Drug Violence near Cancun

[Dweaver]

But what was YOUR experience there ? Did you feel unsafe ? Were you victim of a crime ?

My wife and I went through Cancun in May on our way to Puerto Morelos, and will be doing the same in August. Our experience was a pleasant one. We felt safe, were not a victim of crime, and actually felt like we were on one of our trips to Aruba or Curacao. Everyone was very friendly. Walking around town, still felt safe.

We have already had many family members scold us for booking a trip on going back to Mexico when "they have heard from others at work that it is getting bad and their friends were canceling their vacations there so we shouldn't go either"

I just mentioned, "have you seen the news for around here? People are getting shot at in their own homes by burglary attempts, on their front porch by stray gun fire in drive by's, killed in car wrecks by drunk drivers.... We've been there once and the first thought didn't even enter our mind. You haven't been and you're taking the word of someone else that hasn't been and isn't going because of something they have heard also..."

We let others thoughts like this ruin our Jamaica trip and didn't feel safe at all so we didn't leave the resort based on others thoughts and opinions, but I bet we would have had a great time if we had formed our own opinion instead of letting others form our opinion for us.


Am I being naive about this? Is it really that bad and I just haven't seen it? (still not going to cancel trip though)

 

[annlaur]

My point exactly Dweaver.
Spent two months in Mexico this winter and can't wait to go back. While cartel-related crimes are a reality according to the news reports, they were certainly not part of the reality I personally experienced there.
Ten years ago, I got a big severance check and decided to backpack through Mexico. Prior to crossing the border, I spent two months at my friends' in California and watched all these scary TV shows warning people about how bad things were in Mexico. Almost cancelled my trip. I ended up spending almost 2 years in this wonderful country.

People in this thread have complained about not finding information about the drug war crimes in the Yucatan peninsula. Since I read the online Por esto! edition almost everyday, I thought I'd fill them in (can't help it, I'm a journalist). But it saddens me to see how people freak out.

The whole Caribbean (and I'm not just talking about Mexico) has been a major transportation route for drugs bound to the US, Canada and Europe for many, many years. Cancun is a major hub for the cartels (drugs, illegal migrants from Cuba and China, money laundering and so forth) and has been for over a decade. This winter, many police officials have been replaced by people from the military in an attempt to crack down on corruption. There have been many arrests, and the Zetas (one of the most powerful cartels, which has cells everywhere, including in Texas and Italy) have stricked back by taking down "traitors" and competitors. Their typical modus operandi is they abduct their specific targets and take them to safe houses where they kill them. They don't go around shooting random people, much less tourists.
Ten years ago, they were more discreet (the killings were disguised in accidents or suicides or done out of state), but there was cartel-related crime all the same. The tourists were not a target then and they are not a target today either.

Enjoy your next trip, Dweaver. And DandyDon, if you're afraid to go to Cozumel on your own, buy me a plane ticket, I'll be your bodyguard

 

[Nords]

But what was YOUR experience there ? Did you feel unsafe ? Were you victim of a crime ?

I could slowly walk blindfolded across the highway, safely to the other side...

 

[Scott L]

I would not hesitate to travel to Cozumel (during cooler temps anyway). If the bodies were tourists that would be a different matter. The gangs have nothing to gain by killing tourists. Such activity would bring a massive counter-attack by the government...

 

[DandyDon]

Come on over annlaur, but you'll have to pay for your own ticket - sorry.

Ok so the news is easy to find if one reads Spanish well, but I don't and I really do not have a need to learn other than preparing for an enjoying annual trips there - so that's not going to happen. Google will translate pages for me, but they're very difficult to follow even then. So with mostly not knowing what is happening overall, with a little knowledge of what is happening - it's easy to become a little nervous. Makes it harder to leave the tourist areas at least.

40 years ago there were only 3 people living on Cancun island, Juarez was a fun shopping town by day and party town by night as was Tijuana and I guess many other border towns; I only partied in those two. All that changed quickly and totally. Wondering how much and how fast changes are happening in Cancun and even Coz is a little unnerving.

It's all tied to stupid drug laws in the US and other northern countries I know, but anywhere you have non-stop plane service to those - there will be problems. Cancun and more so Cozumel have been insulated to a degree, but that is fading.

 

[cruiser]

I would not hesitate to travel to Cozumel (during cooler temps anyway). If the bodies were tourists that would be a different matter. The gangs have nothing to gain by killing tourists. Such activity would bring a massive counter-attack by the government...

I thought the Mexican government was outgunned by the cartels and can't control them. And if the govt. CAN control them, why haven't they? Would the Mexican officials lose out on too much payola? Just wondering because I really don't know...

 

[Nords]

Mexico's government and law enforcement is SO corrupt, which doesn't really help the situation much

 

[lamont]

I would not hesitate to travel to Cozumel (during cooler temps anyway). If the bodies were tourists that would be a different matter. The gangs have nothing to gain by killing tourists. Such activity would bring a massive counter-attack by the government...

Like I argued before, it may be rational for the drug gangs to cut the baby in half rather than let the other gang have the territory. They're also less worried about the government right now, than the other gangs. I don't really buy that calculus that it can't ever happen in a tourist area. That logic may restrain the violence, but I don't think its like a law of physics that Ciudad-Juarez-like violence can never spill over into Cancun and destroy the tourist trade. It feels to me a little like the logic that housing prices across the US had never seen a full year of of across-the-board declines since the great depression, so that could obviously never happen again.

The moral of the story, though, is to just rationally monitor what is going on in Cancun. Right now its pretty obvious that there's been an uptick in drug violence compared to a few years ago. It is clearly more dangerous than a city like Seattle (where white yuppies drag their families so that their kids have a nice safe suburb to grow up in), but probably still less violence than US cities like New Orleans, and nowhere near the level of violence like Ciudad Juarez and the violence is contained to violence within the drug trade. So, stay away from the drug trade right now and tourists should be fine -- but I don't think that means being blind to the uptick in drug violence.

And my avatar right now was taken in March down in Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich -- and I traveled alone down there before meeting up with people in Puerto Aventuras. Clearly I don't think that flying into Cancun is as dangerous as trying to fly into Afghanistan right now, or I wouldn't have gone down there.

Somewhere can we find a middle ground in-between the tourist trade that doesn't want to see anything happening at all and that it can't every possibly happen, and the American sensationalist media that portrays all of Mexico as being more dangerous than Helmand province in Afghanistan?

 

[Scott L]

Like I argued before, it may be rational for the drug gangs to cut the baby in half rather than let the other gang have the territory. They're also less worried about the government right now, than the other gangs. I don't really buy that calculus that it can't ever happen in a tourist area. That logic may restrain the violence, but I don't think its like a law of physics that Ciudad-Juarez-like violence can never spill over into Cancun and destroy the tourist trade. It feels to me a little like the logic that housing prices across the US had never seen a full year of of across-the-board declines since the great depression, so that could obviously never happen again.

I agree with your logic. It is most definitely more dangerous to travel to any point in Mexico as compared to Oslo or Stockholm. That said, exclusive areas exist in CA and FL that have very narrow buffer space between some very mean streets with little violent spill-over. The greatest danger of drug gangs both here and there seems to be from cross-fire...

By the way, the Yahoo story linked retracted the heart removal reports and indicated every victim has drugs in their system.

"Cancun were working to identify six bodies found in a cave over the weekend.

Quintana Roo state attorney general Francisco Alor initially said after the bodies were found Sunday that three had been cut open and their hearts removed.

He retracted that statement Monday, saying autopsies showed the organs were stabbed multiple times and essentially destroyed, but were never removed. Toxicology results found drugs in all six victims."

 

[Nords]

Toxicology results found drugs in all six victims."

Knowing the huge slants that most US news sources have in their articles , this could mean anything from "these were drug dealers high on meth", or "these informants were given medication to keep them alive while being tortured", to "these were 18 year old female americans on vacation who were drugged with roofies and raped/murdered"

Without more information, who knows what actually happened.