Reports of mass grave sites, daylight shootings and carjackings from the escalating drug war don't exactly build confidence for a family planning a week's holiday. And on April 22, the U.S. State Department upgraded its travel warnings to target 14 of Mexico's 31 states.
Now's not the time to visit our southerly neighbor, right? Well, wrong. Mexico is a lot safer than you may realize.
We tend to lump all of Mexico — a country the size of Western Europe — together. For example, a border incident resulted in the death of a Colorado tourist last year, and the Texas Department of Homeland Security recommended against travel to all of Mexico.
Yet it's in the 17 of 31 states not named in the newly expanded warnings where you'll find the most rewarding destinations: the Yucatan Peninsula and Baja California beach resorts, colonial hill towns like the ex-pat haven of San Miguel de Allende, even the capital Mexico City.
An hour inland from Cancun‘s beaches, Yucatan state — home to the most popular Mayansites and "real Mexican" colonial cities such as Merida and Valladolid — is among the country's safest. The state, with roughly the same population as Kansas, saw two drug-related deaths in 2010. Wichita, Kansas, alone had six gang-related killings over the same period.
In most of central and southern Mexico, drug violence simply isn't on the radar of daily life. "It's as easy-going as it's always been," said Deborah Felixson, a diving operator on Cozumel who is "shocked" when people say they had been scared to go to the Caribbean island. "We're just small communities here. We all know what everyone's up to."
That sentiment is found even in places once linked with political tension, such as Chiapas state and Oaxaca City, where political protest turned into a stand-off in 2006.
"Things are so much quieter now," said Rogelio Vallesteros, who runs a Spanish-language school in Oaxaca City. "People call to ask about safety all the time, then they come and see how quiet it is. We're normal, really."
After the swine-flu crisis of 2009 — when some cruise ships diverted routes from Mexican ports that had no reported cases to American ones that did — travel bounced back a bit last year. Interestingly, the increase of returning Canadians and many Western Europeans doubled that of the American rate. We seem to remain particularly leery of Mexico.