How Safe is Mexico for Your Next Spring Break?

I had the luxury of spending my spring break in Mexico, more specifically Baja California. It was an all-expenses-paid trip, courtesy of my lovely girlfriend Jessica, her father Tom, and their entire family.

Going into Mexico, I expected nothing short of a war zone. I anticipated rotted out buildings, bullet holes and beat-up old trucks packed with armed cartel members. The truth is that I was right about the buildings and wrong about the bullet holes and cartel caravans.

During our drive down, the only guns I saw were in the hands of 15 -year-old Federalis.

So where was the violence, the murders, the hanging of rival gang members from freeway over-passes? Turns out those things only happen in certain areas.

The Trans-Border Institute from the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego, among other research, geographically mapped out murders that were a result of organized crime in Mexico. In the year 2011, TBI found 10 areas that reported between 103 and 191 murders. The most common for the whole of mexico was 13 to 58 murders, with a large number of areas reporting zero organized crime related killings.

To give these numbers some context, according to the Huff Post San Francisco and the Oakland Police Officers Association, Oakland California had 110 homicides in the year 2011. Detroit’s 2011 homicide rate, according to the Huff Post Detroit, was 344.

Now, organized crime related homicides and regular homicides are not directly compatible. By only mapping organized crime related killings, you could be leaving out other murders.

However, the people afraid to visit Mexico aren’t  afraid of regular street crime, they are afraid of cartels. They fear being kidnapped and murdered by drug lords angry at the U.S. I can say this with some certainty because I was one of these people.

So, would Mexico be safe for your next spring break? The answer is, if you are afraid of being a victim of cartel violence, you are relatively safe. The numbers found by TBI show that the worst areas of Mexico for cartel-related homicides are sometimes just as dangerous and other times much less dangerous than some major U.S. cities.’

You’re also pretty safe if you make the choice to avoid buying or selling narcotics.

Finally, I would like to leave you with some last minute facts.

- Only two of the areas that reported 103 to 191 murders are along the US and Mexico Border. These are Tiujana and Jaurez Mexico.

- TBI found that from 2006 to 2011 there were over 50,000 drug related murders in Mexico.

- According to TBI the states Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Nuevo Leon “…accounted for just over 41% of the violence…”

-In 2010, The Texas Department of Public Safety told Texas college students to avoid visiting border towns because of violence. In 2011 and 2012, the Texas Department of Safety advised students to avoid Mexico entirely.