Traveling to Mexico: Just how dangerous?
Mexico’s infamous drug war is in its fourth year with almost all of the violence far from most tourist areas. Authorities do recommend flu shots but when it comes to a visit, don’t stay home, travel commentators say.
Robert Reid, who has contributed to Lonely Planet’s Mexico guides, likes to remind people that Mexico is about the size of France, Spain, Germany and Italy — combined.
Before you let trouble in one corner of the country affect your travel to another corner, he said, "Imagine a shootout in Sicily forcing a canceled vacation in Germany."
Also, as Mexican officials are quick to note, most drug-war victims so far have been active partisans — that is, drug-traffickers or law enforcement officials.
Charles Pope, interim director of the Trans-Border Institute, visits Tijuana and Mexicali up to four times a month, traveling just as he did in the years before President Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug-traffickers in 2006. Pope dines out, drives at night and said he wouldn’t hesitate to go to a baseball game, a lucha libre (professional wrestling match) or an event at the Tijuana Cultural Center.
Mexico’s drug-war death toll reached more than 9,900 between January 2007 and early October of this year, by the count of the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute. Many of the deaths have occurred near the US border and far from the resorts and cities that draw thousands of Americans every year.
If you set flu aside, said Edward Hasbrouck, author of "The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World," the biggest danger for a law-abiding traveler in Mexico is probably "the same as the big danger in the U.S. — road crashes. Almost everything else is negligible by comparison."
But Hasbrouck said, "You have to evaluate not only ‘Is it safe?’ but also, ‘Will I be so frightened that I won’t enjoy my trip?’ "
By David Wilkening
David
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