http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080105/ap_on_bi_ge/mexico_frightened_tourists
http://www.gringogazettenorth.com/index.php
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20071204-9999-1b4tourism.html
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04557436.htm
http://forums.bajanomad.com/viewthread.php?tid=29116
MEXIDATA . INFO
Monday, December 3, 2007
By Nancy Conroy
A spate of recent reports in the US press about carjackings, highway robberies and violent crime in Baja California, Mexico is threatening to destroy tourism. Over Thanksgiving weekend, few visitors arrived in Baja California and major tourist destinations were empty.
Negative reports about Baja California crime are all over the Internet, with most people saying that they are sick of everything about Mexico and will never travel there again.
Tourism officials are currently conducting emergency meetings, and they are expected to make a public announcement within a week. But it is simple to predict what the officials are going to say. They will claim that the crime wave was a brief aberration, measures
have been taken, and the problem has now been solved.
Believe that story at your peril.
Although the current crime wave has only now been reported by the US press, actually these violent attacks on tourists have been occurring at least since last summer. The reports currently coming out in San Diego are not necessarily new incidents. Some of them happened last August or September, when the last wave of carjackings hit the Baja
California toll roads. The problem settled down in September and October, and then started up again with a vengeance in November.
There was also a rash of attacks and carjackings in August of 2006, but that one was covered up more effectively and most people have forgotten about it. But, "Baja 1000" car racers have not forgotten the murder of Duane Curtis on a lonely beach last year during the 2006 race. That memory is probably what prompted them to arrive late at the race this year, leave early, and report all crimes to the US press.
Again, these incidents are nothing new, but the tourists and sportsmen are fed up with them and finally going public.
Covering up incidents of crime against American tourists has long been a basic goal for Baja California officials and real estate leaders. When a Baja California tourism e-newsletter recently reprinted one of the crime articles, real estate and tourism officials sent emails to the webmaster arguing that circulating such information was an act of "negativity." The Gringo Gazette North, an English language newspaper in Baja California, first reported the carjacking problems last September and received aggressive criticism for doing so. Leaders and officials prefer to deny reports, ignore the truth, and lean on the local media to kill the story. They do nothing about the problem until the US press starts to report it.
Now the officials are in full PR and damage control mode. They will trot out an old script that they have read to the US press before, saying that there will now be a safe, "no-shakedown" corridor in the tourist zone. That story is an old yarn that sounds good in
press announcements, but has never actually been implemented. They will also say that the crime wave was a temporary phenomenon associated with the change in government administration, a claim that is disproved by the actual dates of the crimes. They will then
dramatically unveil new anti-crime initiatives, measures that have been tried before and have never worked in the past. The idea is to convince the American newspapers to report that safety programs are in place, the problem is solved, and Baja California is now safe
for tourists.
The Baja California officials genuinely would like to believe their own claims, but in reality crime is out of their control. The carjackings are not being committed by ordinary criminals, the perpetrators are armed commando squads affiliated with drug cartels.
Local, state and federal authorities do not have adequate resources to fight the "Men in Black." The only action that has ever successfully decreased Baja California crime is federal intervention by the Mexican military, and a tourism protection initiative proposed
by business leaders is not going to solve the problem.
In the past, drug crime in Baja California did not affect tourists or the American community as much. Previously, the shootings and kidnappings seemed to be directed at police or drug dealers, and Americans were largely unaffected.
Now however, the new carjacking methodology does specifically target Americans, especially naive tourists. An unmarked vehicle, usually a pick up or SUV, flashes police lights and sirens at a car with California plates driving on the toll road. Believing that the
car is a police cruiser, the American pulls over to the side of the road and is attacked by armed commandos. Anyone with a sharp eye can learn to identify these vehicles with the lights and sirens, and will soon realize that many of these cars roam the streets, sometimes in caravans. This is a new phenomenon that has emerged over the last year, one that represents a serious threat to American tourists as well as Mexico's important tourism industry.
