Mexico is Safer than the Headlines Suggest
Christine Delsol of the San Francisco Chronicle asked recently, “Quick – which national capital has the higher murder rate: Mexico City or Washington, D.C.?”
If you happen to base your answer on recent headlines and news coverage, your answer will probably be Mexico City. But in fact, Mexico City’s drug-related-homicide rate per 100,000 population was one-tenth of Washington’s overall homicide rate in 2010. These kinds of statistics continue to justify Mexico as a safe travel destination by and large, but are ignored by the mainstream media.
While parts of Mexico are indeed plagued with drug-related violence, these parts have been well-publicized and are easy to avoid, as the article relays. On the flip-side,
“More than 95 percent of Mexico’s municipalities are at least as safe as the average traveler’s hometown. Yucatan state, for example, had 0.1 of a murder for every 100,000 people in 2010 – no U.S. tourist destination comes close to that. Most cities in central Mexico, outside of the scattered drug hot spots, have lower murder rates than Orlando.”
As Delsol points out, while it’s fairly clear what travelers should do when visiting Mexico – fly (don’t drive) across the border directly to safe regions, it seems that tourists would rather just write the country off as a whole, than bother with figuring out which places to avoid – even if it means writing off great vacation spots and even greater discount deals.
If you happen to be that type of traveler, read the full article here for some excellent Mexico safety tips and travel suggestions.
[...] Comments (0) [...]
Of course you are going to tell us that it is safe to travel to Mexico, San Miguel House Rentals, because it is in your best interest. I sure hope most people realize that no statistics coming out of Mexico are to be trusted, partly because of corruption and partly because the vast majority of crimes in Mexico go unreported. You have basically written a misleading article by twisting the statistics to prove your point. You forgot to include stats on the number of people that have dissapeared. You compare drug related homicides in Mexico City to a different statistic for Washington DC (the overall homicide rate). These are two different stats. I am not saying that people should not travel to Mexico, but I do not like the fact that your propaganda is rather misleading when it is peoples lives that are at stake. Make no mistake, you can travel to Mexico, have a great time, and not encounter any problems. However, you can just as easily travel to Mexico and get screwed over royally (and not the good kind of screwed).It is a crap shoot, a roll of the dice. Please consider all of the things that could happen to you while travelling in Mexico before you go, because it just might actually happen.
Thanks for your extremely unhelpful comment “betthisnevermakesitonthewebsite”. A closer reading would have revealed that what this website does is curate and summarize articles that *other journalists and bloggers have written at reputable news sites including MSNBC, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN Travel, AP, Travel Weekly, USA Today, The Economist, The LA Times, Dallas News, and ABC, to name a few. We have not written the articles, nor do we claim to. These are articles written by professional journalists, at multiple different sources.
I have no idea who you are, what organization you represent, or what facts/research you are using to back up the statements you make in your comment (as you chose not to disclose any of that info). But we fully disclose who we are, where we are located, and that the content on our site is curated.
So who wrote this line – “These kinds of statistics continue to justify Mexico as a safe travel destination by and large, but are ignored by the mainstream media”? Because I sure did not see it in Christine Delsol’s article. You wrote that, so that makes you the author of this. You used excerpts from other articles to write your own, much like a research paper for school. Also, any facts I used are either common knowledge and are readily available through the same sources you named above. It is common knowledge that corruption is prevalent in Mexico, and as for all the crime going unreported, here you go – http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/20/us-mexico-crime-idUSTRE78J74I20110920 . This is from Reuters, one of the largest and most respected news organizations in the world. I would like to disclose that I think Mexico has many unique things to offer to travellers from around the world. It is, in my opinion, a country with an interesting history and a lively and incredible culture. The only reason I will not go to Mexico right now is because of the rise in crime and violence. I am an American from a border state that has lived in South America (and not just for a few weeks or months, it was nearly 5 years) and travelled extensively in Latin American countries including Mexico. I spealk fluent Spanish and have seen and experienced many things most Americans will never see. I am not just some idiot who does not know what they are talking about. I understand that your livelihood depends on tourism. I just think that what you put on this website is misleading, and I think people should know that in the end your main goal is not to keep people safe, but to get people to vacation there. Some things are more important than money, like peoples lives. It also makes me sick to see how many Mexicans are being slaughtered over drugs and money.
To betthisnevermakesitonthewebsite:
This article talks about MEXICO CITY and CENTRAL MEXICO, specifically. I just returned from 7 days there and felt very safe- I was on the metro, out late at night, and even rode street taxis (more common now). There were families out everywhere and many tourists.
I stayed with a young French family with two children who have lived there for ten years and have no plans on returning home. There are many people from different countries living there- many South Americans, including Brazilians and Venezuelans who think that Mexico City is WAY SAFER than places like Rio and Caracas. I even saw many Asian female tourists riding the metro in the evening.
This information is not misleading- You need to learn to respect other peoples opinions. The crime situation is definitely a problem in Mexico right now and is scary. There is no negating that. However, it is focused in certain areas and has not spread to the whole country. There is nothing wrong with stating that as a fact. I do not believe it is “irresponsible” to encourage people to visit.
I have been to Ensenada, Tijuana, Mexico City, and Sonora in the past few years and plan to continue traveling to Mexico because I have seen the situation with my own two eyes.
We have been traveling to Mexico for 18 years and have never had a problem. We have visited almost all the states. We might not visit the states that have problems but feel very safe on either the west or east coasts. We normally stay for 8 weeks and enjoy the people and the weather.