I was recently in Polanco D.F. for a month and saw no signs of fear or stress except when my Mexican friend reacted at my suggestion to get a taxi as we were needing to make an appointment. I asked why the hesitation and she said because there had been incidents of the type you described but we were in Polanco going to the other side of Polanco so she thought it would be Ok.
The only other sign of potential extreme violence was at the entrances to some of the upscale shopping malls where a security guard would be armed with a heavy machine gun which seemed out of place with all the shoppers coming and going just as one would see here in the USA.
On another shopping center site, my friend’s 18 year old son and I went to the Liverpool store in the Sante Fe district, at night. We parked in the outside parking lot and went into the mall. There were no heavily armed guards, no incidents and no sign of fear or stress. Everything was normal, very well lit outside, upscale just as in the USA.
Mexico City is a huge place, more than 20 million people and I was in districts that were considered safe. Still I was made aware by my friends that there were dangers but they seemed well adapted and happy. Maybe the fear and stress was not much more different than being in NYC.
We drove to Acapulco and ate out at restaurants. We stayed in a gated condo development. Everything seemed normal, no unusual stress or fear even when out and about on the strip there. It was definitely nothing like some of the border towns. The streets were clean, modern, well-lit, good traffic signals, people driving and behaving normally. We went to a wedding reception on the north end of Acapulco and it was the older part but it did not seem terribly unsafe.
Mexico is a country of many contrasts. I saw the good part but I did not doubt that extreme violence could be found in other sectors that I did not go to. From what I have been told, the Mexico today has a ‘Columbia problem’ in that many of the cartels were started by and developed by cartels that were exiled from Columbia.
If you had plenty of funding and political power, how would you see Mexico improving so that people could feel it was a safe destination with a strong rule of law?