The CSM’s reporter for Latin America, Sara Llanes, visited Merida a few weeks ago to find out if what she suspected was true… that expats who live and work in Merida Yucatan feel a lot safer here than most media is reporting.

Sure enough, she found a lot of us who felt that way. And it wasn’t just the two of us who escorted her around to show her the sights. We stopped to talk to some expats who were renovating a home on Calle 53. This was unplanned and unannounced. Sara talked to the two of them, and to a Yucatecan couple who just happened to be walking down the street. Her planned meetings with Dan and Martha went expectedly well too.

And, as a result of her weekend here, which she and her husband (who both live in Mexico City) thoroughly enjoyed, we have this article:

American Expats Feel Safe South of the Border

I just ran across this post on AOL Travel by Anne Johnson. It is a must read for anyone planning to travel to Mexico or to calm fears of friends who think you shouldn’t visit!

Drug-related violence in cities south of the United States-Mexico border has caused the U.S. State Department to issue a travel warning for Mexico — but did you know most of Mexico is as safe as ever?  Read More…

… just ask the New York Times!  Travel writer Brooke Barnes wrote a piece for the January 24, 2010 issue that is titled 36 Hours in Mexico City.  The article touches on some of my favorite places in the Big Manzana.  Article is here.

The San Francisco Gate published a piece titled  Swine flu fallout: Great deals on Mexico trips. The article includes individual deals in Mazatlán, Los Cabos and the Riviera Maya, and a lot of information about how the country is working to reassure visitors.   One of the most important quotes from the article is:

Mexico’s ultimate hurdle is not room rates, flu or even drug violence, but perception. You’re three times as likely to contract H1N1 flu in the United States as in Mexico. And the drug war’s front lines still occupy just five of the country’s 2,400 counties; most Americans caught in the fray were in the border towns of Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and Nuevo Laredo. Read more here.

A writer/blogger for Conde Nast Traveller writes about why it makes so much sense to invest in (and live in) Mexico, despite the news about the drug war, the swine flu and whatever else comes next. http://jeffmusto.com/blog/the-new-global-economic-reality/

In today’s New York Times, the reporter says there is evidence it didn’t start in Mexico at all. So just forget everything you’ve read over the last few months…

Andrés Martinez,  a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote an opinion piece titled Be Neighborly, Go to Mexico for the Los Angeles Times today.

Your neighbor needs your help. Do you have it within you to lend a hand? Will you book yourself a week on the beach in Cabo or Puerto Vallarta, or explore Mexico City or one of the colonial cities in the heart of Mexico? You know, for the common good. This has been a banner decade for empathy tourism — many Americans flocking to New York after 9/11 and to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did so with a sense of public service. Mexico now needs a similar surge.  Read More…

The New York Times video entitled War Without Borders – Fueling Mexico’s Drug Trade is an eye opener for anyone looking for a balanced take on what fuels the drug trade, where the guns used in Mexico come from, and what is being done and needs to be done on both sides of the border. A Mexican official says in the video that the person in the US who is a casual marijuana user doesn’t even think for a moment that their use is helping maintain the Mexican cartels.  But it is. Watch this 9 minute video, it will explain a lot.

A few days ago the New York Times ran this very realistic appraisal by Larry Rohter of Mexico today as compared to Mexico twenty years ago. Rohter was NYT Mexico City bureau chief from 1986 – 1990.

Journalist Linda Ellerbee wrote about her love of México in Puerto Vallarta’s Banderas News.  Read the entire article here.