Finally Some Good News on Mexican Travel 
By Peter Ferry

Poor old Mexico. Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down! Just when the price of oil plummets, American jobs dry up, and the fear of drug violence cuts tourism in half, along comes the Swine flu to cut it in half again.

Okay, it’s time for a little good news. In May the U.S. Centers for Disease Control lifted their recommendation against travel to Mexico; the Swine flu isn’t so bad after all, and it probably didn’t come here from Mexico in the first place. 

And now a little bit more good news. Drug violence is not a threat to ordinary tourists like you and me. This is according to the Mexican government, the US State Department and me. Let me give you a little background. 

I had driven to, in and around Mexico often with impunity and pleasure, but that was years ago. Now I was planning two auto trips, one from the border to central Mexico, another from Mexico City to Cuernavaca to Oaxaca and back, and my friends were alarmed. 

“What about the drug war?” 

“Aren’t you afraid of being kidnapped?” 

No. At least I didn’t think so. The dangers of Mexico have always been exaggerated, and I have always taken them with a grain of salt. The drug trade is nothing new, and poor people have been kidnapping rich ones for money in the third world and even in the first world (Italy) for a long time. Besides, I’m not rich. 

Still, news reports in the weeks before I left caused my grain of salt to grow smaller. One said that President Felipe Calderon’s assault on the drug cartels had started a “civil war.” Another called the kidnappings an epidemic. A third compared Mexico to Pakistan and described it as a “failed state.” And the CO of an Air Force base in New Mexico advised those in his command who planned to drive into Mexico to do so in broad daylight in caravans with cell phones at the ready. 

Hmmm. 

I called Sanborns, the American insurance people who have been providing auto insurance for American motorists in Mexico for sixty years, and asked if they advised any special precautions. 

“Only to stick to main routes and not to drive at night, but that’s mainly because of animals that wander onto roads.” 

“Have you had problems with tourists being held up or hijacked?” 

“No. We wouldn’t be insuring them if we did.” (A review of Sanborn’s rates indicates no dramatic increases in recent months or years which would likely have occurred if theft or damage claims had gone up.) 

Okay. I’d go, but I’d avoid Ciudad Juarez where the violence is the worst. I’d cross the border on a Sunday morning, the quietest time in any week, and I’d do it at Laredo, where the cartels recently seemed to have called a truce.

What follows are facts, anecdotes and opinions. 

Here are the facts.

Mexican highways are excellent and well marked. Most major cities are now connected by well engineered toll roads that have limited access and are patrolled by Federal Police and Green Angels, motorist assistant trucks manned by mechanics. 

Customs offices are clean and custom officials are professional and efficient. Neither used to be the case. 

Gas stations are also vastly improved. Almost all now include a convenience store and some even have food courts. 

And the vehicle stock is better than years ago; gone are most of the lopsided buses and one eyed trucks of the past. 

Here are the anecdotes: 

David Tramp is an American who has lived in Ensenada, Mexico, for three years and sells real estate. He drives his Hummer into California through Tijuana, one of the hotbeds of drug violence, about four times a month. Has he ever had or seen any trouble? “Never.” Does he have any advice for tourists? “Stay out of high crime areas where there are drugs and prostitutes. Common sense.” 

Fiona McNeill is a school teacher in her sixties with very little Spanish who is working in a Waldorf School near San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. She drove there alone in nine days from her home in Bend, Oregon without incident except to be short changed in a gas station. 

Ramon Morales is a Harley Davidson motor cycle mechanic who came to Mexico with his pregnant wife and three year old daughter when he was laid off from his job in San Antonio. Despite his Hispanic name, he has red hair and a Texas twang. His wife was reluctant to come; “Now I can’t get her to go home. Hell, I gotta get back and find some work.” 

Bill and Debbie Kent from Corrales, New Mexico, speak no more Spanish than “por favor” and “gracias.” They drove down the west coast through Sinaloa and Sonora, states where the drug wars are being waged, then across to Guadalajara and to the central Mexican state of Guanajuato before returning home. Like almost all of the dozens of American motorists interviewed for this article, they remarked on the excellence of the Mexican roads, the courtesy of Mexican drivers, and the scenic beauty of the drive. Nothing untoward happened to them coming or going. 

Michael Stark is an Englishman with a home in Hertfordshire and another near Valencia in Spain who came to Mexico to study Spanish. He drove the five hundred miles from McAllen, Texas to central Mexico straight through at eighty miles an hour during daylight and nighttime hours. He was stopped for speeding, but the police let him go with a warning. His only complaint, which was true of virtually everyone interviewed for this story, was heavy traffic around cities. 

Skip Mascorro has been operating international motorcycle tours out of Spring Branch, Texas since 1981 in countries around the world including Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Moldova, Cuba and Iran as well as Mexico and most of Latin America. He regularly leads groups into the mountains of Chihuahua, Sonora and Sinaloa where the drug cartels operate and, some say, rule. He says Mexico is as safe as any of the countries he has visited. 

Then are the drug wars a figment of someone’s imagination? 

“Not at all,” says Mascorro. “They’re real all right, and they are a serious problem for the Mexican government, but they are not a problem for tourists.” Mascorro compares them to the turf wars of inner city gangs or the internecine cocaine wars of the 1970’s and 80’s in South Florida made famous in the television show Miami Vice and the movie Scarface. “People were dying all over the place, and no one stopped going to Florida.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton drew the same analogy on March 26 speaking in Monterrey, Mexico. 

Then is the press in the United States overreacting? 

“Yes.” In Mascorro’s opinion, it is doing so at least in part in response to political pressure. Fanning the flames of the issue are the anti-immigration forces in whose interest it is to stir up fear of Mexico and Mexicans. “I think this is about ‘the fence’ that anti-immigration groups want to build from the Gulf to the Pacific. Almost no one who lives down on the border wants this wall,” says Mascorro. Indeed, Texas’s conservative Republican governor Rick Perry has opposed the wall, and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano when she was governor of Arizona once famously said, “If you build a fifty foot high wall, somebody will find a fifty-one foot ladder.” 

I entered Mexico with considerable trepidation sticking to toll roads and watching both my clock and rear view mirror. When I departed a month later, I did so at my leisure using secondary roads and leaving even these to explore the villages and countryside. As a motor tourist I did not feel threatened by the drug violence or kidnappings I had read and heard about. And I was able to take advantage of the very favorable exchange rate that has made Mexico once again the best travel bargain available while rediscovering that country’s charm, beauty and friendliness. 

Should you go? You’ll have to decide that for yourself. As for me, I’ve already rented an apartment in San Miguel de Allende for the month of February, 2010. I’m going back, and I’m driving. 

Peter Ferry’s novel Travel Writing was selected by Conde Nast’s Traveler as “one of the season’s best new fiction travel titles.” It is available at La Tienda, the Biblioteca Pública bookstore.

Note this article first appeared in www.worldhum.com/features/speakers-
corner/finally-some-good-news-on-
travel-in-mexico-20091014/