept Mexicans from traveling to other states as well, such as Michoacan, the home state of many Mexicans in Napa.

Around Christmas last year, about 950,000 travelers crossed the border from the U.S. to Mexico, Orbezo said. This year, it has decreased to about 900,000.

Instead of traveling, many Mexicans created their own feasts and festivities in Napa and sent money home to Mexico.

Maria Elena Valadez, 55, of Napa, threw a holiday party for 20 guests in Napa instead of traveling home to La Piedad in the state of Michoacan.

She sent $100 to her son in Baja California from La Morenita Market in Napa, but can’t visit him during the holidays because she won’t get her visa until March, she said.

At La Morenita Market, where Napa Latinos buy meat, tamales, atole and piñatas for posada festivities, in addition to sending money to Latin America, sales increase about 40 percent Dec. 20 to 24, said owner Everardo Curiel.

“A lot of people don’t go to Mexico because the situation there is difficult now,” Curiel said.

At La Morenita, Eva Morales, 26, of Napa, sent $50 to her father in Tabasco, Mexico, for the holidays.

Morales used to send him that much every paycheck when her husband was working, but now sends that amount monthly since her husband lost his job, she said.

“I miss traveling in Mexico during the holidays,” said Morales, who has lived in Napa eight years. “My family would go to the ocean and go out at night for dinner.”

This year, Morales spent Christmas with her husband’s family in Napa, she said, where they ate hot Mexican Christmas punch, tamales and spaghetti.


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Wow, Mexican citizens afraid to travel to their homeland! Unreal.

Already put this up once before... but, perhaps this story really adds to the previous post