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Tourists re-thinking visits to violence-plagued Mexico
Drug violence and festering political unrest are making foreigners more hesitant to visit Mexico, threatening the almost $12 billion a year tourism industry.
Mexico’s recent tourism problems stated last fall when Hurricane Wilma hit the area’s most popular destination, Cancun.
“No tourists have been reported hurt in Mexico City, Oaxaca or Acapulco, but hotels are being hit by cancellations of thousands of reservations,” commented the Associated Press.
Dramatic and highly publicized negative news reports included a human head washing up on an Acapulco Beach. But protestors of politics and poverty have also been bothering visitors in both Oaxaca and Mexico City, according to press reports.
In some parts of Mexico City, tourists are forced to pass through checkpoints to reach the main plaza. Drugs gangs have been reported fighting for control of smuggling in Acapulco.
Some reports said Mexico City businesses are losing $23 million a day.
Protestors want to use the unrest to get tourism officials to pressure the government for reform, according to some union officials.
Tourism is the country’s third-largest legal source of income, after oil and remittances from migrants in the US.
Will the unrest continue? Some reports say there’s no quick in part because protestors vow their next target will be airports.
Report by David Wilkening
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