|
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2008 
US Students Brave Mexico Despite Drug-War Threat
 Laurence Iliff - Dallas Morning News
go to original
| | Spring Breakers on South Padre Island, TX | | |
Acapulco, Mexico – Fearless students from the University of Texas in Austin, Texas State and colleges across the country are injecting badly needed cash into fading resorts like Acapulco this spring break season. But analysts warn that even they cannot save a stagnant tourism industry as long as Mexico is awash in drug violence, police corruption and drugs openly sold on the streets.
Unless President Felipe Calderón's 15-month frontal attack on the cartels begins to reduce violence, his drug war may kill off parts of the very tourism industry he promoted as an engine of economic development and part of a strategy to keep would-be immigrants home, some analysts said.
"In the United States, there are stories almost every day about police being killed by narcos in Mexico and other violence," said Verónica Baz, director of Development Research Center, a Mexico City think tank. "Americans don't know if it's just on the border or in Cancún."
The violence is not obvious on the beaches here – where American spring-breakers jump with abandon from Acapulco's popular bungee free-fall.
But police and soldiers patrol the streets carrying assault rifles, and not a day goes by in Mexico without new victims of the drug cartels' turf war and the government's response to it.
An estimated 3,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since Mr. Calderón took office on Dec. 1, 2006, police and media reports show.
Blocks behind the flashing lights of open-air discos, members of the Gulf cartel based on the Mexico-Texas border and the Sinaloa cartel from northern Mexico fight for Acapulco drug routes and local cocaine and marijuana sales, police and media reports show.
Cancún, sold for decades as an Americanized paradise on the blue waters of the Caribbean, is no longer immune from narco-violence. This month, a cache of military-style assault rifles and grenades was seized at a drug cartel safe house in the heart of the hotel zone.
In January, a shootout between rival drug gangs in downtown Cancún, where few U.S. tourists wander, left two people dead.
And it's not just the beach. A botched bombing whose target was a Mexico City police commander occurred near the Zona Rosa tourist area last month. Local drug distributors and a national drug cartel have been blamed for the attack.
The U.S.-Mexico border was the first casualty. Daily narco-violence sharply reduced the number of American border-crossers, including spring-breakers who stayed on Padre Island on the U.S. side but avoided the two-nation vacation by not crossing into Matamoros. Just as spring break began for some Texas universities last week, local Mexican officials held a press conference to urge Americans to visit Mexico.
The mayor of Nuevo Progreso, between McAllen and Brownsville, said tourism is down by 30 percent and blamed the decline, in part, on the presence of the military, which is posted throughout the region.
As tourists cross into Mexico, the first sights they see are soldiers in military vehicles.
Debra Fassold, who manages a cross-border shuttle service on South Padre Island, said she used to ferry several hundred spring breakers daily and now gets only a few dozen. She has canceled night trips.
"I've had no reason to schedule them this year," she said, adding that no one has even asked for the once-popular excursion.
Partying on U.S. side
In cities like Nuevo Laredo, bars are empty, while across the border in Laredo, popular clubs like Canana's are packed with teens from both sides of the border.
El Paso is seeing the same phenomenon along a section called "Union Depot," popular with the UT-El Paso crowd, which once partied in Juárez and now, along with fellow students from the state of Chihuahua, parties on the U.S. side.
Acapulco became a drug battlefield three years ago, and now less than 10 percent of visitors here are Americans.
Although booming Cancún is still tops among U.S. tourists, an uptick in drug violence there breaks its image as clean and safe, analysts warn.
Ms. Baz said the danger is not only a matter of image – nobody vacations in Colombia, even though many areas are untouched by the drug war there.
"Although a spring-breaker has never been killed," Ms. Baz said, "I don't think it's far-fetched that there could be an incident in Cancún serious enough to scare Americans away."
Tourism flat in '07
Recent figures show that foreign tourism was essentially flat in 2007 when compared with 2006 – a red flag, given that Mexico has invested in golf tourism, gay tourism, eco-tourism, wedding tourism and new beach areas like Punta Mita in Nayarit state in an attempt to keep the critical industry growing.
In 2007, Mexico received 21.5 million international tourists, overwhelmingly Americans. The figure for 2006 was 21.3 million.
Tourism Minister Rodolfo Elizondo and industry officials have pointed out that expenditures by foreigners were up 6 percent in 2007, hitting $12.9 billion.
Mr. Elizondo, who was unavailable for comment, has said that narco-violence has only hurt tourism along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the overall increase in foreign visitors was a sign of industry health.
But the Mexico City newspaper Reforma has suggested that Mr. Elizondo might soon lose his job as a result of the lackluster tourism numbers. He is a holdover from the last administration.
And yet, students now visiting Acapulco – from places like North Texas, Chicago and New Jersey – said they felt safe as long as they didn't go looking for drugs or trouble.
"I knew that during spring break we would be exposed to drugs, but I'm not concerned for myself because I'm not into that thing – I don't do drugs," said a 20-year-old student from Plano, who asked to be identified by her first name, Lisa.
Several other students, few of whom wanted to give their full names for fear of scaring their parents, agreed that staying away from drug pushers and dodgy cabdrivers was among the sternest warnings they were given by tour companies.
Mexicans officials point out that all nations suffer from crime and violence, and say that Americans are no more likely to be victims here than Mexicans shopping in New York.
A March report by the World Economic Forum ranked Mexico a dismal 122 out of 130 nations in terms of "safety and security" for tourists. But the United States did not fare much better, at 119.
"Violence is not a problem exclusive to Mexico; it occurs in all nations," said Manuel Torroco, president of the National Tourism Federation, an industry group. "There have been no incidents involving foreign tourists besides isolated ones that happen everywhere in the world. We welcome this year's spring-breakers with open arms."
Still, he said, tourism is likely to remain flat in 2008, at about 22 million foreign visitors, with California, Texas and Illinois the top three states for tourists to Mexico.
Mexico City Bureau Chief Alfredo Corchado contributed to this report, which also contains material from The Associated Press.
liliff(at)dallasnews.com |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us