Reeling Mexico hopes travel deals bring back the tourists

During a visit to San Diego in April, Pratik and Priti Chavda thought they’d slip over the border into Tijuana just to do a little shopping, have a quick meal and say they had made it to Mexico. But upon hearing the plan, staffers at their hotel sounded the alarm.

“Swine flu! Drug cartels! Don’t go!” Pratik Chavda, 32, recalls them warning.

Six months later, the Chicago couple have finally made it south of the border, where they’re enjoying a meal of grilled shrimp with a panoramic view of a golden sunset. And they didn’t even have to wait for a table.

What started out as a gangbuster year, with international tourist arrivals up about 6% in the first quarter, came to a screeching halt in late April when Mexico became the first to report an outbreak of the H1N1 virus. The flu scare, coupled with news accounts of gruesome drug-related violence, caused visitors to stay away in droves. From April to June, tourist arrivals plummeted by more than 19% over the previous year.

Full Story Here:
Reeling Mexico hopes travel deals bring back the tourists

I lived in El Paso many years ago. I did a lot of business on BOTH sides of the border. It was common to cross the border, go to Juarez and have dinner, drinks, do some shopping and so forth. But I’m talking about 25 or 30 years ago. I wouldn’t go to Juarez today for anyone.

I was in Nogales, AZ. about 22 years ago, a business trip, and a friend of mine wanted to go across the border to eat lunch. He claimed that there was a place he knew that had the best Chinese food you’ve ever eaten. He was RIGHT! It was delicious, and cheap too. We have several courses and drinks and spent about $6.00 each.

We were walking back to the border when the gunfire started. The Federales and some drug dealers were engaged in a running machine gun battle and it was coming our way. We broke into a dead run and were less than 50 yards from the border, screaming at the top of our lungs, “U.S. Citizens!” because INS and Border Patrol were in place, waiting for this gun battle to head their way and were in the process of shutting down that particular crossing.

Needless to say, we made it over the border, took cover behind some *Jersey Barriers* that were set up, and we waited. The Federales either caught the guys or killed them, the gun battle never made it that last city block to the border. And that was the last time I ever went to Mexico as a tourist.

It was also about the time I began to develop a serious attitude concerning border security and the HUGE influx of ILLEGALS we were seeing at the time. It was nothing compared to the surge of ILLEGALS today, but even 22 years ago, it was a concern for me. And sadly, nothing has been done, by ANY U.S. president to remedy this situation.

And then there’s this;

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Gunmen killed fifteen people on an isolated ranch in northern Mexico, including a prominent farmworker leader, in the latest grisly attack in an area overrun by drug gangs, local police said on Friday.

Margarito Montes, a well-known organizer of agricultural laborers, was among the bodies found riddled with bullets in trucks in the town of Hornos in southern Sonora, a state bordering the United States, a police spokesman said.

The cause of the crime was unknown but the killings had many of the hallmarks of hits by drug cartels, who often use automatic weapons to murder people in groups to send a message to rivals.

« Read the rest of this post HERE! »