Posted on 05/07/2024 8:24:48 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Maybe you've heard that two Australians and an American were murdered in Mexico recently. The three men were on a surf vacation and apparently came across a group of carjackers who had no hesitation in murdering them.
The men who were killed were Australian brothers Callum Robinson, 33, his brother Jake, 30, and their American friend Jack Carter Rhoad, 30...
The three men were on a surfing trip in Baja California and were expected to check into an Airbnb in Rosarito on April 27 but never showed up, according to Debra Robinson, Callum and Jake’s mother...
Mexican authorities have determined that the three men were killed by thieves who were looking to steal their white pickup truck in order to sell its tires...
The bodies of the victims were found about 4 miles from where they were killed, just south of the city of Ensenada. A tent the men were staying in, as well as their burned-out truck, was found nearby.
It's a tragic story for the families involved but also not a very surprising one in this part of the world. In fact, the 50 foot deep well where the bodies of the three men were found also contained another body, unrelated to this case. The situation is bad enough that last year the State Department put out a warning to Americans about visiting parts of Mexico. The warning advised that Americans not travel to six states within Mexico and reconsider travel to seven other states including Baja.
The only really surprising thing about the murdered tourists is that they were found. Kidnapping and disappearances are very common in Mexico but resolution of these cases is relatively rare. As of last November there were 113,275 people on the missing persons registry maintained by the government. But Mexican President ALMO ordered an audit which critics saw as a way to bring the numbers down without actually solving the cases.
When López Obrador came to office in 2018 as a leftist reformer promising to reduce crime and violence, the official number of disappeared was about 53,000. His administration boosted funding for the government search commission set up to help find them.
But by 2022, the total topped 100,000. López Obrador, who often cites “other data” when disputing statistics he doesn’t like, began to express doubts about the veracity of the numbers. He ordered an exhaustive new census of the disappeared...
In December, the government released the results: Of the more than 110,964 people officially listed as disappeared as of August, only about 11% could be corroborated as missing.
But the same article opens with the story of a mother whose son disappeared in 2020. She got a call from the auditors working on the list.
“We have information that your brother has appeared,” he told her. “We would like to have an interview with him.”
That was news to her. She checked with relatives, her brother’s friends, his old co-workers, the police and the hospital where he worked in the port city of Veracruz. No one had seen or heard from Osvaldo Julián García Colorado since October 2020.
“It was all a lie. My brother is still disappeared,” she said. “And everything was the same.”
Karla Quintana, the lawyer who headed the search for the missing quit her job last August. She had nothing good to say about ALMO's audit.
"The intent is, clearly and regrettably, to lower the numbers of disappeared people" without them necessarily having been found, Karla Quintana, a long-time human rights expert, said during a university seminar last week.
Quintana also said she resigned from her post as director of the search commission in August because she opposes the review and planned changes to the registry. It's unclear what those changes will be when the review is over.
The bottom line is that the real situation is probably even worse than the numbers suggest and it seems to still be growing.
In 2017, state prosecutors opened about 760 disappearance investigations in Baja California. In five years, the number jumped more than threefold, according to Elementa DDHH.
“This is an ongoing phenomenon, and it’s increasing exponentially,” said Ms. Demichelis, adding that several factors are contributing to the worsening disappearance crisis in Baja California, such as drug trafficking, internal displacement, migration and gender violence.
Most of the missing are either Mexican nationals or migrants passing through, but as of last year there were at least 558 Americans missing in Mexico. If you choose to visit parts of Mexico at this point, you are taking a real risk.
We don’t have to go to Mexico to be killed by criminal gangs anymore.
Mexico?
Hell, don’t go to Canada, Australia, Chicago, Manhattan, California— a whole host of places are no go zones these days.
Mexico has been off my list for quite some time now.
I think it’s smarter to wait till it’s finally empty, then visit.
Yep. I read a horror story in the paper way back in the 1980s. And that was about Cancun.
Guy and his bride - she was killed in an accident and every low-life did every dirty thing they could - money, money, money.
I worked in Mexico for a couple of years in the mid-90s, but I would never cross the border now for any reason.
Don't worry, I won't.
But I DO worry that Mexico (and many other third world countries) is coming to me.
there is NOTHING south of the border worth your life, nothing...
OK, I went to Nuevo Laredo across from TX, but I only brought back straw hats, I promise.
But I did get to meet the Corona Girls, they hot
I would assume the cruise ships on their Western Caribbean tours have strict security….( not having been on one)….stopping just off the coast of Mexico
Even the Eastern Caribbean touches down at a small part of Haiti…( another dangerous hotspot)
What’s in Mexico? All the Mexicans live in the U.S.
Good lord…lighten up .
..
Man, I used to go across at Matamoros in the early 80’s. I could get a case of Corona for 2 bucks. I would buy 8 cases and bring it back to my hotel in Brownsville, then make a couple more trips that day. 8 cases was the import limit.
Then I would bring all those cases back to Houston and sell them at a nice profit. Made some good money back then.
One afternoon I was in the hotel pool and a guy approached me and told me that he was watching what I was doing. He asked me if I wanted to make some real money. I asked him how.
He told me that he could get me into the smuggling business of weapons coming into the US.
No dice. I was out of there.
we were just saying the exact same thing after watching that “Contraband: Seized at the Border” ... nothing new about the sentiment for us, it just reminded us of our vow regarding zero visits to Mexico ...
More than 40 million people visit Mexico annually.
The show House hunters has scores of programs of people buying houses in Mexico and I always say to myself these people are crazy
A little history about Mexico.
The PRI party took over the country and was in power for over 70 years. The PRI has very close ties to the soviet union.
The second largest KGB base in the world was in Mexico City.
After the soviet union fell, Mexico was a struggling third world country but mostly stable. Then came the cartels. They took over the northern states and eventually took over Mexico City. Then the Chinese got into the act and are now partners with the cartels. The Mexican government is a government in name only. The cartels run Mexico with financial backing from China.
With all that going on, our betters in DC have left our border with ChinaMex wide open.
This could only happen with a compromised bribed President Biden.
But Trump is on trial?
You can buy a house in Mexico but you cannot buy the land it sits on. Mexican law.
I think I heard there is something similar in Hawaii .
..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.