Is American TV still making you frightful at the very thought of ever visiting Mexico? If so, you are responding to propaganda designed to prevent you from finding out that life is really much better -- and safer! -- south of the border than it is in many parts of the States.

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Safety in Mexico: Reality vs. Sensationalist Media Hype

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By Cathy Brown / Dec 12 • Categorized as Living Overseas                                                           Original Here

In the last few months, I have had the good fortune to visit Mexico a couple of times. For a single mom whose family and friends have no problem with me romping around Buenos Aires, taking my young kids to the Amazon, or climbing mountains in Africa, I cannot say that I was sufficiently prepared for the distinct reaction I got when people heard I was going to Mexico:

“You are going where? But what about the cartels?”

“Wow. I wouldn’t go there even if someone paid me”.

“Pretty irresponsible to be going there. You’ re a mother – you shouldn’t be putting yourself into situations like that…”

To which my response was:  “Have you ever been to Mexico? Oh, you haven’t… Well then, please at least tell me specifics as to what this violence is where I am going. What area is it in, and what specifically should I be on the lookout for?”

And, shocker…they have no idea. They just know it’s for sure really, really bad and I am totally going to get kidnapped/raped/shot/then probably beheaded for good measure.

Let’s work off facts here, not just blatant, misguided, baseless fear. The US government advises against visiting very specific places where drug cartels are warring over the billions of dollars made yearly trading illegal substances into the United States, and the efforts by the Mexican government to put an end to the drug traffic. Problems come in when, after hearing “warning” and “Mexico,” all too many Americans perceive the advisory for the country as a whole, which it clearly is not. Leslie Bassett, Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, declared that the intention of the alert is to inform people of some violent acts that are taking place in specific states of Mexico. She clarified that in no way does this alert seek to negatively portray the tourist destinations.

I can’t exactly sense the fear in my friend Fernando here,
who recently visited Mexico for the first time.

Mexico is roughly the size of Western Europe. Of Mexico’s 2,500 municipalities, only 18 have been considered to be a security problem.  Please read that sentence again. Pretty sure that leaves you with a 2482 very safe options if you want to travel to Mexico. Yes, there are places in Mexico that have had problems with drug violence. But the majority of Mexico’s organized-crime killings last year took place in a mere three of Mexico’s 31 states: Chihuahua, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon. I am not here to dispute that there has been and is drug violence in Mexico. I am here to point out that those specific places are likely nowhere near where you as a tourist or expat are planning to go.

I would hope you would find it downright silly if you heard a Mexican saying that they would never, EVER, consider going hiking in Oregon nor go golfing at Myrtle Beach because they heard reports of there being drug-related gang violence in South Side LA. Well, you know what? Where you most likely would be going in Mexico is perhaps further from the violence, distance-wise, than Oregon is from LA. The bandits are not going to travel 800 miles to come after you, American tourist drinking margaritas on the beach or taking pictures at Chichen Itza. They actually don’t care about you, I am sorry to inform.

Three problem areas to be avoided (Tijuana, Juarez, and Nuevo Loredo),
and how far these places actually lie from main tourist areas.

Don’t be stupid. Don’t buy or sell drugs in Mexico. Don’t flash large amounts of money or jewelry. Don’t visit the specific border towns notorious for violence. That is a given. Use common sense and you will be as fine in Mexico as you would in most other tourist destinations around the world.

Let’s look at some actual statistics from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime:  In drug offenses, Mexico recently ranked 12^th in the world, and the US 4^th. When it came to homocides with firearms, the US ranked 7^thand Mexico 17^th, (39.56 per 100,000 vs. Mexico’s 20.6). Yes, that means the US has 92% more homicides with guns than Mexico. So all of those people in the US telling you that you will get shot and killed in Mexico should be more worried about themselves.

Recent FBI statistics show the murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants in Baltimore is 43.3, Washington D.C. is 29.1 and Detroit is 47. Mexico, however, which suffered an especially violent year in 2008, recorded a murder rate of about 10 per 100,000. You do the math…

Travel writer Kyle Ellison put it perfectly when he said: “While I could rattle statistics off from a slew of different sources, the bottom line and the main point which needs to be made is that traveling to Mexico is no more dangerous than living in any major global city. Of the 60 countries I’ve wandered through and after 20+ visits to Mexico, you know where I’ve felt the most in danger (including when I thought I was kidnapped in Borneo)?  When I got lost on the south side of Chicago.”

In the last couple of months, I have personally visited Mexico City, Queretaro, Puebla, Mazatlan, Baja, and Veracruz. I have had nothing except phenomenal experiences, met some of the warmest, most welcoming people, and not for one moment did I feel unsafe in any way. I have enjoyed scuba and snorkeling, I have rafted, climbed, and hiked to hidden waterfalls and caves. I have explored archeological ruins, I have seen gorgeous art and architecture, and I have eaten some of the most memorable meals of my life. To have missed out on any one of these experiences because of what I heard from some media outlet needing the next sensational story would be sad and senseless. I would travel to Mexico alone, and I would travel with my three small kids. No second thoughts on that whatsoever.

There was a distinct lack of drug cartel activity as I recently
snorkeled here on the very tranquilo Coronado Island
in the Sea of Cortez…

Mexico ranks tenth as an international travel destination in the world and, regardless of the negative media hype, remains the number one international tourism destination for North Americans traveling abroad. Many tourists to the country are repeat visitors, which demonstrates that the vast majority of tourists are satisfied and leave with overwhelmingly positive impressions.

The Mexican government is expecting 2012 to be a good year for tourism. In fact, Mexico is expecting 52 million tourists to visit its five southern states – that compares to 22 million foreign visitors to all of Mexico in 2011.

If you choose to not visit Mexico in response to media hype, that is obviously your choice. But just know that there are millions of other Americans out there living life to the fullest and exploring an amazing country full of warmth, culture, natural beauty and history, right in the backyard of the US. I hate to say it, but if you sidestep Mexico due to fear, it is your loss. As Mark Twain put all so well, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do." So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. Give Mexico a chance – I am willing to bet you may just end up falling in love with the country as so many other travelers and expats have.

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Blogger's Notes: (1) My wife and I have lived in Mexico for 8 years now. (2) If you should want to compare the murder rates in Mexico with those in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, go here.

ONE OF THE MOST INTRIGUING TOURIST DESTINATIONS IN THE WORLD IS ALSO THE CLOSEST FOR AMERICANS.

Blogger's Note: I regard this to be the finest article on Mexico of such a short length that I've ever read. The photo below shows the entirety of the Diego Rivera mural featured in the article. I took this shot in 2002 in the Mexico City museum where it is now housed.  Notice the indigenous people to the right being pushed aside by the police to assure that the rich can walk by unimpeded.  Remind you of Occupy Wall Street?  And, oh yes, their elections, like ours in the U.S., are also rigged (see here).

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In Mexico, a Universal Struggle Against Power and Forgetting

Friday, 11 November 2011 04:36  

By John Pilger, Truthout | News Analysis 

Original here

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Diego Rivera's Mural, "A Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park." (Photo: asmythie / flickr)

Alameda Park is Mexico City's languid space for lovers and open-air ballroom dancers: the gents in two-tone shoes, the ladies in finery and heels. The cobbled paths undulate from the great earthquake of 1985. You imagine the fairground sinking into the cobwebs of cracks, its Edwardian organ playing forlornly.

Two small churches nearby totter precariously: the surreal is Mexico's facade.

Hidden behind the poplars is the museum where Diego Riviera's mural "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park" occupies the entire ground floor. You sink into sofa chairs and journey for an hour across his masterpiece. Originally painted at the Hotel Prado in 1947, it was rescued and restored when the earthquake demolished things all around. More than 45-feet long and 14-feet high, it presents the political warriors of Mexico's past, from the conquistador Hernando Cortes to Rivera himself, depicted as a child holding the hand of a fashionably dressed skeleton, the iconic symbol of the Day of the Dead. Standing maternally beside him is his wife, Frida Kahlo, Mexico's artistic heroine. Around them parade the impervious rich and unrequited poor.

What is it about Mexico that is a universal political dream? As in a Rivera mural, nothing is held back: no class martyrdom, no colonial tragedy. The message is freedom next time. The autocracy that emerged from the revolution of 1910-19 gave itself the Orwellian-name Party of the Institutionalized Revolution. This was eventually replaced by businessmen promising a pseudo democracy, which, in 1994, embraced Bill Clinton's rapacious North American Free Trade Association. Within a year, a million jobs were destroyed south of the border, along with Emiliano Zapata's revolutionary triumph, the constitutional protection of indigenous land from sale or privatization. At a stroke, Mexico surrendered its economy to Wall Street.

The beneficiaries of the new, privatized Mexico are those like Carlos Slim, now ahead of Bill Gates as the world's richest man, whose fingers are lodged in every imaginable pie: from food and construction to the national telephone company. A US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks says, "The net worth of the 10 richest people of Mexico - a country where more than 40 per cent of the population lives in poverty - represents roughly 10 per cent of the gross domestic product."

The last election, in 2006, was won by Felipe Calderon, Washington's man, followed by persistent allegations that it was rigged. Calderon declared what he calls "a war on drug gangs" and 50,000 dead are the result. No one doubts the menace of the drug cartels, but the real "security issue" is more likely the resistance of ordinary Mexicans to an enduring inequity and a rotten elite.

For most of this year, thousands of los indignados have taken over the massive parade ground known as the Zocalo facing the National Palace. The occupations in Wall Street and around the world have their genesis in Latin America. The difference here is there is none of the angst about the protesters' "focus." As in all places where people live on the edge and the state and its cronyism cast lawless shadows, they know exactly what they want. Ask some of the 44,000 employees of the national power company, who prevented the fire sale of the national grid until Calderon sacked them all; and the striking copper miners of Cananea, whose owners funded Calderon's campaign; and the former pilots and stewards of the national airline, Mexicana, dissolved in a sham bankruptcy that was a gift to the private airline industry.

These angry, eloquent and often courageous people have long known something many in Europe and the United States are only beginning to realize: there is no choice but to fight the economic extremism unleashed in Washington and London a generation ago. Employment, trade unionism, public health, education, "life itself," says Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City who ran against Calderon, "has since been struck by a political and economic earthquake." Since Calderon came to power, 30 journalists have been killed, ten this year alone, says the Committee to Protect Journalists. Again, the drug cartels are blamed, but suppression of a national resistance, coordinated with the United States, is also the truth.

Unlike in the US and Britain, many journalists, some of them inspired by the rise of the Zapatistas in the 1990s, have thrown off the patronage of the political and business elite and pursue what they call "civic journalism." The second-largest newspaper in Mexico is La Jornada, famous for its fearless investigations and campaigns and for surviving mostly on subscriptions; it carries no commercial advertising. Reminiscent of newspapers before they were consumed by corporations, there is nothing like it in Britain; it reflects much about Mexico City that is surprising and enlightened.

In the National Palace, the presence of "Robocop" guards is at once overwhelmed by Diego Rivera's most epic mural. Painted between 1929 and 1945, it follows the walls of the staircase, spilling, like his Alameda work, spectacles of revolution and tragedy, hope and defiance. When I filmed it 30 years ago, I tried unsuccessfully to write a narrative to the pictures. In condensing and bringing alive 2,000 years of history, it is art of which Europeans and North Americans are sometimes disdainful yet envious; for it charts the struggle of ordinary people, uniting and celebrating them, and identifying their true political enemies. Seeing it again, I am struck by how it speaks for us all.

On 1 November, John Pilger was awarded Britain's highest honor for documentary film-making by the Grierson Trustees, in memory of the documentary pioneer John Grierson. 

John Pilger

John Pilger, Australian-born, London-based journalist, film-maker and author. For his foreign and war reporting, ranging from Vietnam and Cambodia to the Middle East, he has twice won Britain's highest award for journalism. For his documentary films, he won a British Academy Award and an American Emmy. In 2009, he was awarded Australia's human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize. His latest film is "The War on Democracy."