I don’t think not visiting the U.S./Mexico border region is much of a loss

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I don’t think not visiting the U.S./Mexico border region is much of a loss

Posted on 10 March 2010 by oscar

From: The South Chicagoan

It has been years since I personally set foot in Mexico. But my impression has always been that those border towns directly across from the United States were always so kitschy that no self-respecting individual wanting to see Mexico would seriously go there.

So when I learned that Texas state officials had issued an advisory telling people to avoid the area when they make spring-break trips later this month, my honest reaction was two-fold.

IT IS NO loss, AND how many idiots are going to want to believe this refers to the whole country.

Specifically, the Texas Department of Public Safety issued an advisory in recent days saying that U.S. citizens should avoid visiting the cities along the international border.

Anyone paying attention to news reports from the region in recent years knows about the violence in Ciudad Juarez, where the drug lords whose power has reached such heights that local police and government are unable to restrain them has created a situation of violence that has left innocent bystanders dead.

The situation is so tense that Mexico had to send the Army in to try to regain control of the city. Texas state officials say the situation is bad in other border towns, including Tijuana and Nogales.

THE NATIVISTS OF our nation want to believe this is somehow reflective of the Mexican society as a whole, when it really is merely reflective of the fact that the drug situation afflicting both nations reaches a particularly tense situation at the point where the two nations meet up.

Head south of the U.S./Mexico border and the situation becomes drastically less violent. When one gets significantly south of those Mexican states along the border (places like Sonora or Tamaulipas), you start to find cities whose cultural amenities make them seriously worth seeing.

In short, anybody who thinks they’re seeing Mexico and enjoying the full cultural experience by visiting Tijuana deserves to get ripped off, or pay way too much money for those tacky, cheap knick-knacks sold as souvenirs to tourists who don’t know any better.

So while I understand there are people whose economic livelihood depends on a certain flow of tourists passing through the border area, I don’t think there’s any real loss to those of us in the United States if we stay away from Matamoros.

IF IT SEEMS like I’m pushing places like Guadalajara (where my maternal grandfather was born) or Cancun, if not Mexico City itself, I’d say they are more what the country is about than the kitchiness on the border.

I don’t consider that to be disrespectful to the nation where my ethnic origins lie. Any place has its parts that are more relevant for outsiders to see than others. Take the United States. Would anyone suggest that an international tourist get the quality U.S. experience by visiting a place such as Truth or Consequences, N.M. (I don’t want to hear about the local spas) or Brownsville, Texas?

There are other places they would want to see in limited time. Anyone wanting to see Mexico on equally limited time shouldn’t be wasting too much time in Tijuana (a place I was in only once, for about two hours, some 36 years ago. My main memory is of peddlers on the streets selling sticks of chewing gum.)

So as long as people keep in mind that this latest advisory from Texas officials is directed specifically to the border region, it is about as sensible a warning as could be issued to parents whose college-age kids are contemplating a trip toTijuana or Rosarito Beach to act stupid for a few days.

BY THE WAY, Mexico tourism officials point out that the murder rate in and near that beach is actually lower than that of New Orleans. Quite a selling point.

The State Department, which issues its warnings of regions around the world that U.S. citizens should avoid, says that Mexico is no more dangerous than any other place on Planet Earth, with the exception of the border towns where people are advised to use “extreme caution” if they happen to be traveling through the area.

So what should we think, other than that those people who want to see this warning as an indictment on all of Mexico are nothing more than nitwits? For the sarcastic streak in me wants to quip that the reason those border cities appear so absurd is because of their proximity to all those Texans and Arizonans.

It seems like the “Wild West” atmosphere that Texans like to think was so colorful on their side of the border is now insanity in Mexico. Perhaps it was never all that cute or colorful in Texas either.

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Categorized | Latino Community, Latino News, Politics, Uncategorized

I don’t think not visiting the U.S./Mexico border region is much of a loss

Posted on 10 March 2010 by oscar

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