Roberto L’hopital | English - A politically incorrect blog, and some useful tips for the bon-vivánt

Many foreign tourists are concerned about the rise in crime in Mexico, scaring them off from visiting the country.  Extended media coverage, specially in the USA, has risen the insecurity perception, but sometimes the media is missing a more thorough analysis.

The murder and kidnapping rate are rising, that is an undeniable fact.  Murder rate had gone down from 17 murders per 100.000 inhabitants in 1997, to some 10/100.000 in 2007, but since then it has been growing, and is now estimated at 12-15/100.000. To give it some perspective, the murder rate in USA is now around 5.5/100.000, and in Western Europe some 1/100.000. So an American can say “if I go to Mexico I will have twice the chance of being killed”, while an European would say “If I travel to the USA, I will have 5 times more probabilities of being killed”.

So far, this is the hard data. But looking deeper in to the figures there is some more interesting information that you should consider if you are analyzing traveling to Mexico:

1)Tourists are very rarely killed in Mexico. The most recent, and very rare cases (they get a lot of media coverage because of being rare) were the following: i)the wife of a US penitentiary officer targeted by the drug gangs as some revenge in the north border (south US border), ii)A wife allegedly killed by her American husband in a Cancún resort.

2)Kidnappers rarely target foreigners.  They do a lot of intelligence, chasing rich local families and businessmen.  Foreigners are not attractive targets.

3)Violence is concentrated only in some places, mostly away from touristic areas.  Most of the violence is because of the clash of rival drug gangs, or between them and the police/army.  Most of the violent events happen in the northern states (US border), Michoacan, the Mexico City poor suburbs, and Guerrero.  The only “touristic” place is Guerrero (Acapulco is in Guerrero).  You need to be very unlucky to be caught in the cross fire.

So my conclusions are the following:

• Mexico is a safe place for tourists

though you may consider the following advise:

• Avoid driving by night in isolated highways, especially in Mexican northern states (there have been some isolated events in daytime also in the last couple of months)
• Stay in the touristic places
• Have the usual precautions when traveling anywhere