Mayors: Lift travel alert(to Mexico)

— City leaders from Matamoros, Brownsville and South Padre Island said Thursday they will ask the U.S. State Department to lift or soften its alert for Americans traveling along Mexico’s northern border.

With at least 150,000 Spring Breakers expected to arrive here next month, the mayors of each city said they are concerned the alert will reduce the tourist flow into Mexico.

“We all agreed that is something we will pursue,” SPI Mayor Bob Pinkerton said of submitting a request to the State Department. “I know a lot of kids want to visit Mexico.”

Based on a recent wave of drug-related and other violence, State Department officials issued an alert on Jan. 26 to American tourists traveling in Mexico’s border region.

U.S. Consulate officials in Matamoros said the alert is scheduled to last until April 25, but ultimately the decision on the mayors’ request will come from either the American Embassy in Mexico City or Washington, D.C.

The consul cited the drug-related deaths of 12 people in Sinaloa on Tuesday and the disappearance of a police officer in Diaz Ordaz, near Reynosa, on Sunday as the most recent examples of violence in Mexico.

“It’s not likely that your average college student in Michigan has heard about this,” he said.

Naland said Consulate officials are considering ways, including distributing flyers on the Island, to inform Spring Breakers about the situation in Mexico.

Brownsville Mayor Eddie Treviño Jr. said he did not support the idea of distributing flyers or avoiding travel to Mexico.

“That’s not the solution,” he said. “It’s giving in to what’s going on over there. It’s still OK for Spring Breakers to go to Mexico.”

Naland said the Consulate’s intention is to inform the public, not to scare them from visiting Mexico.

“It’s not a red light and it’s not a green light. … It’s a yellow light for caution,” he said of the alert.

Mexican business leaders told The Brownsville Herald in previous interviews that business in Matamoros has suffered since the alert was issued.

Although they could not be reached for comment on Thursday, Matamoros officials have maintained that Matamoros remains a safe tourist destination.

Pinkerton said the economies in the three cities are links; what hurts one hurts the other.

“The Island has always done its advertising as, ‘Take a vacation in two nations,’” Pinkerton said.

Withthe modern obsession with "notice", the State Dept. would be held as responsible when idiots go down there and bad things happen to them.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/02/17/2003223405

Hitmen kill 12 men in Mexico as drug turf war escalates

AP , MEXICO CITY
Thursday, Feb 17, 2005,Page 7
The bodies of 12 men killed by hitmen believed linked to drug gangs were found on Tuesday in the northern state of Sinaloa, in what appears to be one of the deadliest one-day tolls in violent drug battles in recent years.

The victims -- all apparently executed with close-range gunshots -- turned up in clumps along an 130km stretch of highway between the state capital, Culiacan, and the well-known beach resort of Mazatlan.

"Given the type of weapons used, the type of people [killed] and the objects found at the scene, we are assuming this was a shootout between gangs," said Sinaloa state Attorney General Luis Antonio Cardenas.

Cardenas was referring to assault rifles and cellphones found alongside some of the victims.

The first group -- three men shot to death with assault rifles -- were found in a car on a roadside just north of Mazatlan.

A truck driver who was passing by the scene of those killings around midnight was wounded by a stray bullet, the Sinaloa state Attorney General's Office said in a press statement.

Two more men were found shot to death on a roadside near the state capital, Culiacan, early on Tuesday. One was identified as Carlos Tirado Lizarraga, alias "El Carlillos," allegedly a top enforcer for the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Along the same highway later on Tuesday, police found five more bodies in a Lincoln Navigator truck which had apparently been armor-plated or bulletproofed, and two more bodies just a few yards further down the highway.

All had been shot to death with weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, a favored weapon of drug traffickers.

More assault rifles were found scattered around the truck; they apparently belonged to the dead men, and large numbers of spent shells were found nearby, but it was not immediately clear whether the dead men had fired their weapons in self-defense.

Authorities say the Sinaloa cartel, led by reputed drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in alliance with Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, has been waging bloody turf battles against Mexico's Gulf and Tijuana drug cartels.

Most of those deaths in that turf war had been concentrated along the eastern flank of the US-Mexico border.

However, the Tuesday killings may indicate that rival gangs have brought the territorial war to the Sinaloa gang's home turf on Mexico's western coast.

The Mayors don't have to worry about being put in jail or killed they have enough sense to stay out of Mexico.But hey come on down and spend your money and get locked up for no reason so they can get all your family money also.Stay home or go someplace that is safe.
I lived in Mexico, I taught machine safety and building, Farmed and taught packing to farmers.Mexico was my second home for 43 years.I have seen Mexico go from peace loving country 45 years ago to the country of corruption Murder and the art of master shake down Artist.{Oh yes i spent some time in jail for the hell of it until the LEO were paid off.}

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