RickS
Dec 31, 2011, 10:31 AM
Post #12 of 15
(1015 views)
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Re: [cindym] More Murders.... Just wrong Country
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Well since you asked, let me take a shot at my view..... warning: an admittedly too-long post. Read at your own risk!
I live 3/4 of the year NOB. The other quarter is generally spent in Mexico somewhere… presently in San Miguel for a couple of months. I drive down and usually drive within Mexico quite a bit in the months I'm here. I like it here (Mexico). I also like it NOB!
As a visitor to Mexico since about 1995, I have seen it through several stages. The current stage has some problems to say the least. But in my view.... and this is after spending a great deal of time throughout the year paying attention to what is actually going on, I believe Mexico is not an unsafe place to visit. Let me say that again..... Mexico is NOT an unsafe place to visit. People I respect have a different view of this.
Do I mean every nook and cranny of Mexico? Of course not. There is no denying that there is much lawlessness in the country…. on a scale that is basically not matched anywhere in this hemisphere. A number of people on the forums don't like to see 'comparisons' given when discussing crime SOB. But I think that comparing is how we relate to a given situation. When I'm SOB I often have to think when I see a price on something (naturally) in pesos.... compare it if you will with the dollar cost to me NOB. It gives me a baseline from which I make decisions. The same is true with the safety issue.
One big problem I have is with/how the press reports (generally bad) news in Mexico. But I shouldn't really be surprised because a very large percentage of the news we get from our Press dwells on the negative. It's been that way seemingly forever. It sells. Another problem with most news we get is that it is in the 'sound byte' format.... hit the highlights, most of the time with a shocking lead, and then go soft on much of any substance. Report and run. This approach often gives a very distorted view of the reality of the event. I combat this, both NOB and SOB, with searching out the 'rest of the story' on topics that interest me. Mexico interests me so I always try to find out what really happened or what the real circumstance were in the sound-byte story.
But I'm pretty sure that many people just listen/see the sound-byte story and take that for the gospel and it becomes their reality. But often that reality is not reality at all... it's a slanted version of the story wherein very important (in my eyes) facts are missed. If that happens on a forum, I often try to post 'the rest of the story'. I'm sure that this is sometimes taken as 'denying the tragedy' or 'rebutting' the Post. That is not my intention unless the Post is blatantly misleading or the Poster is always harping on the negative in my view. "His" biased view then gets my (probably) biased counter-view. Sorry.
Why don’t people help? They often do. I do it a lot it seems. Just yesterday a guy on another forum asked for help driving out of San Miguel some other way than thru Laredo, then heading to west Texas. I responded with a route (Hwy 57 to Piedras Negras) that I have taken several times and is ‘easy’ from SMA. I mentioned that there were others but they kept one driving in Mexico much more (which I consider a negative if I can travel similar miles on US roads as an alternative). When he heard that the 57 route took him through Monclova he had a bad reaction….. wanted to hear more about the ‘long way’ through Zacatecas, Torreon and Chihuahua. Why? He had (old) information that Monclova was a ‘wasteland’…. Bad cops demanding mordida and cartel shootouts. I explained that the bad cops were not actually in Monclova but on a bypass that he should not even take; and that while there was some unrest in Monclova many months ago, it had been very quiet for a long time and really was a quite nice town. I’ve driven through 3 times in the last 15 months and stayed overnight there once; had a nice Burger King there 3 weeks ago. A fellow Mexconnect Poster whose opinions I respect deems Monclova and that part of Coahuila State as safe an area as there is on the border (and he is there for the Holidays!). Yet this other guy was willing to drive many more miles in Mexico, taking him through some places that have had more serious cartel situations than Monclova in the past, and end up paying more tolls to boot rather than driving through Monclova “because he had heard about the bad cops”. Listening to a sound-byte rather looking for the rest of the story.
As always, YMMV
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