TV Blamed for Fear of Mexico
Cabo san lucas
is a wonderful beach for relaxing.Last Modified: Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 9:48 p.m.
The subject: Whether it is safe for American students (and logically, any American of any age) to vacation in Mexico.
For the past several weeks, many cable networks have devoted segments to hyping the alleged dangers of vacationing in Mexico.
This particular celebrity attempted to do the same when Pauline appeared with him, but was the first such commentator to permit a person believing otherwise to speak for about 5 percent of the time.
As Pauline talked, the show's producers filled the screen behind her with incongruous shots of drug-related gunbattles in Mexico, and as she attempted to develop her statement, the talk-show host spoke over her for more than 90 percent of the program.
In actual fact, the resort areas of Mexico - Cancun, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo, Manzanillo, Cabo San Lucas, the Maya Riviera, Huatulco and Nayarit - have experienced no violence directed against tourists and are, in fact, almost totally serene, as I myself witnessed on a recent stay.
It is as safe to vacation in the tourist part of Mexico today as to go to any city of the U.S. or Canada.
The recent violence in Mexico has occurred almost entirely in towns along the Mexican border with Texas and Arizona, and the single Mexican state of Chihuahua, surrounding the border town of Ciudad Juarez, has been the site of more than 50 percent of the violence (according to The New York Times), with additional instances in Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo.
The violence is drug-related and involves people engaged in the drug trade or in the suppression of the drug trade into the United States.
All this is recognized in the recent State Department "alert" on the subject, which also draws a careful distinction between the border cities of Mexico/U.S. and the areas many hundreds of miles away where tourists go.
When that recent talk show would dwell on the battles in Ciudad Juarez, adjoining El Paso, Texas, and follow up by claiming that all of Mexico was therefore dangerous for tourism, Pauline would respond by asking whether tourists should not go to New York because of problems in Detroit. "It's a big country," she managed to say.
Her host never responded to her emphatic claims that visitors to Mexico's major resort areas have not suffered in the slightest from the border wars happening hours and hours away.
To return to my own recent experience in Mexico: I enjoyed the most serene vacation imaginable just a few weeks ago in Cancun and along the Maya Riviera. The assertion that I was in danger from drug wars in faraway Juarez is laughable.
Can anyone explain to me why the cable networks are attempting to destroy tourism to Mexico? Why do they feel compelled to advance the party line on that issue? Other Mexican Web sites (see, for example, the LatinBusinessChronicle.com) have picked up the battle between Pauline and her interviewer and expressed similar puzzlement and outrage as to why America's television entertainers (posing as journalists) are attempting to defame all of Mexico - and destroy travel to a nation that received more than 18 million American tourists in 2008.
[ Arthur Frommer is a travel writer and guide. ]
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Photography by Bill Bell to view Mexico Photography click below
Colonial Cities and Towns Archeological Sites
Ruben Jimenez: Tin Craftsman
By Tara Spears
Before its conquest by Spanish
explorers in the 1500s, the native people of Mexico and Central America
created objects of great beauty from their natural resources. In ancient
Mexico, gold, silver, and copper were plentiful and accessible, and from
those metals, the Aztec people created masterpieces of jewelry, masks,
and sacred objects. However, as the Spaniards conquered the native
people, they melted down the beautiful jewelry and sent it back to
Europe, dug mines, made slaves of the Aztecs, and forbade them to use
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With the Indio’s skill in metalwork, they soon created beautiful mirror
frames, jewelry, ornaments, and candle holders with the shiny, malleable
metal. A new form of art thus arose out of political and economic
necessity. Presently, much tin work comes from the state of Oaxaca, home
of the largest native Indian population in the western hemisphere.
Mexican tin art embodies the Mexican reverence for nature in beautiful
handmade sculpture that enlivens any home or patio. One very talented
craftsman is Ruben Jimenez, who offers original home décor items in the
Riviera Nayarit mercandos.
To read the entire story click here
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Miramar is located just
off of the road between Las Varas and
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serve you the best and cheapest oysters
in the area...photographs by Bill Bell
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