Are We Afraid to Live in Mexico ?

Are We Afraid to Live in Mexico ?

No, No. No… Not the part we live in !

By now if you haven’t heard about the violence in Mexico you must have just come out of a Rip Van Winkle sleep or you don’t watch TV, listen to the radio or surf the net.

So what the real story? Well, there’s no question that there is in fact a lot of violence ALONG THE BORDER and admittedly in a few other scatter places.

But, the media’s brush paints much too broad a stroke leading the world to believe that Mexico is a hot bed of terrorist like activity and close to anarchy.

Of course nothing could be farther from the truth !

Lt. Sid Grosvenor – DPD

Yes, that’s me in one of my former lives. As you can see I have reason to be interested in criminal activity.

It makes me think of the USA in the Roaring Twenties when Al Capone et al were warring for control of the illegal booze business in Chicago.

Now, I would not want to have lived in Chicago in that era and I do not want to live along the US – Mexican border now … or any place where competing groups of thugs are perpetrating violence against each other and the authorities.

My friends and neighbors here at Lake Chapala Ajijic are not afraid to live here, but instead feel blessed to be able to live here because among other things the relatively speaking low crime and especially very low violent crime in our area.

Just to be on the safe side the government has recently added extra protection in our area which I for one view not as a sign of increased crimes of violence, but as a sign of proactive protection.

Worried friends and family back in the USA and Canada have been contacting their families who live here to see if we’re all OK.

That’s natural, given the terrible press Mexico has been the target of lately.

The usual reply to such questions is that Lake Chapala, Mexico (One of the foremost retirement havens in the world) remains a whole lot safer than most cities in the United States and Canada.

“I think the Mexicans should issue a warning for travelers heading for Vancouver,” one local man notes in reference to a front-page story published in last week’s Guadalajara Reporter.

Another expat, Chapala resident Eileen Collard also was recently quoted as  saying, “I feel safer here than in the United States,” mentioning the USA’s appalling statistics on gun-related deaths. “About 30,000 people die there each year from gunshot injuries. Eight children are killed every day.”

So No, Again I say No … we definitely don’t feel afraid to live here. We invite you to come see for yourself. Seeing is believing, but living here is even better than seeing here.

So come and see here and then come and live here. Where most of the worries of the outside world are just that… Outside our area.