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Behind the Headlines: Safety in Mexico
Is the Travel Danger to Tourists Exaggerated?





By CHRISTINE DELSOL
SPECIAL TO SFGATE.COM
April 23, 2009

"Mexico's homicide rate skyrocketing." "12 decapitated bodies found in Mexico." "Cancún police officer latest to be gunned down in Mexico." "Police discover 6 charred bodies in Tijuana."

The headlines are enough to give anyone pause. So much pause that every story we've printed about travel in Mexico in recent weeks has elicited a flurry of reader responses ranging from "Mexico doesn't seem to be safe anymore" to "The current State Department warning about going to Mexico...says: Stay away. Stay far away."

And yet, one has to wonder what a potential European, Japanese or even Mexican tourist would make of recent California headlines: "Four Oakland police officers gunned down after routine traffic stop." "Man in Santa suit kills at least six at Covina party." "Marine sergeant and wife tortured, slain; 4 Marines charged."

The point is, headlines like these rarely get more than a news brief outside of California, let alone in other countries. And when they do, they are perceived as tragedies specific to a certain places and circumstances. If tourists were deterred from visiting Oakland, or Covina, or the San Diego suburb of Winchester, that didn't stop them from visiting San Francisco, Wine Country tasting rooms or the San Diego Zoo.

But Mexico's troubles, combined with a State Department travel alert and obsessive media coverage, have provoked a clamor bordering on hysteria.

A Look at the Facts

The killings in Mexico have been building since President Felipe Calderón took office in January 2007 with a mission to crack down on traffickers who ferry drugs through Mexico to the United States. The traffickers' response has resulted in an estimated 7,300 drug-related killings in the past two years.

While these alarming numbers aren't exaggerated, the risk to tourists visiting Mexico definitely is. The latest comprehensive data available from the United Nations Survey of Crime report Mexico's overall murder rate as 13 per 100,000 people, compared with 4 per 100,000 in the United States. An estimated 90 percent of Mexico's murders are specifically drug-related — not U.S.-style mall shootings, schoolyard massacres or road rage — and concentrated in five of its 31 states, leaving the rest of the country freer of crime than most of the United States.

While alarmists admonish travelers to avoid Mexico at all costs, people actually returning from vacations in Mexico tell a different story. Last month, Funjet Vacations surveyed more than 900 tourists who visited between October 2008 and March 2009; 97 percent said they would return and 90 percent said they felt "safe and secure."

The State Department bolsters the Mexican tourist industry's assertion that most of the country is safe. "Many of the violent activities are localized in several different places," spokesman Gordon Duguid said last month. "They are not general across the north of Mexico," he said, "let alone in Mexico as a whole."

The Travel Warning

Although it simply extended an alert that had been in place for months, the State Department's February release of an update set off a flurry of headlines and doomsday blogs, most of them mischaracterizing the alert as a warning to avoid Mexico entirely.

To clarify: The State Department's 29 current travel warnings, which recommend avoiding dangerous or unstable countries where embassy personnel may not be available to American citizens, include Yemen, Colombia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Somalia. Israel, the Philippines and Nepal, both of which still get significant numbers of American travelers, are also on that list. Mexico is not.

Travel alerts such as the one in place for Mexico are lower-level advisories noting specific, short-term risks that include natural disasters, terrorist attacks and coups. Mexico's company on that list consists of the Comoros Islands off southern Africa's coast (potential demonstrations in reaction to a referendum on becoming part of France), Bangladesh (repercussions from a recent mutiny attempt), the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf (threats to the U.S. Embassy in Yemen), Mali (kidnapping threat against Westerners) and the South Pacific, including Australia and New Zealand (cyclone season).

Rather than advising against all Mexico travel, the alert outlines cautionary measures for general travel (sticking to main roads, not traveling alone, keeping valuables out of sight), then goes on to detail specific areas that have been wracked by "an increasingly violent conflict — both among themselves and with Mexican security services — for control of narcotics trafficking routes along the U.S.-Mexico border." Tourists are not the intended targets; most U.S. citizens caught up in the violence are in some way involved in the drug trade. The alert singles out Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, Tijuana and Chihuaha City. It also reports restriction of government employees' nonessential travel to the state of Durango and parts of Coahuila.

Some of the alarmists probably reacted without ever reading the alert. But a disturbing number of rants reveal an entirely different agenda, not only warning against travel to Mexico but calling for immediate deportation of all illegal aliens and a boycott of all things Mexican. In that light, it's instructive to look at the travel advice in English-speaking countries where immigration is not an issue.

Australia's advice to its citizens reports the drug violence "including the cities of Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana, Cuidad Juárez, Nogales, Reynosa, Matamoros, and most recently, in Mexico City" and identifies the states of Michoacán, Sinaloa, Sonora and Guerrero as additional hot spots. Mexico ranks at the third of five caution levels. (The United States gets level two, for terrorism risk.) Britain has not issued a travel warning for Mexico. Its country-by-country advice reports the drug-related killings and recommends caution but notes that most visits are trouble-free.

To Go, or Not to Go?

We absolutely recommend avoiding Mexico's identified hot spots. Even tourists who pack common sense along with their swimsuits are more likely to walk unwittingly into a dangerous situation in those areas, and the visit could be less than a satisfying experience. Besides, trying to safeguard tourists is an added burden to officials who need to marshal all their resources to cope with the violence.

But that still leaves most of 761,000 square miles to explore, and this column will continue to cover travel in areas safely removed from the conflict. Mexico is a big country, and geography is on your side. Cozumel, for example, one of Mexico's safest destinations (as is the Yucatán Peninsula as a whole), lies 1,800 miles from the border wars — about the distance from San Francisco to Chicago. And only 200 miles from Tijuana, friendly San Felipe is safer than most small towns in California. If you're looking for a safe bet on the Pacific Coast, Manzanillo boasts the lowest crime rate in Colima — the state with Mexico's lowest crime rate.

Beyond the popular tourist destinations, which except for northern Baja remain well-policed and tranquil, safe havens include a vast array of overlooked cities, towns and beaches where you can insinuate yourself into daily Mexican life instead of sweating with fellow tourists in the nightclub of the moment. And with the double whammy of headlines trumpeting drug violence and the economic slump, travelers who pick their destinations and their attitude intelligently will find lower prices, higher vacancy rates and a warmer welcome than ever before.

Good article. Some common sense without ignoring the reality of what is going on. But common sense seems to be hard to find these days?

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