Is it safe in Mexico?
I’m asked this by friends all the time so I’ve finally decided to give in and blog about the situation as I perceive it. Nothing whatever to do with food history or politics but back to that tomorrow.
As background, I’ve lived in Mexico now for twelve years, the longest time I’ve lived anywhere since I left home for university. I commute between a town of about 100,000 in the center of the country (Guanajuato, capital of the eponymous state) and Mexico City. I read the papers and most of my work and social contacts are with Mexicans rather than expats, though this is not a policy, just the way things have worked out.
So have I noticed a difference in the last couple of years? The answer has to be yes. Here are just a few stories.
A little over a year ago we had a phone call from the woman who cleans for us in Mexico City. Her father had been kidnapped. A week later our front door bell rang and she crumpled through it. They’d paid the ransom but her father had been murdered anyway. She’d come to work because the day after the funeral she didn’t know what else to do with herself.
As we drive back and forth to Leon (shopping town) and Mexico City we remember: this is the street where there was a four-hour shoot out; this is where four policemen were found decapitated; this is where a train was overturned and looted (looting of maize on trains up from 35 tons last January to 750 tons this year, if my memory serves and these are not, repeat not, food riots). Sometimes we make black jokes. Sometimes we just say nothing.
One friend tells me that she was attacked by a gang, had three stitches in her head. She moved to another part of town. Another tells me that she took her granddaughter (visiting from Switzerland since her mother is married to a Swiss) to Acapulco and the hotel staff locked them in the dining room during a shoot out in the street. She’s glad both her daughters left Mexico. Academic friends in in my husband’s unit at the National University ponder the responsibility of inviting foreigners to conferences following the probably fatal wounding of a French scientists in a taxi from the airport. The girl who works for me in Guanajuato arrives hardly able to speak. A gang broke into a wedding reception she was at with her family and sprayed the room with gas (tear gas?).
Ten days ago we had a threatening phone call from a couple of men who knew something about us. These are so common now in Guanajuato that the University has circulated a memo to all staff, faculty and students with advice on how to prepare the family and domestic help and what to do when they happen. And I am just back from a long chat with a neighbor who had a nasty, odd robbery last week–three mesquite doors which are solid, solid, shattered, almost nothing taken. Her daughter wants her to leave but where would she go?
Yes, all these things can happen. The kidnapping involved a mistress, the robbery may have been politically motivated, the phone calls are often made from prison cells with cell phones (or so we are told), there are gangs in other countries, and so on. And we may have had a run of bad luck.
That said, the cumulative effect leaves the impression that life here is not as safe as it was. A few observations:
This is not a situation in which investigative reporting flourishes, so facts are hard to come by.
It appears to be true that the narcos don’t go for the civilian population (indeed some are active benefactors).
I have the sense that Mexico City is no more dangerous and perhaps less dangerous than it used to be.
I have the sense that the insecurity in our state (which used to be regarded as very safe) is much greater. In part, this is because it appears to be a target for takeover by one or more of the cartels. Personal danger, therefore (unless you are in the police, military or politics) is pretty much limited to collateral damage. But there also appears to be an increase in kidnappings, robberies, threatening phone calls and so on. We speculate that is because the state is perceived as weak and unlikely to do anything.
Have I changed my ways? Yes, to some extent. No more walking alone in the hills (rats). More security around the house. More caution when driving, shopping, walking downtown.
Is it dangerous for tourists? Tourists have not been targets of the cartels nor it seems of the flourishing petty criminal element. Millions of Mexicans continue to go about their daily business.
But it is very sad. People we know are worried and upset. Let’s hope it does not get much worse before it gets better.
I am so sorry to hear that the Mexico I loved so much as a student doesn’t exist anymore.
This had to be so difficult to write, about a place that you obviously love and is your home. What heart ache.
Very sad, indeed. I love GTO and Mexico. But if we Americans keep up this ridiculous drug war on our side of the (idiotic) fence, and continue to pay the Mexican government to crack down on its side of the (idiotic) fence, things might only get worse.
Thanks for posting this. The topic of safety and crime in Mexico comes up often here in Los Angeles. I’ve been curious about your take on the situation. I have to say that I find it worrisome.
just for the record, athens city is FAR MORE DANGEROUS now (the situation has changed within the last 6 months) than it has ever been in the past
You know what I’m tired of? I’m tired of people making Mexico sound like it is the worst place in the world. I went to Mexico 3 months ago and so many people told me that it wasn’t safe, that I was going to get shot, I was going to get robbed…blah blah blah. I’m sorry, but all the bad situations you talked about in your blog happen all over the world even in the USA. Not just in Mexico. Have you not heard about kids killing kids, parents killing their own kids in the U.S. and so much more ugly situations? These kind of problems happen all over the world. Anyway I went down to Mexico and let me tell you it was still the most beautiful place I have ever been to and there were still awesome trustworthy people I could count on. So let me give all Mexicans an advise: Stop talking shit about your country. Let’s stand up for our beautiful Mexico.
Yes, there are problems in Mexico, but which country doesn’t have them?
My impression is that the situation varies enormously across Mexico.
Clearly some of the border cities, notably Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros are now much more dangerous than in the past, though they have never been havens of tranquillity.
Thankfully, up until now, where I live – in Ciudad Guzman in the South of Jalisco – there has been no real change. The city has always had a reputation for being ‘tranquilo’ and remains so.
What does seem worrying is that somewhere like Guanajuato, which as Rachel says, has seemed safe in the past, now no longer seems so.
I agree with Baylen’s comment that the whole situation is exacerbated by the so called ‘war against drugs’. I wish there were more serious consideration of the possibility of legalisation of drugs, at least marijuana. I have read respected analysts saying that if marijuana were legalised, they estimate that the profits of the drug cartels would be halved. That would be half the money available to buy arms, politicians, judges and the police force.
YEAH!!! HILDA!!!
I live in Mexico and feel much safer than I have in several of the places I’ve lived in USA, though I rarely feel unsafe there, either. Nor did I feel unsafe in Palermo where the Mafia kills judges and ruins businesses that don’t pay protection. In every city that I visit in my extensive travels, I check with locals (have found hotel chamber maids to be most accurate with their information — neither hiding anything nor selling anything) about where it is safe to walk and where it is not. Live doesn’t come with a guarantee that one will never have a bad experience or become “collateral damage” but still, one lives with prudence and hopes for the best ANYWHERE. (… but, I won’t be going to Madagascar or Socotra this year.)
I’m reminded in reading this of various times and places. And I’m reminded of who I was within those times and places.
There was the time in NYC when I was an executive chef. In my neighborhood I was relatively safe. On the other hand, in the next neighborhood to mine I had staff whose nieces or brothers were shot or killed in drive-by shootings. Was it safe? For who?
There was the time again some years earlier in NYC when I was a fourteen-year old runaway, the usual protections that are promised as a usual thing to someone who was that age were simply not there. It was safe – in general – for the girls my age in NYC, and it was safe for the college girls who swooped through the city with the invisible guarantee of their rank and privilege. But it was not safe, for me.
It is not the place. Though places can be varying in terms of immediate dangers offered. Moreso, it is who you are within that place – that makes it more safe or less safe.
Thanks for the post Rachel. It is worrying a bit. Be safe.
Most if not all readers/bloggers have done very little research into the so called “Mexican drug war” stats. The Houston Chronicle ran an article of 230 “Americans” murdered in Mexico since 2002. They linked the US dept of State database. I decided to examine each of the 90 +/- alleged “American” victims in Baja. 68 had NO documentation of citizenship, residency, to verify that they were IN FACT US citizens. Three were actually Mexican citizens, incorrectly listed. Of the balance of the 20 or so cases, 15-16 were US citizens living fulltime in Baja, some of which died of circumstances involving the drug trade. The remaining vicitms were either tourists or visitors (but coulda been residents).
The point is the media is BSing the public, and most, if not all, of the other media are regurgitating the misinformation and embellishing the same.
EVEN IF you accept the Dept of State stats, the following is true for Baja (including TJ). Since Calderon, took office (2006) and initiated the “drug war” the number of US citizens (even by DOS stats) HAS DRAMATICALLY DECREASED!!!
2006: 14 dead
2007: 8 dead
2008: 4 dead
2009: 1 dead
THIS IS BASED ON THEIR STATS
One final note, the 8 victims in 2007, NONE had any credentials or info that substantiated that they were US citizens. ALL were found w/hands/feet tied, wrapped in blankets or carpet and dumped in the barrios of TJ, 10 minutes from the border crossing.
THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE THAT ANY OF THE 8 were US citizens NOR was there any prooff that they were even MURDERED IN MEXICO… think about it…they coulda been murdered in San Diego, driven over the border and dumped…the perfect scheme….
Mexico is only dangerous for drug dealers, military, cops, and occassionally an innocent bystander,
MEANWHILE in the first 3 months of 2009, 57 US citizens were MASSACRED in Mass murders in Alabama, North Carolina and New Jersey. And those stats don’t include normal day to day senseless 1-3 person murders.
Its safer in Baja than Birmingham!
For the REAL facts go to: http://BLOG.BajaTravelAdvisor.com
Tourists are impacted, directly, in many parts of the countgry . . . all is not safe, nor should everyone panic. The fragment grenades tossed into the crowd of tourists in Morelia last year targeted tourists. The Danish tourist shot in front of Santa Prisca church in Taxco was collateral damage from a kidnapping in the crowd. Gunfights have broken out on the streets of Acapulco. Someone’s head sitting on the beach or roadside in some of the towns, or bodies hanging from overpasses in Lazaro Cardenas, etc., etc., have all impacted tourists. The enlarged criminal environment goes beyond “drugs” and encompasses the kidnapping epidemic in the country – trageting middle-class Mexicans and some tourists or foreign residents. People who say what’s happening in Mexico happens everwhere – but it doesn’t. I don’t live in a city where the military patrols with APVs – nor are there tourist destinations in my country where that happens . . . like it’s happening in Mexico. Best wishes for a healthy year ahead.
Thanks to everyone who commented on this post. I was glad to be able to put up my general assessment of the situation which is not, clearly, to say that Mexico is the most dangerous place in the world but to say that most Mexicans I know at different social levels and in two different parts of the country believe the situation to have deteriorated over the past couple of years. And not much more can be said with any precision until INEGI (the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografía) updates its statistics for homicidio, secuestro, delincuencia etc since as in any country these run a couple of years behind. Indeed even then with underreporting running between 50 and 80%, they have to be read with care.
I was also interested to learn how many Americans who either live in Mexico or visit or have (say) tourist businesses find the discussion somewhere between uncomfortable and unacceptable. Hmm.
Anyway I am now closing the comments on this particular post and we’ll get back to food history and politics.