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 Editorials | May 2007 
Canadian Plague on the Playa
 Todd Babiak - Edmonton Journal
| | With the way some tourists act in Mexico, it's a wonder more don't end up in trouble. |
The tragic story of Jeff Toews is, like similar stories in Mexican tourist destinations, incomplete. All we know for sure is that he was a 34-year-old husband and father from Grande Prairie, on vacation in Cancun, when something horrible happened to him.
This week, we remember the 19-year-old who died outside an Acapulco nightclub in January. In April, two Canadians were injured by gunfire, also in Acapulco. Most famously, Domenic and Nancy Ianiero were killed at a Playa del Carmen resort in February, 2006. In all of these cases, there were large discrepancies between the families' stories and those of Mexican authorities.
Tourism is the third largest industry in Mexico. But public relations and marketing officials within the tourism board obviously don't understand the battle they're beginning to lose in one of their most lucrative markets. Media outlets in Canada don't report on the one million Canadians who return home safe and happy - if sunburned and hungover - after a week or two on the Pacific or Caribbean coasts.
They also don't report on the way a lot of Canadians travel. It's possible that Toews and every other Canadian injured or killed in Mexico in the last seven years behaved intelligently and honourably on their vacations. If so, they were exceptions.
Visiting the strips of hotels and nightclubs in cities like Puerto Vallarta and Cancun isn't really a trip to Mexico, one of the most diverse, complex, historically resonant, beautiful and messed-up countries in the world, despite its impressive economic recovery since the crisis of 1994.
Like Canada, Mexico is a safe place. Also like Canada, it can be a very dangerous place. The factors that make Mexico dangerous, for Mexicans and tourists alike, are the same factors that make Canada dangerous: alcohol, drugs and organized crime. While almost 20 per cent of the Mexican population lives in extreme poverty, Canadians who venture into the poor villages are safe.
However, they are not necessarily safe in a nightclub, hopelessly drunk and belligerent. Most Canadians don't speak Spanish and most young Canadian men don't become more polite, more cautious and more culturally sensitive after six bottles of Corona and seven tequila shots.
By midnight, in nightclub zones, Canadian and American men with neon all-inclusive bracelets on their wrists, stumble in packs. Many have been drinking in the sun all day, and their eyes are glassy. Their voices are loud. They're on a holiday from their working lives and from common sense. As the hilarious T-shirts say: what happens in Mexico stays in Mexico.
Talk to Mexicans about Canadians and you'll hear two stories. They love Canadians. Thank you, friends, for coming to our country! Talk a little longer and you'll hear the second story, and it isn't pleasant. Canadians, who like to think of themselves as a mild and friendly people, do not enjoy an enviable reputation in these tourist towns. We're famous for drinking to excess, for patronizing and insulting Mexicans, for treating their country like the site of a giant frat party.
Indeed, certain parts of Mexico have an extraordinarily high crime rate. In the past seven years, there have been 172 reports of violence against Canadians in the country. But 172 out of seven million isn't a particularly high number, considering the way many of us act in Mexico. If we were to parade drunkenly up and down Whyte Avenue in Edmonton or 17th Avenue in Calgary, drinks in hand, shouting at women, we would be inviting violence. It's no different in Acapulco or Cancun.
On Wednesday, Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Ujjal Dosanjh suggested the Canadian government should issue a travel advisory about the dangers of travelling to Mexico. "I can tell you that we were planning a family vacation in the next several months," he said, "and Cancun was one of the places we were thinking of, but I can tell you I ain't going there."
Dosanjh is free to spend his vacation dollars where he likes, but he is engaging in hyperbole. There are, to be sure, thieves and marauders and lunatics in resort cities, eager to steal our money and beat us to death. But the numbers, and the experiences of most travellers, show that Mexico, like Canada, is as safe as we want it to be.
tbabiak@thejournal.canwest.com |
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