Caribbean Travel

Drug crimes of little concern in the resort areas of Mexico

BY ARTHUR FROMMER
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
The airwaves have been filled with stories about crime in Mexico. But is that the whole story?

No. The resort areas of Mexico -- Cancun, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo, Manzanillo, Cabo San Lucas, the Maya Riviera, Huatulco and Nayarit -- have experienced no violence directed against tourists and are, in fact, almost totally serene, as I myself witnessed on a recent stay.
It is as safe to vacation in the tourist part of Mexico today as to go to any city of the United States or Canada.

The recent violence in Mexico has occurred almost entirely in towns along the Mexican border with Texas and Arizona, and the single Mexican state of Chihuahua, surrounding the border town of Ciudad Juarez, has been the site of more than 50 percent of the violence (according to The New York Times), with additional instances in Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo.

The violence is drug-related and involves people engaged in the drug trade or in the suppression of smuggling narcotics into the United States.
All this is recognized in the recent State Department ''alert'' on the subject, which also draws a careful distinction between the Mexico/U.S. border cities and the areas many hundreds of miles away where tourists go.