A Seasoned Traveler Mulls Over Visiting Mexico Today
“You’re going where? You gotta be kidding. You been reading what’s happening there?”
Yes, I have been reading about what has been happening there. I talk with sources. I listen. Then I make a decision. I don’t have a death wish, nor do I want to endanger Georgie. But as I wrote in an article in September of 2001, “Travel can be frightening. Unnerving. Uncomfortable.” I don’t plan it that way, nor do I revel in it, but sometimes it just is.
In this case my well meaning friend was referring to Mexico.
You certainly don’t have to look far to see what is happening in Mexico. The news is plastered all over the media, be it newspapers, television, magazines, or word of mouth. And unfortunately it is not new. It has been happening for years. And we in the U.S. are an important reason for it, even though we don’t pay much attention to it.
Our concern seems to be the border and our perception of hordes of illegals storming over, under, and through it. But with the drop off in arrests at the border our concern with Mexico seems to have vanished. It was not a factor in the recent presidential election. Mexico was once again put on the back burner. What happened within its borders could not possibly affect us, or so we think.
For those few who do think of Mexico, it often appears to be a place of bloody violence. It seems that every day there are stories of kidnappings, brutal murders, and violence in the streets. To North Americans, it appears the Mexican authorities are unable to cope with the problems and in too many cases officials have been found corrupt and unable to protect those who need it most.
I’ve been going to Mexico for many years as a scholar, a traveler, and even as a surfer, but always to enjoy the people and the culture. I can speak and read Spanish surprisingly well for a gringo. And I know the culture, having studied and taught about it for years. Yet there are some forces which transcend cultures.
Drugs and money are examples.
What author David Danelo calls “the war on our southern border” is a consequence of drugs. The war between drug traffickers and the federal government’s military crackdown has spilled over into the streets of the country. As horrible as the attacks in Mumbai were, they represent only a weekly body count in Mexico’s war. One source states feuding drug lords and the military were responsible for 5,376 deaths by mid-December of last year.
The areas around the principal drug centers in Mexico are particularly hard hit. When I was in Laredo, Texas two years ago we went to Nuevo Laredo for a Sister City party and heard talk (in hushed but straightforward tones) of the Gulf Cartel, one of the major players in the drug trade in eastern Mexico. Mexico City sees drug violence almost daily. And the grotesque killings in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach: beheadings, bodies in tanks of acid, and dead lined up in rows at grade school playgrounds seem commonplace. Even the wealthy city of Monterey is not immune.
However, Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, has perhaps the worst reputation. At least 1,350 slayings occurred in 2008. On November 3 a bloody, headless corpse was suspended from an overpass for hours because no one had the courage to remove it until after dark. Danelo quotes an El Paso official as estimating up to 100,000 dual U.S.-Mexico citizens have fled north from Juarez to his city this year. Only those who cannot afford to leave, stay.
I used to drive through Culiacan in the western state of Sinaloa on my way to surf in Mazatlan. To outsiders it was a quiet city, the most notable feature being a set of railroad tracks we had to drive along to reach the town from the north.
Now it is known to be one of the centers of the drug trade in Mexico. Warring gangs kill one another on the streets, the cemetery is a rather bizarre place with mausoleums extolling the virtues of young men killed in the drug wars and buried with their AK-47s. Casinos abound and business selling Hummers and expensive yachts are commonplace. The beauty queen from the city was recently stripped of her title of Hispano-American Queen after she was detained in western Mexico along with seven men, on December 22, with a large stash of weapons, ammunition and US$53,300. She told authorities she was going to travel to Colombia and Bolivia with the men to go shopping.
Mexico is our second largest trading partner. Yet it is fragmenting as the recession there strikes home. The largest sources of income in Mexico: oil, tourism, and remittances from emigrant labor in the U.S. are all falling. Remittances dropped 20 percent in 2008.
Drug consumption in the United States has not declined significantly over the past 25 years. There are about 6 million users of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. Although the street price of cocaine is up slightly, it is still one third of what it was in 1990. This would indicate a steady supply is available through Mexican smuggling routes. Supply and demand at work again, and we supply the demand.
Plus, the Brookings Institution estimates 2,000 guns a day make their way to Mexico from the United States to be used in the drug wars. Some are legal but Mexican authorities say others are black market goods from overseas and even from U.S. Army and National Guard depots.
Why even think about going there then?
I talked with a friend before Christmas, an expatriate from California who lives and works in Cabo San Lucas, my Christmas destination. He knows Mexico well and loves it. He encouraged me not to be frightened away. There are drug problems in many parts of the world. Mexico’s are perhaps unique but not uncommon. And the vast majority of the Mexican people are still warm, friendly, helpful, and kind.
He’s right, of course. As bleak as it may seem, it is still a wonderful country and we are responsible for many of the problems there. As I said, we supply the demand for drugs. As it turned out, for the first time in many years I did not spend Christmas in Mexico. Georgie developed an illness which demanded treatment here. It was not the kind of thing one can alleviate with aspirin and tequila. So for the first time in a long time we spent Christmas at home.
But in a few months we will be back in Mexico. I look forward to it and I look forward to telling you about it when I return.