![\"USA](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/USA-Today-Mexico-350x261.png\")
<\/p>\n“Reconsider travel” to Mexico, asks USA Today<\/strong> (10\/2\/22<\/a>)? Cancun has a relatively high homicide rate, but it’s 24% lower than Baltimore’s, which we haven’t seen the paper warning tourists away from. Cozumel, meanwhile, has a homicide rate<\/a> lower than 38 major US cities<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Planning a trip to Mexico? If you read the news these days, you would think that Americans ought to be terrified of the popular tourist destination.<\/p>\n Headlines abound like \u201cKilling of Artist Brothers Shatters Mexico City\u2019s Veneer of Safety\u201d (Guardian<\/b>, 12\/23\/22<\/a>) and \u201cReconsider Travel? Safety Experts Talk Violence in Mexico Tourist Spots\u201d (USA Today<\/b>, 10\/2\/22<\/a>).<\/p>\n Of course, a headline isn\u2019t the text of an article, but it\u2019s frequently all readers see<\/a>, and their constant repetition about the alleged dangers posed by simply being in Mexico is disturbing.<\/p>\n Most recently, you might have seen a version of \u201cUS Issues Strongest Possible ‘Do Not Travel’ Warning for Mexico Ahead of Spring Break” (LA’s Fox 11<\/b>, 2\/9\/23<\/a>) in a local news report headline. But read down to just the first line, and you\u2019ll see that the warning<\/a> is for only six of Mexico\u2019s 31 states, not for the entire country\u2014nor does it apply to Mexico City, by far the country’s largest metropolis, which is in its own federal district.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the article goes on to say, \u201cOther countries that are under the same highest-level travel warning include Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Ukraine, North Korea\u00a0 and Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n Take a breath, Fox 11<\/b>.<\/p>\n AP<\/strong> (via ABC<\/strong>, 2\/21\/23<\/a>) offers news you can use, if you’re a Playa del Carmen bar inspector.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Isolated incidents, like the murder of a US resident in Zacatecas (CBS News<\/b>, 1\/25\/23<\/a>) and the possible extortion and death under mysterious circumstances of a US lawyer near Tijuana, described in the Fox 11<\/b> article above, do happen, particularly in the parts of the country where cartel violence is out of control.<\/p>\n But this must be placed in context. Mexico is a country\u2014yes, one with social violence\u2014that is consistently among the most visited in the world<\/a>, in large part due to US tourists. The country had 32 million visitors in 2021, which was down from a pre-pandemic high of 45 million.<\/p>\n While they’re often happy to produce click-bait headlines that spark fear in potential travelers, many corporate media outlets seem less interested in giving those readers any sense of what level of risk the average tourist visiting a popular Mexican tourist destination might actually face.<\/p>\n Consider the article, \u201cBar Employees Stabbed Inspectors at Mexico Resort\u201d (AP<\/b>, 2\/21\/23<\/a>). The AP<\/b> devotes four of seven paragraphs to providing context, which offer that Playa del Carmen “has long had a reputation for rough and dangerous bars,” “has long had a problem with illicit business,” and has been the site of two shooting attacks in the last five years, at least one of which killed tourists.<\/p>\n That emphasis certainly suggests that tourists to Playa del Carmen ought to be worried about being shot while there. The article does not offer the context that Playa del Carmen is in the state of Quintana Roo, which the State Department puts in the same travel advisory category as France. Or that according to the US State Department<\/a>, four US tourists were murdered there in 2021 (the last full year for which there’s data)\u2014out of some 4.8 million visitors<\/a> from the States that year, making homicide on a trip there literally less than a one in a million chance.<\/p>\n Fox News<\/strong> <\/b>(2\/21\/23<\/a>) paired a report about increased police patrols in Playa del Carmen with video of a Polish tourist climbing an off-limits pyramid in Chichen Itza, in a different state.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Fox News <\/b>(2\/21\/23<\/a>), predictably, went even further, offering, \u201cMexican Beach Town Announces Major Crackdown Amid Country\u2019s Crime Crisis Ahead of Spring Break.”<\/p>\n In case you miss the point about the ginned-up crisis, and whom it purportedly affects, the article was paired with a video of a white European tourist, climbing the steps of a Mayan pyramid in a totally different state, who was heckled and took a few cheap shots while being escorted out for breaking the rules.<\/p>\n Yet, as tourism advice website TravelLemming.com<\/b> (1\/19\/23<\/a>) notes in a much more balanced piece, \u201cPlaya del Carmen is, overall, a relatively safe place to visit.\u201d The piece focuses as much on Covid, water contamination and crocodiles as it does on cartels.<\/p>\n Where it does talk about violence, it does so in measured and specific terms:<\/p>\n In general, unless you\u2019re using drugs, purchasing drugs or are involved with people who are affiliated with cartels, chances are you won\u2019t be the victim of a cartel-related incident.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Carlos Vilalte, a geographer of crime based in Mexico City, says that although there are no official statistics kept of crimes against tourists, he has \u201cno knowledge of tourists being particularly targeted for crime, either in tourist locations, or anywhere else.\u201d He notes, though, that they might be affected \u201ccollaterally.\u201d<\/p>\n This is because there is violence in Mexico\u2013a lot <\/i>in some places, often fueled by drug consumption<\/a> in the United States. Several cities, like Tijuana<\/a>, are among the most dangerous in the world that are not in a literal war zone.\u00a0\u201cOrganized crime is a serious issue in Mexico,\u201d says Vilalte.<\/p>\n The Louisville Courier Journal<\/strong> (8\/25\/22<\/a>) offers “Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula” as a “refreshing alternative” to Cancun\u2014which is on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula (though not in the state of Yucatan).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n But roughly three-fifths of the country\u2019s states are under the first (“Exercise normal precautions”) or second (“Exercise increased caution”) levels of the State Department\u2019s system for alerting US travelers to possible danger. These areas, according to the government\u2019s system, are as safe as or safer than France<\/a> and Spain<\/a> (both of which carry warnings about \u201cterrorism and civil unrest\u201d).<\/p>\n You wouldn\u2019t know that from headlines about the Riviera Maya like \u201cUS Tourists Beware: Popular Mexico Getaway Plagued by Drug Cartel Intimidation and Violence” (Courier Journal<\/b>, 8\/25\/22<\/a>), or the Fox News<\/b> article mentioned above, which says:<\/p>\n \u201cViolent crime and gang activity are widespread,” the [State Department] warning said of one area. “Most homicides are targeted assassinations against members of criminal organizations.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This would be terrifying if you were planning to travel to the resort town, if you didn\u2019t know better\u2014or read down to the end, where even Fox News<\/b> is forced to admit, \u201cThe state of Quintana Roo where Playa del Carmen is located is not included on the State Department’s \u2018do not travel\u2019 list.\u201d<\/p>\n It’s a xenophobic double standard: You’d be hard pressed to find a US media outlet suggesting foreign tourists should beware of visiting our own country because of social violence in New Orleans or St. Louis, or even Dallas or Portland, Oregon<\/a>, all of which now have higher murder rates than Mexico City.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The post Scary Headlines Hype Dangers Rarely Faced by Tourists in Mexico<\/a> appeared first on FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US corporate media outlets seem uninterested in giving readers a sense of what level of risk they might face visiting Mexico.<\/p>\n The post Scary Headlines Hype Dangers Rarely Faced by Tourists in Mexico<\/a> appeared first on FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1303,362,259,1018,262,263],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1017456"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018763,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017456\/revisions\/1018763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1017456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1017456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1017456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}One of the most-visited countries<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"ABC:](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/ABC-Mexico-350x355.png\")
<\/p>\nSpring break crime crisis<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"Fox:](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Fox-Mexico-350x370.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
As scary as France<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"Courier](\"https:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Courier-Journal-Mexico-350x256.png\")
<\/p>\n\n