U.S. Issues Travel Advisory For Mexico
Posted February 27, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
If you’re among the scores of high school and college students that plan to head to Mexico for spring break, you may want to think twice this year.
Escalating drug violence has prompted a travel advisory from the U.S. State Department and universities across the country.
And while Ottawa stopped short of advising its citizens not to travel to the volatile region, Foreign Affairs does warn of the danger.
“Canadians travelling to Mexico should exercise a high degree of caution…due to high levels of criminal activity, some involving the use of violence,” the website reads.
But the Flight Centre’s Chris Perrotta says he hasn’t noticed any change in travel patterns yet.
“I was in a resort just south of Playa del Carmen, which is on the Mayan Riviera – and nothing at all. There were tons of Canadians, tons of Americans. The hotel was at full capacity, and I felt no sense of danger at all.”
More than 6,000 people died last year in a bloody war for smuggling routes among the country’s drug cartels. They’ve been carrying out massacres and dumping beheaded bodies in the streets – even engaging in brazen shootouts with the military and law enforcement personnel.
Most of the drug violence is happening in border towns, and tourists generally have not been targeted. But there have been killings in the spring-break resorts of Acapulco and Cancun, well away from the border.
Ontario residents Rita Calara and Yoyo Manela were injured when a gunman fired into the lobby of an Acapulco hotel in February 2007.
Weeks before, two other Canadians died while vacationing in the area. The family of 19-year-old Woodbridge resident Adam De Prisco, killed in Acapulco, says he was beaten to death. But Mexican authorities say he was struck by a car. And Glifford Glasier of Chatham, Ont. was killed in Guadalajara after an apparent hit-and-run. His wife was also badly injured and left in a coma.
In 2006, Woodbridge couple Domenic and Nancy Ianiero was found murdered in their room at a resort in the Mayan Riviera.
To view the Foreign Affairs travel report on Mexico, click here.
Mexican Army Soldiers patrol along a main road on January 16, 2009 in Juarez, Mexico. The army stepped in to stop an ongoing drug war which resulted in more than 1,600 people killed in Juarez in 2008, making Juarez the most violent city in Mexico. The situation has failed to improve with more than 40 people since the start of the year. (Richard Ellis/Getty Images)
