Forget Cartel Problems

I must disagree with MW. When you are walking in downtown Oaxaca and a riot starts will you be immune to being hurt. Have you ever seen a riot? Have you seen the look of rage on the rioters faces? Do you remember what happened in Oaxaca a few years ago? Will I just show them my tourist visa or my Good Sam card and I will get a pass? Political riots are damn scary. Far more dangerous than cartel activity. Regardless of anyone's reassurances that all is good most tourists will just look elsewhere. There are hardly any RV'rs in Mexico the past few years and that amount is shrinking. However Canadians are flocking to Cabo, Cancun and a few other places BY AIRPLANE.

Moisheh

Everrrrybody's an expert except people who live here.

You are ALL wrong. 100%

How's that for being blunt?

Normalistas and radical students do not target tourists. They are dreamy-eyed Marxists who believe socialism is the cure for all things. They hijack buses, fight with the police, occupy school buildings and when they feel it's necessary burn down the government offices in the state capitols. Hey wait a minute isn't that something like People's Park, and Mario Savio in the sixties?

Sicarios and secuestreros (kidnappers) do not target foreigners because there is not enough money involved and it always brings down an avalanche of police and army.

The problem is ineffective police. A vacuum. Some are in the employ of the cartelistas and the rest are terrified to respond to a crime or even to patrol.

This caused and still causes a vacuum. Dodge City without the Earp brothers, and Doc Holiday. The police have radios so when they hear about a problem, they can turn on lights and siren and go Code 3 the other way.

The more people the cartelistas can get hooked onto cristal the more they will rob and the less pressure will filter it's way to the Jefes de plazas. It's the petty robbers, the petty car jackers, the petty thieves that cause all the problems for tourists. Most of them are supporting drug habits.

Granted, if you carefully time your travel and manage to thread your way down countless boulevards and intercept a normalista demonstration, the crowning acheivement would be to bulldoze down the center of the street pushing demonstrators aside. THEN you might find yourself in hot water.

Mexico has NEVER had good police. But I can say this: The SSP of today are about a hundred times more effective then the old PJF. It's the always have been flaky Policia de Municipios that have gone TOTALLY belly-up performance wise.

By the way, the posting I made here early today is the SOLE bit of criminal news I have heard in quite awhile. Are there stacks of reports out there on the internet, mile-long threads of criminal chronicles regarding crimes against tourists that I have been missing. Or is this subject a mouse that is trying to roar?

People who visit Mexico (not counting jets & ships) are a special crowd; not timid, not scared, willing to think for themselves and weigh the pros and cons.
Mexico has never been an easy country to tour; if it's not cartels, it's crime or corruption. I've been touring on and off since 1986 and there is always some reason to worry....after some time it gets easier.
Every time I've toured in Mexico I come back alive and unscathed, and I can't wait to go back again.

For anyone who cares about a well balanced article with specific regions can find it here:

State Department Advisory

Everyone has to make their own decision. It is a fact that Mexico, overall, has a much higher crime rate than the U.S. so I will not be visiting.

But more importantly, I am not done seeing what the U.S. has to offer. I want to get that done first.

And for years...whenever someone (including me) posts that they will not go RVing in Mexico and post that there are plenty of beautiful adventures to have here in the U.S. someone comes on and flames them (me) for having that opinion....

So, cartels, teachers, "lefties," whatever...