| | |  Editorials | Opinions | February 2009 
Viewpoint: Peril in Mexico
 Leah Finnegan - Daily Texan
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| | Officials warn students about a surge in drug-related violence in Mexico. (ABC News) | |
One day after gunmen targeted a Mexican governor’s convoy in embattled Ciudad Juarez, the University of Arizona has formally advised students against spending spring break in Mexico. UT students should heed this warning.
According to the Houston Chronicle, one of Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza’s agents was killed and two were wounded in the Sunday attacks. Although high crime areas like Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua City and Tijuana have not been historically popular with beach-laying, margarita-sipping tourists, Puerto Penasco, a fishing camp turned tourist village on the northeast coast of the Gulf of California, is a desirable place for students to vacation due to its inexpensiveness and proximity to the border.
But for University of Arizona administrators — as well as the State Department, which issued a travel advisory for the area effective through mid-August — it’s uncomfortably close. In a memo to students, the University warned of the danger of vehicle theft, robbery and murder, among other crimes related to Mexico’s ongoing drug war. They failed to mention kidnappings, beheadings and vehicle pursuits involving automatic weapons, all of which have recently resulted from gang violence.
According to grim statistics released by the U.S. Embassy last week, Americans were slayed in Mexico at the rate of one per week in 2008.
University of Colorado student David Parrish was one of them. While vacationing in Puerto Vallarta for spring break, Parrish, 21, was shot trying to protect his mother from thieves on a well-populated street in the afternoon.
The State Department has warned potential travelers to Mexico to stay close to tourist areas as conditions at the border becomes increasingly lawless. On Feb. 20, Ciudad Juarez’s police chief, Roberto Orduna, resigned his post after drug lords threatened to murder one of his squadron’s officers every 48 hours until he quit. The gangsters alerted Orduna to their threat by affixing signs to the bodies of the five officers they killed in the weeks preceding his resignation. According to the Chronicle, circumstances in Ciudad Juarez are so dire that the city’s police are not allowed to patrol alone and must carry their guns in their hands at all times.
The U.S. Embassy has said there is little reason to think the violence will taper off in the near future. More than 6,000 people died as a result of drug-related violence in Mexico in 2008, and the bloodshed has carried over into this year. Earlier this month, two bodies were found in a burning sport utility vehicle in Tijuana. In a small town outside Mexico City, two heads were found in a cooler.
The state department’s advisory appropriately warns that Northern Mexico is highly volatile. The only predictable thing about the situation is that the violence is bound to continue. |
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