How safe is it down there?

Well, Mom, perhaps this is one blog you shouldn’t read...

There are, in fact, some serious issues with safety and security in Mexico. When doing my research before coming down here, I read some frightening reports from the U.S. State Department and various travel guides warning of robberies, kidnappings and murders in Mexico. I don’t normally scare easily, but it freaked me out a bit. Luckily, most of the violent crime here is related to the drug traffic in the states outside the Distrito Federal, and most of the worst case scenarios are related to that specific situation. When President Felipe Calderon launched a frontal assault on the country’s drug cartels a year and a half ago, he made drug interdiction a priority. He sent 30 thousand army troops to the worst areas. As a result, the number of drug war related assaults, kidnappings and murders has skyrocketed. But even after acknowledging the impact of the drug wars, it is also true there are other sources of crime in Mexico. I must confess that I know regular people here who have been mugged, robbed, car jacked, assaulted and kidnapped. (I have yet to meet anyone who was murdered.) On the face of it, I realize that probably sounds pretty bad.

On the other hand, everything is relative. A very quick internet search conducted on “the most dangerous countries in the world” did not yield for me a list which included Mexico (though one did feature the United States). Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Iraq, Russia, South Africa, Somalia, Haiti, Indonesia, Israel, etc. came up again and again, but not my beloved Mexico. And none of these lists were exactly the same. I imagine the list you get depends on how you phrase the question and how the list makers decided to crunch the numbers, not to mention the questions of who is crunching the numbers and for what purpose. For instance, are we talking about drug interdiction and/or civil war related crime? Do the statistics refer only to the sort of average crime that happens to regular citizens? Are we mixing combat fatalities with run of the mill homicides? The answers to these questions will likely give you the variations in lists I found. Obviously, countries with civil wars and violent insurgencies are very dangerous, but how valuable are these figures for inclusion in a serious discussion about crimes against tourists in non-combat zones? And though most of you probably do not consider the United States a particularly “dangerous” country, I think we would all readily agree there are places in Trenton, Camden, Newark, Brooklyn, Detroit, L.A., New Orleans, Dallas, Oakland, Washington DC, Atlanta, New Orleans, etc. that anyone in their right mind should steer clear. And major cities are not the only places homicides happen in America. I know a lot of small-town Americans are being murdered because I see the cases being solved on reality crime shows like, Cold Case Files, Forensic Files, FBI Files, The First 48, etc.

So, is Mexico a safe place to visit and/or live? Is it more or less dangerous than living in the United States? Allow me to discuss several related topics and let you decide.

The drug war in Mexico...it’s bad. Really bad. The kind of bad that would make Americans flip-out if it was happening in their country. In the first six months of the year, 3,500 people have been killed in the drug war. That’s a record pace compared to last year. The killings generally take place in the Mexican states where drugs are imported, produced, refined and/or exported to the United States. (There are 32 states in the “Estados Unidos Mexicanos.” Yes, the official name of this country is the United States of Mexico!) The northern border is the worst. There are places up there where law and order exist only as a pleasant concept. I read recently that some cartel thugs came into a town and started a huge shootout throughout the downtown area, killing several police officers, including the chief, as well as innocent bystanders. The next day the entire police force resigned. You can’t really blame them. Cops in Mexico are found dead on a daily basis.

And not just any cops, high ranking officers like the heads of the state police. This spring, the national head of the anti-drug division was assassinated. The next day, the head of the national anti-kidnapping unit was executed. And cops aren’t just any kind of “found dead.” I have read several stories about cops being found beheaded in the back of a car and seen footage of the charred bodies of dead police being found on the side of the road. Often times, the bodies display signs of torture. I can’t believe anyone is actually still signing up to join the police anymore; except, of course, for the fact that there is tremendous money to be made aiding and abetting drug traffickers. (Police in Mexico are notoriously underpaid, particularly the local police who make close to the minimum wage.) In the old days, perhaps, it was a pretty good gig because you took your bribes while there was no real expectation to do much law enforcement. But now, Calderon is actually attempting to seriously reduce this illicit trade. The shake up seems to have disrupted much of the established “order.” As some cartels are weakened by the government’s efforts, others are emboldened to take over new territory, resulting in inter-cartel violence that resembles an all out war. This is Bloods vs. Crips fighting over an inner city corner, magnified to the nth degree. Sometimes the cops are not killed for enforcing anti-drug laws, they are assassinated in order to punish them (and warn others) not to do business with the competing cartels.

To give you an idea of what it is like let me give a few more examples. A few months ago, I read in the paper that the Zetas, a paramilitary mercenary hit squad associated with drug cartels, were placing banners on freeway overpasses. The banners were recruitment posters, asking military and former military members to come and work for them. The banners brazenly boasted of “better pay and a more competitive package” than what the government offered. In nearby Guatemala, cartels managed to run recruitment spots on the radio. Can you imagine hearing such an ad on WMMR in Philadelphia?!

Now before you go shaking your head and saying, “Boy, is Mexico screwed up!” keep in mind that all this violence and suffering is a result of the desire on the part of Americans to do drugs. Yup, all those regular (mostly white) Americans who enjoy a little recreational puff or snort or pill are actually the primary cause of all this mayhem in Mexico. I am absolutely certain that if a Mexican demand for drugs was creating the same level of violence, death and instability in the United States, the U.S. would intervene militarily. But, because Mexico does not have that sort of military power, they are forced to suffer. Sure, there are drugs in Mexico, but the U.S. demand dwarfs what the average Mexicans can afford to buy.

It’s similar to the organized crime violence and police corruption that occurred during Prohibition in the U.S. People wanted to get a buzz drinking alcohol and making it illegal was not going to stop them. Plenty of unscrupulous and violent characters were willing to do whatever it took to get the drug (alcohol) to the masses who wanted it. Plenty of police and politicians were corrupted by the money paid to look the other way. When they repealed the 18th amendment prohibiting alcohol, all the related crime stopped. I can’t help thinking that legalizing illicit drugs would be the lesser of two evils in the same regard.

It’s a pretty simple equation: No high demand, no high profits. No high profits, no willingness to kidnap, torture and kill to preserve your business. Sure the drug-related violence in Mexico is grotesque, but it is directly caused by the exorbitant demand for drugs north of the border. Mexicans must think, “We gave you tacos and you give us death and mayhem? Thanks America!”

OK, the violence related to the drug war is pretty significant, but what about the rest of Mexico? If I stay away from drug war areas, stay away from drug trafficking and drug interdiction, is it safe then? Well, it depends. If you live out in the countryside and are poor you don’t really have anything of value, so I think you are generally left alone. (Though I think poor women in these areas regularly suffer abuses that we would consider criminal.) Or, if you are middle class in the towns and cities of provincia, things are relatively safe as well. If you are wealthy—and there are some very wealthy people here—then you have likely surrounded yourself with a variety of protections that help to keep you safe. You may be “safe,” but the reality is you also live your life under guard as a constant target. I encounter these rich “targets” at my school on a daily basis. In the mornings and afternoons, the front of ASF looks like an SUV car show. The biggest and baddest SUVs on the market are lined up with tinted windows, driven by dark sunglasses laden chauffeurs/body guards.

One day, as I ate my delicious burrito for lunch at the stand in front of the school, I saw a woman pull up in the sportiest Mercedes I had ever seen. As she came to a stop, the doors of the car behind her opened and two men in suits and sunglasses jumped out and began running toward her car. At first, I imagined I was watching some sort of assault taking place. I soon realized it was just the opposite. This was her personal security entourage. One man stayed in the car behind, another helped her from her car then took possession of the Mercedes, and the third—hand on openly displayed holstered gun—walked her into the school gates. I have no idea who it was, but it was someone who obviously does not go anywhere without having a car full of armed men follow her every move. I am sure she lives in a large beautiful place surrounded by high walls, elaborate security systems, armed guards and barbed wire. I suppose that’s one way to live.

You do not have to be super rich to need security around your house. All houses in Mexico City (and much of Mexico) have bars on the first floor windows, and often the second and third. All the roofs have razor or barbed wire separating the buildings, except the poor who put broken bottles and glass up on top of their walls instead. If you leave yourself unprotected, you are likely to get robbed. I saw an interesting documentary at the Film Festival in Morelia last year called Los Ladrones Viejos, “The Old Thieves.” In it, famous old thieves (all growing old in Mexican jails) reminisced about the glory days of the 70’s and 80’s when robbery was an art form and done only to take from the rich and give to the poor. Throughout the movie they emphasized their credo of non-violence. They said they would never enter a house they believed was occupied, and never used violence to earn their living. They disparaged the new thieves of today who use guns and violence as part of their trade. Oh, the good old days…

It is no doubt the poverty of the Mexican masses contributes greatly to the crimes of street muggings, pick-pocketing, burglaries and car/taxi jackings that are still an unfortunate part of life in Mexico City, and other large state capitals. I know several teachers who were approached by muggers on their way to the subway station from our school. Thankfully, only one ended up having to hand over money. One, a big Spaniard named Alex, shoved the idiot down a set of steep steps. Another two girls simply screamed and ran away. Another woman I know was less lucky, two guys jumped into her moving cab, forcing the driver to drive to a remote location. When they realized she did not have anything of value, they took their frustration out on her face. (It may be important to note that all three women in the previous examples were blonde and alone.)

And gun violence? Ale had the adrenaline rush of having the language school she was working at robbed by thugs at gunpoint. The crooks rounded everyone into one room and demanded all the valuables. When one person only had a few pesos for the bus, the kindly thief said, “keep it.” My friend Enrique recently drove us to the movies in the borrowed (luxury) car of a friend, complete with bullet marks from when his friend’s watch was stolen at gunpoint. My friends, Pete and Cyndi, watched a person driving a fancy convertible in stop and go traffic robbed at gunpoint. The assailant simply walked up to the side of the car, put a gun to his head and asked for the victim’s wallet, which he promptly turned over. I have heard that many crooks commit crimes with guns that are not even real—but would you want to find out?

And what of the famous kidnappings down here? Did you see the Denzel Washington movie, Man on Fire? Well, sorry to say, that sort of stuff really happens too. Kidnapping is a major phenomenon in Mexico, Latin America and much of the third world. In one of my first nights out in Mexico City I went to a trendy nightclub called “Cibeles.” It was filled with young, rich and attractive Mexicans. It reminded me very much of the pretentious vibe I have found in some Manhattan bars, filled with yuppie up-and-comers. While there, I started chatting with one guy who told me his kidnapping story.

He was in his dorm in his private high school when three masked guys burst in, tied, gagged and blindfolded him before throwing him in the trunk of the car and taking him to a secret location. He was there for several days while the negotiations for the ransom were made. In the meantime, the kidnappers cruelly joked with him that his parents had refused to pay and that they would be left with no choice but to kill him. After three days he was dumped by the side of the highway, still bound, blindfolded and gagged, where he lay for two hours before the police arrived. While he lay there, people drove by an obvious boy in distress and no one stopped. Getting involved in such matters can bring unwanted trouble to you or your family. (When a friend of mine was being chased by a mugger in broad daylight, she ran for help to the juice stand where she bought a juice every morning, only to have the owner shrug his shoulders and step away from the fray.) Many years later, this young man was still angry when he told me that the first question the police asked him upon untying him was “Do your parents have kidnapping insurance?” (something apparently available down here) instead of “Are you ok after being traumatized for three days and laying here on the side of the road for two hours?” Because his father was extremely rich and influential, they were able to find and arrest the kidnappers—all federal police officers.

But catching kidnappers is by far the exception to the rule. Most kidnappings go unreported, much less unsolved. Think about it—if some group of guys can manage to snatch you off of the street at their pleasure, when they tell you, “if you go to the police, or don’t pay the ransom we’ll kill you and your family,” you tend to take them at their word. They have already proven they are capable of abducting you against your will. And if the police are not directly involved (which they sometimes are) they are generally regarded as inept and inefficient. In contrast to the image of the shiny, hero cop in the U.S., the average Mexican policeman is a poor, uneducated, brown guy wearing a dingy, ill fitting uniform, driving a police car likely to have dents and missing lights. On top of that—in the event that the police manage to arrest someone—the courts are so overcrowded, inefficient and corrupt as to make convictions unlikely. Plainly stated, it’s really hard to get caught and sent to jail for doing crime here. Because of all of this, the bad guys often win the day.

For average middle class Mexicans, tourists and gringos, the kidnapping concern is generally what is called “express kidnapping,” which often occurs in a taxi. Your taxi driver takes you to an unexpected rendezvous with armed hoodlums who jump into the cab and demand you go to an ATM and take out the maximum amount available. If you are lucky, they let you go after you cough up five hundred dollars or so; or they may keep you hostage for days until your account runs dry. This happened to my neighbor’s ex-husband some fifteen years ago. As I understand it, this practice is becoming less frequent due to some long overdue government attention to the problem. But, as I mentioned above, this happened recently to a woman I know. She survived the beating, but had to cake makeup over her black eyes for weeks. The easiest way to avoid this is to call a taxi service or take a taxi from a sitio station. Both record the cab number and the location of the trip. These are safer but more expensive, of course. Too expensive for someone like me who is not rich and who uses cabs regularly. Instead, it is important that you know where you are going and have a good sense of how to get there. That way if the cabbie goes off the appropriate route you will know something is up. Another precaution you can take is avoiding the famous green VW bug cabs because there are no back doors through which to exit. Finally, you should trust your gut. If the cabbie seems creepy and you don’t feel safe, just hop out and get another one. There are plenty of them around.

Muggings, kidnappings, carjackings—rough stuff, I know. But what drives some of these people to a life of crime? The minimum wage in Mexico is 50 pesos a day—that’s less than five dollars, A DAY. So, even if you are working steadily at a legitimate job there is a chance you are making 25-30 dollars a week. This is hardly enough to raise a family properly, and a clear explanation as to why people risk their lives to come to work in the U.S. And if you are truly poor and uneducated—and God forbid, a woman—your chances of getting a job are slim. Every day in Mexico City, women and their toddler children lie in the filthy street in front of cars stopped at red lights, doing some lame gymnastic or clownish feat in order to get a few pesos from the drivers, who usually ignore them. Meanwhile, the poor are constantly observing the upper classes walking around in fine clothes and driving luxury cars, eating in fancy restaurants and shopping in swanky malls. (I should mention that most of these rich folks are mostly white, or light brown, while all of the very poor are dark brown and Indian. But, I’ll explore that angle further in another blog.)

I don’t know about you, but I would be quite pissed off if I were poor and brown in this country. Unlike the United States, where you can say with some sort of a straight face that even the poor get an education and have a shot at meaningful economic advancement through hard work and perseverance, the Mexican poor are basically condemned to a life of harsh poverty. Mexico’s public schools make Trenton’s public schools look like Princeton’s private schools. Mexican society is much more closed than the U.S., with a rich caste of “haves” rigging the game for their own purposes against the “have-nots.” I am honestly surprised that more poor people don’t just say “fuck it” and start grabbing whatever they can from the rich. It is actually a testament to decency of most Mexicans or the inherent goodness of human beings—or both—that criminals are not just running rampant down here robbing, killing and stealing in the name of “fairness”.

Not that there are not people advocating a reshuffling of the economic cards here. In the last presidential election the leftist candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an enthusiastic supporter of Hugo Chavez, barely lost the last presidential election in a hotly contested recount. He continues to stir the masses at rallies proclaiming himself as the “legitimate president of Mexico.” If he or his party ever comes to power, it is scary to think what might transpire. Their rhetoric is extreme, making frequent use of the notion of “revolución!” Several of my rich students told me their family’s bags were packed and ready for a quick exit to the United States or Europe, in case Obrador won the recount. Revolution is perhaps the one constant in Mexican history, and it continues to hover in the wings. In order for this country to move forward it is imperative that the burgeoning middle class continue to grow. Maintaining the current gap between the very rich and the very poor (the percentage of poor is currently around 60%) is a recipe for disaster—and, of course, crime.

So having said all that, is Mexico more or less dangerous than the United States? It may seem like an obvious “yes”. But let’s take one last look at a few statistics that may help illuminate the answer to this question. The crime rate has fluctuated quite a lot in the USA over the past 50 years. After reaching a peak in 1991, the violent crime rate (homicide, rape, assault, robbery) has been on a downward trajectory. Some say the decrease is a direct result of the legalization of abortions some 20 years earlier, which makes some sense to me, despite the icky implications. Whatever the reasons, it has been relatively low since then. Between 1991 and 2005, violent crime in the United States has dropped from 758 to 469 per 100,000 people. Homicides came down from 9.8 to 5.6.
Property crimes dropped from 5140 to 4130. Are those rates good or bad compared with Mexico? Well, let’s first look at some other places in the world to provide us with context. Comparing the American homicide rate per 100,000 to Canada and Europe, the United States is as much as five times more dangerous than these places, including: Germany 1.0, France 1.6, United Kingdom 1.4 and Canada 1.9. On the other hand, the U.S.A. is much safer than some other countries which have higher homicide rates including, Russia 20.15, Guatemala, 24.3, Jamaica 32.41, Venezuela 31.61, South Africa 49.60 and Colombia 61.78. Those numbers certainly make the U.S.A. look pretty good—but don’t forget that the highest figures come from countries with enormous problems, including crushing poverty, total government corruption, drug wars and rebel insurgencies. Even in America, without those sorts of extreme problems, there are cities with comparable homicide rates to the most violent countries in the world, including: Baltimore 43.5, Detroit 42.1, Washington D.C. 35.8, and Philadelphia (Philly, Baby!) 22.2.

And Mexico? Well, the Mexican homicide rate is reported at 13.04 per 100,000 people, more than double the United States. But it is obvious that the majority of these murders are related to the drug war. If you take the overwhelming U.S. demand for cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy, methamphetamine, and heroin out of the equation, I am quite certain the figure would be much lower, possibly even lower than the homicide rate in United States. Other crime statistics per 100,000 people from 2004 appear to bear this out: Mexico’s rape rate was 14.26 to America’s 43.5, auto theft in Mexico was 140 to America’s 432, robbery was 147 in Mexico to America’s 146, and aggravated assault was 187 in Mexico to America’s 310. Total crimes per 100,000 people in 2004 were 4118 in Mexico, compared to 1503 in America. These numbers seem to suggest that America has as much crime, if not more crime than Mexico. In fairness, I should point out that there are probably some questions about the reporting and maintaining of these statistics, which I suspect are much more accurate on the U.S. side, and probably reflect under reporting on the Mexican side. (Again, why report crime to a corrupt and inept police force?) What I do know for sure is that when I travel to various places in the United States of America, I usually see very nice houses without fences, bars or razor wire surrounding them. That must say something.

I will confess, when I first was out and about on the streets of the DF, I was straight-up freaking out—especially at night. My heart rate accelerated, palms grew sweaty, I was looking over my shoulder, contemplating exit strategies, eyeing up passersby with suspicion. I find that funny when I look back on it now. These days, I walk around Mexico City without any of that that kind of stress. Sure, I pay attention to what’s going on around me if I’m walking alone late at night, and I put my wallet in my front pocket with my hand on it when the subway is crowded, and I avoid poor neighborhoods with degenerate/dangerous looking people hanging around; but, I do that everywhere: Philly, NYC, London, Madrid, Rome. Honestly, I do not feel afraid to live in Mexico City. Even though I do know some people who have been victims of crime here, I also know many others who have not. The same is true to some degree of the breadth of people I know in the U.S.A. I don’t visit drug war zones and I'm not involved in the drug trade, so that immediately reduces my exposure to the worst of the violence here. I’m not a blonde woman and I don’t drive a luxury car, so I am not seen as a rich and easy target. I think if you take basic precautions wherever you are, and stay out of the high risk areas, then having crime happen to you becomes a matter of luck, or lack thereof. Crime is a part of life; it always has been. But, you can’t stay locked in your house all day and night trying to avoid it. If you do you will end up missing out on life—and even if you do stay locked at home, someone might break in and kill you anyway.

So overall, for me, living in Mexico has not been an especially unsafe experience. In some ways it may be more dangerous than the United States, but in other ways, based on crime statistics, perhaps not so much—especially if you’re not involved in the drug trade. Based on what I’ve read, what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen, I would compare living in Mexico City to living in NYC during the late 70s, when crime was peaking. Everyone who read the papers knew that crime was out there, some of it violent. Everyone knew people who had been victimized in one way or another. But it wasn’t quite exactly like the movie Escape from New York either. People still lived and worked and enjoyed their day to day lives in the Big Apple. The same is true here. On the whole, there are so many good things about living in Mexico, and in Mexico City in particular, that it makes whatever the (possible) increased risk of crime worthwhile. Crime happens, and it happens everywhere to some degree. I really think a person would be foolish to let the fear of crime serve as an excuse for not visiting this fascinating and exciting place (or any other—except maybe Bagdad). So come on down and enjoy what Mexico has to offer, you (probably) won’t get mugged or kidnapped!

Photo note: “Security" in front of ASF