Beware Extreme Levels of Violence

Canadians love Mexico. Canadians who think of temporarily re-locating themselves to exotic locations think Mexico. Where comfortably luxurious hotels located on pristine private beaches where the locals are generally excluded, await them. And Mexico is highly dependent on tourism. Mexico hugely values Canadian visitors, for this is not a wealthy country other than in its natural resources and its people.

We share a continent. We do not share weather systems. Mexico's weather is vacation-weather, as is its location on the extreme southern third of North America. Where the ocean is large and blue and endless, the skies clear and sun-drenched, and the sand beaches alluring in their promise of unadulterated leisure and creature comfort.

Mexico is not a particularly safe environment. Particularly where the drug cartels have turned towns and cities into shooting galleries, and where armed gangs practise unspeakable atrocities against their cartel rivals, against any civilian unfortunates who get in the way, and that includes the military and the police and local politicians.

Mexico is unsafe for other reasons as well, because poverty is endemic, and it does lead to violence when those who are poor witness the wealth of those who are not, and who are just visiting. Not that Mexico doesn't have ample of its own that have immense wealth that places them separate and apart from the majority of those in the country that decidedly have not.

The result, most unfortunate, of all those Canadians eager to enjoy a Mexican holiday in resort areas which are purported to be extremely safe, but occasionally are not at all so, is that from time to time Canadians are exposed to a level of violence that they are unable to cope with. Some are injured as a result; more die, as a result.

Men and women both, are exposed to violent theft and the kind of mindless violence that takes a life as readily as it takes umbrage at resistance. Saltspring Island resident Robin Wood, just visiting with a friend who lives in Melaque, protested when robbers picked up his backpack. "You're dead", one said, and killed him, making off with the backpack.

B.C. student Ximena Osegueda and her friend Alejandro Alvarado were knifed to death on a Mexican beach. She was an expert in Brazilian martial arts. All well and good, but no match for lethal weapons in the hands of those who are also experts in their use. She was working on a doctoral thesis on Hualtulco, where she lived and planned to research Oaxaca. No stranger there was she.

The Government of Canada asserts in their travel warning: "Canadians travelling to Mexico should exercise a high degree of caution due to a deteriorating security situation in many parts of the country. While most major tourist areas have not been affected by the extreme levels of violence in the northern border region, it is highly advisable to travel to Mexico by air."

To be deposited safely and speedily within the protective confines of one of Mexico's countless luxury resorts. Which are occasionally not so safe, in fact.