My grandma owns a vacation house in a little town in Texas near the Border. She’s planning on going down there in a month or two, but says she won’t go to Mexico. She’s heard that people have been warned not to go over the Border because of a rash of violence and kidnappings. She says that she’s been told it’s simply not safe any more.
We used to love to go over there and shop. We’d buy braided ropes of fresh garlic, leather goods and cases of Corona. (I know it’s the same thing, but my mind insists it tastes better when it comes from Mexico.)
I haven’t heard anything in the media about this . . . is my grandma being suckered by an Urban Legend, or is it true, that Mexican border towns are no longer safe for American tourists?
I think the town we used to visit was Reynosa. (Her house is near McAllen.)
We used to go to Laredo when I was a kid, but hadn’t been there in years because of rumors of kidnappings and other assorted nasty things. (A neighbor of hers told her to remove her diamond rings before she went over because “they” would cut off her fingers to steal them!!! That ruined Laredo for us.)
The State Department has issued a warning, at least about certain places, Nuevo Laredo, for example. It’s because of the drug trade, which is increasing in northern Mexcio. One police chief was murdered only hours after taking office. This is not about tourists though. I haven’t heard of any tourists being victims.
Of course, the State Department always exaggerates the risks to tourists. Your grandmother should ask other locals about the situation.
I live very close to Nuevo Progreso, Mexico and I haven’t crossed the border for more than a year. There are documented cases of Mexican police in Reynosa holding US tourists at gun point and forcing them to withdraw cash from the ATM, there is a great deal of drug related violence and there has been a rash of kidnap/rape/murders in Juarez. Nuevo Laredo has had gun battles in the streets between law enforcement and drug gangs. Matamoras has never been a safe city for US citizens. Spring breakers are killed there every year. The Mexican army is very visible in the border towns but that doesn’t make me feel any safer. Apparently, the army and police forces are as corrupt as most political officials. There is finally an attempt being made to clean up the violence and make the border towns safer for tourists, but that will take a while. Honest police officers are routinely gunned down. The American Council has issued warnings to US tourists to avoid Mexican border towns.
If Granny decides to cross into Mexico, Nuevo Progreso is probably the safest town but she should go in the daytime with a group of friends and stay on the main streets.
She is correct. In the early to mid part of this year, I spent a lot of time in Reynosa on business. We’d stay in McAllen and drive across every day. My client is one of the larger businesses in the area and they gave us copies of the State Dept warning. As a result, my clients didn’t take me on a visit to “Boys Town.” I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not.
My understanding though is that the danger was mainly to drunk Americans at night being forcred to ATMs at knifepoint. You’d probably be safe in the shopping areas during the day.
I asked on another board about moving to either El Paso or Dallas/Ft Worth and got told the same thing–stay away from El Paso, as it’s too near the border and too dangerous.
. . .
Maybe the US should invade Mexico next. At the very least it might slow or even halt Mexican immigration into the US. The funniest aspect of the whole “US/Mexican immigration” situation is that it means essentially that Mexicans don’t want to live in a country run by Mexicans.
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We lived in Pharr about ten years ago. We would go to Nuevo Progresso every once in a while. We just stayed on the main street that extends south from the bridge. We always walked, never drove our car across. We always kept a tight hand on our four-year-old blonde daughter. When my wife became pregnant with our second child, we never went across again. That same summer, a curandera stole the baby out of a pregnant Texas woman. The woman went to the curandera in Matamoros, and woke up in Texas with no baby. I don’t know if she ever found the baby. That killed any thought of our going south and we moved away from the area shortly after the baby was born.
Mexico is a beautiful country with many wonderful people in it. The problems regarding illegal border crossings have a variety of causes. Mexican national politics is probably pretty far down on the list.
Besides, the violence of which the OP speaks has to do with the drug trade (financed in part by what major North American country?). It isn’t so much the illegal immigration.
I’ve probably lived close two two years of my life overall in Mexico. That’s not a lot compared to a Mexican or to retirees, and Mexico has a lot of great, beautiful things to offer, and I intend to retire here one day. Given all that, the border sucks. It’s not a representative sample of what “really is” Mexico. It’s not safe, it’s not very nice, and you won’t miss anything by never going to the border other than to get past the border.
[QUOTE=DougC - Maybe the US should invade Mexico next. At the very least it might slow or even halt Mexican immigration into the US. The funniest aspect of the whole “US/Mexican immigration” situation is that it means essentially that Mexicans don’t want to live in a country run by Mexicans.
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I was trying to come up with something appropriately scathing, but on review…
Okay, I’ll stand up for DougC. I don’t know why this is an ethnic slur, as the Mexican population consists of multiple ethnicities, kind of like the USA with different proportions.
If we were to annex Mexico, that would pretty much stop immigration and emigration since, well, we’d have to absorb everyone into our new national borders. Hell, having such a small, southern border may make it worth it. And the fancy resort places already charge in dollars, so there’s very little to notice there. It might wreck our economy for a while, but I think Germany’s rebounded from reunification now, right? Plus we’d have the largest, untapped oil reserves in the world!
True, but the socioeconomic structure of the country is such that wealth is concentrated, and the people are motivated to emigrate by the hopelessness of their situation. I don’t know if politics is a cause or a symptom of this socioeconomic structure, but I’m sure it’s one of the two, or a combination thereof.
No not really. According to this BBC news article their economy is still a bit of a mess. Especially when you consider in the 1970s Germany’s economy was often described as an economic miracle.
Well, , , I was told (by people who had lived in the southern states) that it was pretty much the same Mexican gangs doing the drug running, doing the illegal immigration, and also who were responsible for much of the US property crime along the border as well. And others have noted that the Mexican police are not known for being just and forthright.
So until the State Department starts issuing warnings about living on the Canadian border, I’m going to poke fun at Mexicans wanting to leave their own country.
Spades being spades and all.
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