No Fear

Maggie  is no slouch when it comes to covering the north end of the Baja,  but what happens in the Baja often stays in the Baja.  Or maybe, what doesn’t happen in the Baja (tourist visits) doesn’t happen in the rest of Mexico…

This evening, Frontera ran the story that Janet Napolitano said today in a speech at the Otay Port that visitors are safe in Mexico. She said,”…Americans, who are reasonably careful are safe [in Mexico], we have no information to suggest that American tourists are a target.” Well yah there Janet, there haven’t been any American tourists lately, so how could they be?

True enough for where she lives (and she’s THE go-to surfer for the northern Baja), but tourism is up… way up… for Mexico this year:

Reuters’ Daniel Trotta writes:

…

Mexico’s tourism has continued to grow despite the drug violence and the U.S. recession, with international visits up 2 percent in the first quarter of 2009 from the same period of 2008, Carlos Behnsen, executive director of the Mexico Tourism Board, told reporters in New York on Wednesday.

That followed a full year in 2008 in which international visits rose 5.9 percent from 2007, Behnsen said, with U.S. tourists accounting for 80 percent of the total.

“It is a victory, I think,” Behnsen said. “Our concern is looking forward.”

Tourism was a $13.3 billion industry in 2008, ranking it third behind oil and remittances from Mexicans living abroad, he said.

Violence involving drug cartels and security forces killed an estimated 6,300 people last year, leading the U.S. State Department to issue a travel alert on February 20 for U.S. citizens living and traveling in Mexico.

The U.S. alert, which superseded an alert from October 15, 2008, generated increased media attention that officials are attempting to counter by reassuring visitors that the most popular destinations remain safe.

“The violence is basically contained in the northwest of the country in five municipalities,” Behnsen said, naming Tijuana, Nogales and Ciudad Juarez along the U.S. border plus Chihuahua and Culiacan, where drug traffickers operate to feed what U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently called an insatiable U.S. appetite for illegal drugs.

The Mexican resort of Los Cabos is nearly 1,000 miles from Tijuana and Cancun is some 2,000 miles away, he said.

The U.S. recession may be helping Mexican tourism because U.S. visitors could be choosing Mexico over destinations that are more expensive and further away, Behnsen said. Moreover, the weaker Mexican peso — which hit a 16-year low against the U.S. dollar on March 9 — could also be attracting U.S. visitors, he said.

Of course, visits are down, way, way down in Tijuana, and the peso is rebounding as the dollar and U.S. economy continue to slide, so this could change.

Of course, the gangsters are still out there,  and there is still violence being reported (though all violence may not have anything to do with the narcotics trade), but with what seemed to be the rationale for the anti-drug war (making Mexico safe for foreign tourists, not safe for Mexicans), it’s time perhaps to reel in the Army and reassure those of us who live in Mexico (citizens and resident aliens alike) that maybe civil liberties will be respected, and get on with more important things, like rural development, job creation, education, watershed protection… the kinds of actions that in the long run will do more to keep Mexicans from having to work in the narcotics trade (or join the police, which is often the same thing) and get on with life.