Avoid thoughtless posting - imagine a post that you would find inspiring from others, then aim for that standard yourself. In this way the board will blossom.
- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 1
No. of Recommendations: 1
What a shame.
My real Mom's side of my family are Southern Californians (my Dada's side are the 1930's Euro immigrants). The loved Mexico. My Grandmother moved from L.A. to quiet little Puerto Vallarta about the time they shot The Night of The Iguana there. My Mom was a bullfight afficionado. We roamed the streets of Tijuana, Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara without a care in the world. As a teenager I did a lot of surfing/fishing/camping trips as far south as Puerto Escondido and camped anywhere.
Working with a magazine team in Mexico for a month around 1980, the writer, Selwa Roosevelt, told us over dinner that the average age in Mexico was TEN YEARS OLD... and that Mexico could not possibly create enough employment opportunity for the baby boom those 10 year olds would create. The message was clear. Things were gonna get ugly.
We started to experience increasing episodes of crime by drug rings, police, and people associated with them...and not just the usual little nips of mordida.
It ceased being fun when we got stopped just before dark at a road block in the middle of the desert south of Ciudad Obregon by machine gun toting guys in plain clothes; feds/cartel? Quien sabe. When they tap the barrel on the window and say 'abre la puerta, you damn well do it.
I loved Mexico. I'm very sad they were unable to control the crime, corruption. We are the market that facilitated the evolution of the cartels. We trained the Zetas. The Zetas were the future of the cartels. And here we are.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Drove with family through Nuevo Laredo to Mexico City in 1965, thence to Acapulco via Cuernavaca.
Acapulco was idyllic back then… I walked miles on the deserted beach.
Driving the roads north of Mexico City was gorgeous- jungled mountain slopes above the clouds.
But even back then in 1965…… at several points along the road- troop carriers and roadblocks and a squad of dark khaki clad, heavily armed troops heading up into the hills.
I was only 16, but I was old enough to realize there was a problem in paradise.
No. of Recommendations: 2
You know, it helps to look at this Mexico stuff in a larger context.
Mexico has ALWAYS been very violent in many areas due to the drug cartels and rampant police and government corruption (and fear if they stand up to the cartels, the authorities will be assassinated--which happens.)
Because it is relatively close to the U.S., because it has nice beaches, because it has an underdeveloped economy and stuff is "cheap" relative to the U.S., it was marketed as a perfect, cheapo "vacation spot" or "retirement spot" for ex-pats.
This was always dependent upon keeping the tourists and the ex-pats in the "safe zones" and hoping the cartel violence would be nice and not intrude into the tourism and ex-pat areas. So, this notion of Mexico as a "safe" and "ideal" vacation or retirement destination has always relied on the ability of the tourists, the expats, and the governments involved, as well as the corporations who developed the resort areas, to maintain extreme amounts of cognitive dissonance.
The poverty was always there. The drug cartels were always there. The violence was always there.
It was only a matter of time before this kind of "leakage" occurred. Even if the current crisis blows over, the violence or potential for it will ALWAYS be there.
Mexico will NEVER be truly "safe" for relatively well-off tourists and ex-pats, who obviously are prime targets. It never was.
Maybe some day but not in any of our lifetimes.
No. of Recommendations: 2
I was only 16, but I was old enough to realize there was a problem in paradise.
Yup. A classic tell was when we'd be camped out on come beach and a man would come up to us to sell us pot. We were smart enough to know there was probably a real or fake cop lurking to bust us for possession an hour later.
Then my grandmother lost a substantial investment in Telefono Mexico when it was nationalized. 100% loss.
She had a Sayulita beach lot north of Vallarta that the bank stole on behalf of an ejido that claimed rightful ownership...it ended up being owned by one of the banks attorneys. THAT convinced me not to buy property on the Baja Peninsula. Shit like that, a gringo has NO recourse. Try to push the ownership issue and you could end up missing for good.
