Practical Ways to Deal with Scared Family; friends

If you (not you personally, Gringal, just any ol' 'you') have lived in Mexico since prior to 2006, you moved to a country where life appeared to be peaceful, where there was the occasional homicide in your town (even in Ajijic--I remember four foreigners being murdered by other foreigners during the first two years I lived there), and where it appeared that national politics had very little influence on your life. You traveled about without paranoia, ready for the occasional justified or not-so-justified traffic stop, posted here and in other places about mordida and whether to pay it or not, and not much other than the normal chaos of Mexico impinged on your daily life in Paradise. US State Department travel advisories about dangers in Mexico were rare to nonexistent.

For all the years of the PRI domination of Mexico's politics, the drug cárteles operated with the permission of the government: you get this piece of Mexico, you get that piece, you get this other piece, etc. The cárteles were closely controlled by the government, paid the government for their plazas, and all of their activities went, for the most part, undetected, particularly by the retired foreign community.

In 2006, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, the PAN candidate, was elected president. Unlike prior Mexican presidents, he chose to beard the lion in his den: he confronted the Mexican drug lords and insisted that he would put an end to drugs in Mexico. War on drugs! As we all know now, his tactics did not work. In fact, it is commonly said that, in effect, he 'kicked the anthill' and the criminals ran everywhere. Conflict increased, the death toll soared--and included the deaths of innocent bystanders--and in some parts of Mexico, real terror reigned. The cárteles multiplied, their activities totally out of control. Violence bred more violence, both along the northern border and in central states as well. The death toll continued to soar; late in Calderón's presidency, the government either ceased counting deaths or ceased reporting, and although "official" statistics would lead the public to believe that around 70,000 people lost their lives during the six-year PAN presidency, others believe that the death count is around 120,000. Other thousands of people are missing, with little government interest in locating either their bodies or the living.

Calderón left office in 2012, followed as president by the PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, who was inaugurated on December 1, 2012. Since his inauguration, the reports of violence have slowed to almost nothing--because Peña Nieto has put the clamps on reporting, not because the violence has lessened. Currently, Michoacán is said to be the most dangerous state in Mexico. Three cárteles--Los Caballeros Templarios, La Familia Michoacana, and La Nueva Generación de Jalisco--continue to contest control of the states of Jalisco and Michoacán. In Michoacán, the most violent areas are along the Jalisco's easternmost border with Michoacán's westernmost border and in Michoacán's southwestern lowlands, the Tierra Caliente. In addition, a high level of violence continues in the contested state of Guerrero.

North of Mexico's center, violence has escalated in the states of Zacatecas (particularly around the capital) and Querétaro.

In addition to violence, Mexico is rife with low-level kidnapping (i.e., criminals will kidnap anyone they can, not necessarily the rich or powerful; I personally know a taxi driver in Michoacán whose cousin was kidnapped and held for two months while the family scrounged up 70,000 pesos for his release), extortion (I personally know a past-middle-age, law-abiding woman in Michoacán who was severely beaten and extorted in her well-known place of business; she paid the criminals 80,000 pesos so they would not come back and make good on their threat to kill her and her husband), and other crimes orchestrated by the cárteles. El Universal reported several months ago that at least 70% of Mexico's cities and towns are controlled by the cárteles.

You may never see an act of narcoviolencia--except, wait--you who live at Lake Chapala have already experienced it. In May of 2012 nearly 20 local men were tortured and killed. Two bodies were discovered at the lake this last week. How much has happened in the intervening 15 months? You already know about police involvement with the cárteles and other corruption, too. To whom can you report crime? Your house is burglarized? Here come the cops--and they haul away the DVD player that the burglars missed: 'Señora, it might show fingerprints'. Will you ever see it again?

You might ask yourselves: why is the price of avocados so high--right now, the price is about 60 pesos the kilo. Why do the limones look different this year? Why have prices risen so drastically? The answer to all of those questions: narco-negocio. Extortion to the avocado growers and packers--not to mention the destruction of huge packing facilities when the owners refuse to pay up. This year, the narcos have refused to allow the limoneros (the guys who harvest limones) to cut the fruit and send it to market. Several young men were ambushed and killed on their way back to the limón orchards after reporting harassment. Limones, a staple here, are being imported to Mexico from Brazil! These tactics raise the bill for all of us.

I hear many foreigners say that the US press has some kind of 'follow the money' situation with Mexico that causes the US press to make negative reports about what happens in this country. It's interesting to me that what I and most other people see as reporting facts about what's happening here is viewed as 'negative' reporting. We do not live in a slightly exotic paradise. We live in a country with huge, violent problems, MOST of which are not reported in the USA press. Only the big things are reported in the States. If all the narcoviolencia were reported in the USA, it's unlikely that *anyone* there would continue to come to Mexico.

So deal with the questions of family and friends as best you can. There is reason to think twice about visiting Mexico.

I would love to see ANY proof of PRI giving away areas of Mexico to the Cartels. Show me any type of proof.
What a disgraceful post for a long term resident of Mexico. Too bad at your age you still don't understand politics and Mexico.

In Reply To

Sam,of course the PRI has never given away areas of Mexico to the cartels,they've always charged for them.You are the one who appears to be clueless regarding Mexico and it's politics.

North of Mexico's center, violence has escalated in the states of Zacatecas (particularly around the capital) and Querétaro.