As the Iraq War enters its seventh year, I’ve been trying to imagine a world in which CIA director George Tenet, faced with deciding whether to recommend sending young American men and women into a dangerous foreign country, receives information from the State Dept. and, instead of disregarding it, accepts it as credible and recommends standing down from the mission.

As reported by the New York Times this week, this actually did happen.Unfortunately, it happened six years too late; the country was Mexico; the mission, spring break; and the young people at risk were Tenet’s college age son and his friends.And this time, it was State that was being unnecessarily alarmist.

Last month, the State Dept. issued a travel advisory for Mexico that was, by bureaucratic memo standards, rather breathless:

“Mexican drug cartels are engaged in an increasingly violent conflict – both among themselves and with Mexican security services – for control of narcotics trafficking routes along the U.S.-Mexico border…Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades.

Large firefights have taken place in many towns and cities across Mexico but most recently in northern Mexico, including Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez.During some of these incidents, U.S. citizens have been trapped and temporarily prevented from leaving the area…The situation in northern Mexico remains fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements cannot be predicted.”

The phrase “large fire fights” tends to have a cooling effect on the tourism trade, and sure enough, colleges across the US have started warning students against spending spring break in a “war zone.”

I have lived in Querétaro, Mexico, for two-and-a-half years. My city is about 450 miles from the nearest beach, and farther still from the nearest wet t-shirt contest, and so I don’t have any particular interest in persuading a swarm of horny teenagers to come survive for a week on tequila shooters. But America’s young people are being fed a lot of misinformation about their neighbor to the south, so I’m here to set the record straight. For the children.

There is indeed a great deal of senseless, drug-fueled violence happening in Mexico right now: over 5,000 people were killed last year, and this year the body count hit 1,000 in just 51 days. But the vast, vast majority of the dead were either involved in the drug trade themselves, or were part of the forces (Army/ police/ judges/ officials) who are fighting them. If you’re planning to spend spring break either working for a drug cartel or joining the Mexican Army, then by all means you should think twice about coming here.

Consumers of American media could easily get the impression that Mexico is a blood-soaked killing field, when in fact the bulk of the drug violence is happening near the border. (In fact, one way of putting this would be that Mexico is safe as long as you stay far, far away from the US.) If your spring break destination of choice is Juarez, Tijuana or Nuevo Laredo, I would humbly suggest that you’re both a degenerate and insane. You’ve got plenty of underage prostitutes right at home in America, and despite what you may have read there’s no such thing as a “donkey show” here. Tenet is right. Cancel your vacation or I’m giving your name to Interpol.

It’s hard to blame universities for issuing these dire warnings, since they have a responsibility to their students, and the fact of the matter is, Americans do get killed here. But in debating whether or not Mexico is dangerous, they’re asking themselves the wrong question. The issue is, is Mexico dangerous compared to the United States? We’ve been hearing for years how American kids are falling behind in math and statistics, so I’ll try to keep the following simple as I can.

According to the State Dept., 669 Americans died “non-natural deaths” in Mexico in the three years between Jan ’05 and Dec ’07, which accounts for 30% of “non-natural” American deaths around the world. Sounds scary, but then Mexico also accounts for 30% of the foreign trips taken by Americans, so what do you expect? Furthermore, we’re talking about 45 million American visits to Mexico, so while 669 deaths are a tragedy, they are not exactly a killing field. Based on these numbers, the survival rate for Americans in Mexico would appear to be 99.9986%

Breaking that State Dept’s numbers down a little further, though, we see that 58 percent (389) of these “non-natural deaths” were from accidents – car, plane, boat or “other.” Eighty-five Americans drowned here in this national full of beach resorts. Fifteen died of drug overdoses and 61 Americans – nine percent of the total – committed suicide! Admittedly, life here can be frustrating sometimes, but any tourist who kills himself here should, in all fairness, not be counted against Mexico total.

The number of Americans who decided Mexico would be a great place to kill themselves is nearly half the number of those who had that decision made for them. According to the State Dept, a grand total of 126 Americans were murdered in Mexico during those three years – just slightly less than the 45,000 killed north of the border during the same period. So while your chances of not dying here may be 99.9986%, your chances of not being murdered here are 99.9997%. Anyone who considers those to be dangerous odds would be advised not to spend spring break in Las Vegas, either.

Recently, the Houston Chronicle took a look at the numbers (covering four years, instead of State’s three) and came to a similar conclusion: that fewer than one-thousandth of one percent of American visitors to Mexico come back to Uncle Sam in a pine box. Actually, the way the Chronicle phrased it was, “Caught in the Chaos: More than 200 U.S. Citizens Killed in Mexico Since ’04”.

So, y’know, one a week, which makes the country a lot safer than most US cities.But then the Chronicle goes on to note:

“The Chronicle analysis showed some American homicide victims were involved in organized crime. The dead include at least two dozen victims labeled hitmen, drug dealers, human smugglers or gang members, based on published investigators’ accusations. Others were drug users or wanted for crimes in the United States…in at least 70 other cases, U.S. citizens appear to have been killed while in Mexico for innocent reasons: visiting family, taking a vacation, or simply living or working there.”

In other words, of the “200 U.S Citizens Slain,” 130 of them simply didn’t draw their own weapons fast enough. So we’re really talking about seventy murders in four years, during which time Americans made 60 million visits to Mexico, which has a population of about 120 million. For the record, that’s ten percent fewer murders than took place in Houston, population 2 million, in the first three months of 2008:

“HPD officials say that the City of Houston has recorded the fewest numbers of murders for the first quarter of this year since 2005.

“The unofficial numbers show 78 murders were recorded through the first three months of this year.

“There were 88 murders for the same period in 2007. That’s an 11.3 percent decrease.”

In case it’s not clear, Houston officials were proud of this. And they should have been, because in 2007, Houston had the second-highest urban homicide rate in the country:

“In Houston, the number of murders increased to 379 last year from 334 in 2005, a jump officials blamed in part on hurricane evacuees.

“The homicide rate has been much higher in years past, especially the 1980s,’ HPD Capt. Dwayne Ready told the Chronicle in October.

“‘Even if the number … for 2006 hits 400 it’s not a bleak picture for Houston.’”

If 400 people get gunned down in Houston in one year, the Houston Police Dept. doesn’t think it’s a “bleak picture.” But seventy innocent Americans get killed in Mexico over the course of four years, and the former director of Central Intelligence is warning people to steer clear? Where was this sense of caution six years ago?

Mexico is a real country, kids, not some isolated beach resort. There’s crime here. People die here – mostly by accident, but some by murder. But the same is true of the United States. The state of Querétaro, where I live, is very small – a little over a million people – and at any given time there are about 50,000 Queretanos working in the United States. In 2007, forty-one of them were shipped home for burial by the Mexican embassy. Strangely, no one here ever tries to talk me out of returning home for a visit.

Ok, people, enough’s enough. Too many people are finding Heather in Paradise by researching “crime in Playa del Carmen,” and the US media has been going on a frenzy trying to sensationalize crime in Mexico in an effort to deter Americans from traveling here.

Here is the most recent travel advisory from the US State department. Read it for yourself and then come back.

Ok, they’re warning you that there has been drug cartel violence as well as some robberies, etc. in some of the border cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. They recommend restricting travel to Durango.

Have any of you seen a map of Mexico? Here you go:

Quintana Roo, which is Playa del Carmen’s state, is the grey/purplish state that is on the far right, curled up little Yucatan peninsula. In other words, it’s really, really far away from the border.

Click here to read more.

Those of us who have lived here for awhile are used to the way Mexico is treated in the media in the United States. Articles are either about wonderful places to travel or about how dangerous it is here. A few months ago, there was a noticeable uptick in the number of negative articles about Mexico. Murder, violence, danger… the drums were beating louder. Then there was an article about the two most potentially dangerous countries in the world: Pakistan and… Mexico! Then the U.S. State Department put out a travel warning, and it seemed everyone was writing about how dangerous it was going to be for college students on Spring Break to go to Mexico.

We pondered all this last night as we walked the dogs through the streets of downtown Merida. Not just any streets, but a neighborhood deep in a colonia south of the Plaza Grande, a place we had once been warned to stay away from because it was dangerous. Now we live here, in San Sebastian, one of the old neighborhoods in Merida’s centro historico. Once upon a time, this was a place of intense poverty and desperation. It still isn’t a neighborhood of manicured lawns and swimming pools, but desperation? danger? Not hardly.

The two dogs and two humans walked slowly through the streets, lit by streetlights and moonlight and the light spilling from the many open doors. In Merida, often the coolest place in your house is on the front step, where the breeze blows by, and it is traditional for people to take their chairs outside and set up light housekeeping in front of their house on the sidewalk. Each block had three or four families gathered around their front door last night, talking, laughing, listening to music. We know each other by sight, and they waved or greeted us as we walked by. “Buenas noches!” “Buenas noches!” The children squeal because the dogs are big and full of energy. At one door, a man is selling unfinished pine furniture… We stop and ask him about it because we’ve never seen him before. How much is the table? Does he make things to order? His friends ask us if the dogs bite, and when we answer “no, they’ve already eaten tonite”, they laugh with us, and we continue on to the park.

At the park by the San Sebastian Church, there are probably fifty young men playing a few games of basketball on the lit courts. The unlit baseball field behind them is fairly empty and we let the dogs run offleash for awhile in the dark, looking at the stars and listening to the distant sound of a TV coming from the cocina economica on the other side of the wall. We walk by later and notice that it’s a quiet night there tonite… only a few tables full of patrons watching television, visiting and eating something that smells delicious.

On the way home, some of the streetlights are not lit and the street is dark except for the passing lights of cars or busses. We wonder how someone reading all those articles would feel right now. Would they be afraid? Because we are not afraid, and we realize we are never afraid walking the streets of Merida. We are not worried that we are going to be shot, because Mexico doesn’t allow ordinary citizens to own guns. There are policemen everywhere in Merida, and it has always been that way. Merida is known as one of the safest places in Mexico and we have seen, heard or read nothing to change that. We feel safe here. We ARE safe here.

When we get home, as we’re lying on the roof looking up at the stars and moonlit clouds, we talk again about our safety. We have walls and locks on the front door and we take the normal precautions. But within our home, we don’t lock every door. We live an indoor/outdoor life and we have been doing that for seven years, with no breakins, no burglaries. One night, we didn’t close the front door well, and the wind blew it open. We slept through that and came downstairs in the morning to a wide open front door. But nothing was taken, nothing had happened. Everything was just the way we had left it the night before. Every so often, we are awake in the middle of the night. We open the front door for the breeze and let the cat walk outside. Before long, a policeman drives by. Everything okay? Thank you officer, everything is fine. We are always struck by how polite and respectful they are.

We can count on one hand the violence that we have heard about in our community in seven years. Those beheadings in ChiChi Suarez, a few miles from here, and another one in Garcia Gineres… that’s it. And those weren’t normal citizens; they were people caught up in the drug war, working for the narcotrafficantes. No one who was innocent was hurt. Not like the spectacular killings we read about in the United States, where an ex-boyfriend dresses up like Santa Claus and blows away the whole family.

So now we are wondering, who is this news serving? Who has suddenly decided that it is time to paint Mexico as the new bad guy? Whose interests are served by the prospect of sending troops to the border, and increasing military support to Mexico? Now that the economy is melting down in the United States, and we have plans for pulling out of Iraq, who might be worried about their profits or their influence?

As the night got later, and the moon rose, the city quieted down and went to sleep. The barking dogs stopped their nightly communication and the roosters stopped mistaking the moon for dawn, and the busses went to sleep… and so did we. Safe in Merida, Mexico. We’re worried about the future, about our safety, our finances. There are a lot of things to worry about these days. But one thing we aren’t worried about is the danger of living in Mexico.

I got a disturbing call from a client in Texas the other day. I guess I should say calls. The phone started to ring fairly early, and just kept cycling between phones: home phone, cell phone, Vonage phone, repeat. We don’t keep any phones in the bedroom, but all the windows were open, so I could hear all the ringing coming from Chuck’s office directly above the bedroom. When I realized it wasn’t going to stop – ever – I got up to find out who needed to talk to us so desperately.

By the time I got upstairs, I was awake enough to start to be worried. Did something terrible happen to a loved one? The caller wasn’t leaving messages on any of the phones, so I sat down to wait for the phone to ring again. I didn’t have to wait long.

I picked up the phone and was instantly greeted with, “Are you okay?” It took me a few moments to recognize the voice.

“Yes, Mark. I’m fine. What’s up?”

“When you didn’t answer the phone, I was sure something had happened to you.”

Mark and I met when he hired me to develop and manage his web site and became friends. Well, maybe not friends exactly. We have never hung out or called just to chat about non-business related matters, but we deal with each other on an extremely informal level. Some of the things I say to him during a teleconference make his employees cringe, being a group of dedicated yes men. They are quite sure I am going to be fired at any moment.

With no small amount of acid, I said, “I was asleep Mark. There is a time difference, remember? What’s the emergency this time?”

It turns out he was calling on a minor business matter, but got terribly worried when I didn’t answer the phone. Mark has been watching the American news media, you see. And I live in Mexico. He was sure I had been kidnapped, or caught in a narco shootout, or come to some other equally heinous end.

Mark is a very aware type of guy and is constantly plugged into the news: on the computer, on the radio, on the television. Lately, all he has heard are stories about how dangerous it is in Mexico. The U.S. State department sent out a very strong warning about traveling to Mexico. No one has mentioned that the warning has remained largely unchanged for the past 10 years. It just featured a few enhancements this year.

My annoyance at being woken up turned into annoyance at ignorance. But I quickly squashed it. What I was hearing was the product of genuine caring, and I appreciated that. But I am still annoyed at the media that is sensationalizing problems in Mexico.

Here is the ironic part: Violence here, where I live, is down.

I think the news outlets in the U.S are very aware that the people are stressed out and really tired of hearing about the economy, joblessness, and foreclosures. What do most people want to hear about at a time like this? Someone else who is far worse off. Enter the Mexicans.

I’m not saying that the murders and kidnappings don’t happen. They do. In certain parts of Mexico. The drug violence in the border towns is astonishing. But so was the violence in Dallas three years ago. So is the violence in Detroit, with 47.8 murders per 100,000 people. Gee whiz. I just wish the news would put things in perspective when they report it.

Mark’s daughter and her sorority sisters had booked a trip to Puerta Vallarta for Spring Break. But the news has made them scared to come. They recently saw the movie Taken, and that sealed it. The girls are going to Florida.

To his credit, Mark did not forbid his daughter to come to Mexico. He interviewed body guards to send with her, but he never even implied she shouldn’t come. She made the decision on her own.

Even the young, who usually believe they are immortal, are scared to come here. I think the first reaction of most of the expats who live here is, “good riddance. The last thing we need is more drunken gringos making fools of themselves and making us look bad.” But the reality is, we need the dollars they bring with them. Part of the Mazatlan economy depends on the money tourists bring, and when they don’t come, businesses fail, people lose jobs, and children go hungry.

I think the State Department warning is having the exact effect intended: it is keeping American tourist dollars in the U.S., something that could never be accomplished by any “See America” PR campaign, no matter how good. I think encouraging people to keep their money in the U.S. is a very smart thing for the U.S. economy, but I really don’t think using scare tactics is a responsible way to do that.

I told Mark how very safe I am here. I told him that our little city of 450,000 people was just descended upon by 800,000 partiers for Carnaval and the police handled everything very well. I told him that his one U.S. Dollar buys 15 Mexican Pesos, making a trip here a very good value. I told him his daughter was a lot less likely to make an appearance in “Girls Gone Wild” if she came here. She is still going to Florida.

Note: This article originally appeared here.

There’s been a lot of talk about safety among the expat community in Mexico lately. It seems like the press and the US government are going out of their way to discourage people from vacationing in Mexico. Those of us who live here – who love it here, wonder why.

I’m not going to try to figure out what their agenda might be. Some people speculate that it has to do with keeping American vacation dollars at home to help the economy. Maybe it’s just more of the nanny style of government. I really don’t know. But I do know it is taking a toll on Mazatlan and other communities that rely on tourism for a fair bit of their economy. I’ll talk about that in a minute. For now, let’s go back to the topic of safety.

We all want to be safe. What is that, exactly, though? Does that mean that there is a zero percent chance of something unexpected happening? I doubt that anyone expects that! I mean the world is full of random events – you come around a corner a little too fast and a truck is stopped in your lane…you hit it…someone is hurt…and everyone involved feels shaken and unsafe. But that doesn’t mean you never drive again, does it? And random events don’t just happen in Mexico, you know!

I have been getting numerous letters every week from people who aren’t sure if they should come on their long-planned vacations to Mazatlan. It’s good that they are looking for more information and need to decide for themselves whether they’ll feel safe or not. I tell people that write me that I feel safe, and that I love it here, and if they want a fuller explanation as to why they should read my blog.

We all know there is a war in Mexico between drug cartels and each other and drug cartels and the government. High ranking police officials have been killed. There have been graphic pictures in the media of bodies lined up where they were executed. This is horrifying, no doubt. But aside from the slim chance that someone would be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it feels far removed from everyday life.

But one thing that isn’t far removed is the effect that the loss of tourist dollars especially hurts the poor here in Mexico. Many people here are already living a very marginal existence, and losing a job or having hours reduced is an impossible situation. And here in Mazatlan we had already been feeling the effect of the financial crisis reducing the velocity of construction and hence construction related jobs.

I love it here. I love traveling all over Mexico. I take common sense precautions and keep my eyes open. But…you know, I do that where ever I am, and I imagine you do, too. Mexico is a delightful country filled with warm hearted, generous people who would like nothing better than to share with you the Mexico they know and love. I hope you choose to see for yourself.

If you are a regular in the Mexican blogosphere, you know that Rivergirl wrote of this topic today and Gabatcha shared her thoughts on this matter yesterday. We were all set off by a recent article found on Associated Content written by Julia Bodeeb that is inaccurate and obviously written without any real knowledge of what is happening in Mexico. The article was posted on a Cancun information forum and we soon discovered that attempting to comment on her piece was futile. Several of us have posted comments that dispute her statement that tourists should avoid Cancun, we’ve asked her for evidence that Cancun is unsafe for tourists and she is consistently (and rapidly) deleting the comments that disagree with her blatant lies and misinformation. One poster contacted the writer directly to challenge her about deleting comments and she replied with a delightfully courteous “You blow”. You would think that a professional “journalist” would be able to engage in debate and support her arguments, but apparently she has nothing to back up her claims that tourists are in danger in Cancun. Why? Because they are not.

Click here to continue reading this article on my blog!

With the apparent hysteria in the media about the dangers of Mexico and the anxious emails I’m receiving about upcoming trips, I thought I would touch on this subject one more time (see previous post here). In Cancun and Quintana Roo, at this moment in time, all is peaceful, all is calm and tourists are safe. According to today’s local paper “El Periodico”, the US State Department released a letter stating that their warning was intended to urge people to exercise caution in the border areas of the country, not to prohibit travel or imply that resort areas are unsafe. There have been no tourists killed in Cancun as a result of the war on drugs. Do people die here? Why, yes they do, car accidents, heart attacks, drownings, suicides, of course people die here, but random murders just don’t happen. The entire city of Cancun had only 65 murders last year, none of the victims were tourists. For a city of about 700 000 residents with millions of tourists visiting each year, that is not a scary statistic. Does crime against tourists happen? Yes, this is not Disneyland (and I am sure there are pick pockets there too), robberies occur, credit card fraud, rape (usually of the “date rape” variety, not random assaults on the street), all things that happen in any major city. Use your common sense and don’t put yourself or your things in dangerous situations.

Click here to read the rest of this post on my blog!