| | |  Editorials | Opinions 
In Mexico, Security is in the Planning
 Joe Sharkey - New York Times
go to original
March 30, 2010
 |  | Keep a low profile, be well-informed in advance — that would be our approach.
- John Kewell |  | | |
Research on a book brought me to this border city about 60 miles south of Tucson the other day, and by my rough count, there were about a dozen of us Americans on the sunny downtown streets. A few years ago, there would have been thousands.
History shows that it takes a lot to sink the indomitable Mexican spirit, but a year’s worth of drug-war mayhem (and the resulting publicity) in the towns on the border with the United States has certainly has done a good job of it. The downtown restaurants that weren’t already boarded up were mostly empty. Shopkeepers seemed dazed.
At one store selling hammered tin mirrors, the owner pointed to a mirror on display. “This mirror was made by my great-grandfather, who lost both arms fighting with Pancho Villa and had to work holding the hammer in his foot,” he said. “Such beauty!” His woeful grin indicated he knew that friendly banter, rather than money, would be the only thing exchanged here.
Travel to Mexico, both leisure and business, has been severely affected by the violence, especially in cities like Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juárez, Monterrey and Matamoros that are strung near the Mexican border.
The standard advice is that anyone traveling to the Mexican border towns do so prudently. While most of the killings involve warring gangs, bystanders have been caught in the crossfire.
And the violence continues to escalate. Hours after I left Nogales last Thursday, gunmen firing automatic weapons from a pickup truck killed the city’s deputy police chief and his bodyguard on a main street. On Friday, a federal police officer was killed outside a hotel in Juárez. On Sunday, the bodies of five people who had been shot to death were found beside a highway, and another body was found on a soccer field near Juárez, across the border from El Paso. And those are just the grim highlights from one week.
In general, how should business travelers to the region prepare?
“I would say to any business traveler coming into the northern towns of Mexico, try to avoid staying overnight,” said John Kewell, the vice president for security consulting for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean at Control Risks, a risk management company. “We would encourage you to travel by day if possible, which gives you that added element of security.”
From his office in Mexico City, Mr. Kewell, a former British Army officer, also suggested making careful advance plans to ensure “close coordination” with clients or partners in the area.
“You need to have your itinerary fixed very much in advance, have your local points of contact aware of your itinerary, and make sure you use your local contacts to smooth your travel. To think you can arrive here in the same way you would in a city in Ohio or someplace is madness,” he said.
While some fears can be overblown, he said, it is still worth taking precautions to avoid known danger areas. Clients with worries about travel to Mexico are often told that the most significant risk they face is common street crime rather than drug-related violence, but Mr. Kewell said “there is a very strong argument that normal street crime increases with drug-related violence and the associated lack of security.”
That was also the assessment of Samuel Logan, the regional manager for Latin America at iJet Intelligent Risk Systems. Once they are briefed on the overall security environment, clients often ask about the risks associated with daily transportation. They are worried, for example, about using taxicabs, given incidents in which travelers have been briefly kidnapped and forced to withdraw money from bank A.T.M.’s and, sometimes being held past midnight “so they can withdraw two days’ worth of A.T.M. limits,” he said.
IJet will coordinate transportation for clients, depending on risk assessment. Often, Mr. Logan said, the answer is using a radio-taxi service recommended by a reputable hotel.
There have been reports of travelers resorting to armored cars in Mexico. But Mr. Kewell at Control Risks doesn’t think much of security overkill.
“Keep a low profile, be well-informed in advance — that would be our approach,” he said, adding: “No one should pretend that you can put a business traveler in an armored car with a few gunmen in it and expect full protection. If the situation is that bad, you shouldn’t be there in the first place.”
jsharkey(at)nytimes.com |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us