Posted on 04/30/2012 3:17:20 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
CHAPALA, Mexico — This nation's violence came crashing into the retirement dream of Houston's Lorraine Kulig and hundreds of other Americans last fall when gangsters shot it out and set off a bomb in this usually bucolic town on the shore of the nation's largest lake.
“We all know this is a gang problem. We have no connection with drugs,” said Kulig, 55, who retired to this quaint small city three years ago with her husband, Michael, and now helps run the Lone Star Club, a monthly gathering of Texans from the area. “But we can be caught in the crossfire.”
And not just crossfire.
In the neighboring town of Ajijic, where foreigners have been settling for decades, American Chris Kahr, 69, was unloading groceries from his car when a thief jumped him from behind, fired a single bullet into his chest and fled. The killing in November was the third last year to strike an American living in the communities along Lake Chapala, in Jalisco state.
Last year, a record 120 Americans were killed in Mexico — compared with just 35 in 2007. Most of the killings happened in states bordering the United States. But for the first time, a significant number occurred in previously peaceful areas such as Jalisco, where 14 Americans were killed, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of U.S. State Department data.
The Chapala shootout and Kahr's death punctuated months of insecurity — burglaries, assaults, gangland shoot-outs and executions — in the area since last summer.
American and other foreign residents with financial and emotional commitments to their adopted homes tend to downplay such events. But more than a few have felt rattled.
(Excerpt) Read more at mysanantonio.com ...
I’d rank Mexico in 2nd place to Hell on the list of places I wouldn’t visit.
I live in Mexico. I felt unsafe when I visited Flint Michigan, and Detroit. The Greyhound Bus station was like a war zone.
Let me guess, your hobby is self torture?
I refer to Detroit as New Mogadishu.
Stay thirsty, my friend...
“I live in Mexico. I felt unsafe when I visited Flint Michigan, and Detroit. The Greyhound Bus station was like a war zone.”
I think this just demonstrates that you can’t generalize this type of thing. If you get past the US-Mexico boarder areas most of Mexico is no more unsafe than most of the US (outside of major urban areas in the north east and mid-west and west oh and south west and ...). The problem is that most people just hear about the bad stuff and don’t really realize that you can’t generalize to the rest of the country.
That said, there is a US caused drug war going on in Mexico that appears to be leaking into some area that were formally considered “safe”. If the US does not do something to end the “war on drugs” you’ll continue to see violence leaking into safe areas on both sides of the boarder as is already happening.
If I cannot own a gun there, I don’t go there, period.
OK. 120 Americans in one year in a country with a population of 112 million people. How many of those 120 Americans were involved in drug use or drug trafficking?
Now, how many Mexican nationals have been killed in the United States last year? How many in Texas?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to diminish the death of any one, American or Mexican. But there’s too much missing from this story. What are the crime stats of Ajijic per capita? What are the crime stats of San Antonio?
The murder rate of Washington DC or Chicago is greater than that of Mexico City! So what’s the real point of the story? To discourage Americans retirees from spending their money elsewhere?
Visited Mexico briefly one time a few years back, crossed the border into Tijuana with a friend from SoCal who wanted me to check it out, drove around for about 10 minutes and turned right back around, back across the border. 10 minutes was enough for me.
In that same time span, 20 million Americans visited Mexico - which would put your odds of being killed at roughly one in 170,000.
You stay in tourist areas, relatively safe. You go inland, you are begging to be robbed.
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