Murders in Mexico revive safety issue

With 183 bodies discovered in a month in mass graves in Mexico, there are new fears about tourist safety there. But that was not the only bad news for tourist authorities who are trying to convince visitors it is a perfectly safe country to visit.
 

The US State Department has broadened its travel warning for Mexico, advising citizens to avoid certain areas and steer clear of driving at night.
 

The new alert urges Americans to defer nonessential travel in regions where drug-related violence has surged, including the border state of Tamaulipas and the central state of Michoacan.
It also mentions parts of nine other states, significantly expanding the scope of an alert issued in September.
 

The carefully worded note mentioned that “millions of US citizens safely visit Mexico each year.”
 

Most of the country’s problems have been in the border states of Northern Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas. “Much of the country’s narcotics-related violence has occurred in the border region,” the alert says.
 

The State Department’s warning was seen a “quite a bit more expansive” than past alerts, Kathleen Fairfax, vice president for global education at Arizona State University, told CNN.
 

The US government has not updated its travel warning—less severe than travel alert—for Mexico since September. The warning still says that resort areas, such as Cozumel, are relatively safe.
 

Even cruise ports have been impacted by the drug-related violence in Mexico, however. 
 

Some cruise lines, including Disney, have recently pulled out of the Mexican port of Mazatlan—citing concerns about violent crime there. The port in Cozumel, on the other hand, has never been more popular. It draws about two million visitors a year. Cozumel remains safe overall, according to a TripAdvisor safety report.
 

Mexican authorities have been defensive about safety there and often point out that the crime issues are usually restricted to border cities.
 

"We should not take the issue out of context," Rodolfo Lopez Negrete, chief operating officer of the Mexico Tourism Board, said in a recent CNN interview. "The distances are very, very great. You wouldn’t stop going to New York because of a problem in Dallas."
 

“It’s important to keep safety issues in context. Crime can happen anywhere. In Mexico, the number one cause of death for Americans has been automobile accidents, followed by falls from balconies, or into unmarked ditches, by drowning,” wrote Newsweek earlier this year.
 

Statistics from the government show that the number of US citizens killed in Mexico increased from 35 in 2007 to 111 in 2010, the State Department said.
 

More than a third of the 2010 reported slayings of US citizens occurred in the border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, according to the State Department.
 

"There is no evidence that US tourists have been targeted by criminal elements due to their citizenship. Nonetheless, while in Mexico you should be aware of your surroundings at all times and exercise particular caution in unfamiliar areas," the alert says.
 

The 183 bodies were dug out of 40 mass graves in Mexico’s northeastern Tamaulipas state on the US border, according to the justice minister.
 

Police have arrested 74 people in the probe, including several local Zetas drug gang leaders and 17 police officers from the San Fernando municipality, where the bodies were found, minister Marisela Morales told journalists.
 

“Tamaulipas has seen an explosion of violence in recent years blamed on battles between the Zetas — a gang set up in the 1990s by ex-elite soldiers — and their former bosses, the powerful Gulf cartel,” says News 24.
 

By David Wilkening