On Mexico

Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Panama City, Panama
Apart from the blog entries regarding various steps in my trip I intend to post a sort of short summary on each country that I'll be visiting. The idea is to give a glimpse on each country, as I have experienced it. Now I can be quite a smartass and in my head I make these lengthy and involved arguments regarding how and why a country works as I think it does. While I'm definitely tempted to put them down here and they'll certainly spill over anyhow, I'll try to keep it relatively short and to the point and save the lengthy talk for face to face story telling. It's been quite an abrupt switch from the peace of Isla Mujeres to the crazyness of Panama City so here I go with my quick take on Mexico, before I get completely absorbed in Carnival. 
There have been three striking things about the country on this trip, none of which I have felt the first time around in 2002: it's huge, it's more developed than I had given it credit, and it's beginning to pay a serious toll to the whole drug problem . Looking for points of reference two places come to mind: the US and Turkey. The first because Mexico has the huge distances and change of landscapes (Cancun to Tijuana is 4500 kms), the federal structure (Estados Unidos Mexicanos) and the lengthy, fancy border paperwork (it feels like you're entering a pretty serious country). The second because it seems to have with North America the kind of relationship Turkey has with Europe: big country, fairly well industrialized, major tourist destination for the tourists from the North, pretty developed though not throughout, and yet a world apart. 
I was travelling on motorways all the way from Monterrey to Cancun (a good 2000 km) which for me was pretty impressive. They've also got a booming low-cost domestic aviation industry. Costs were similar to Romania, some times higher, except for food which is cheap and delicious. They are building heavily from what I could see although the people I have been talking to did tell me that the crisis hit hard.
While I have never feel threatened in any way the military presence is annoying, particularly if you know why they're there. Military checkpoints when crossing from state to state, automatic guns casually worn, sandbag protected watching posts, security guards at ATMs with gun drawn, not fun. Worst was the body-count and relevant op-ed in the newspaper: they've hit the first thousand dead in late January this year compared to mid February last year. It's really chilling for when you've got the numbers overshadowing the story it changes the reality of the place. It's mostly confined to the northern border area, but it's getting worse instead of subsiding and that's a bad sign. Most papers ran entire pages of debate on the success of the drug war and the deployment of the army.
Have no idea where Mexico's headed security-wise but I highly recommend it for travel. It has pretty much everything in terms of landscapes, beaches, mountains, colonial cities, you name it. It has a good tourist infrastructure and is really easy to get around. It's comfy and yet very different and that's why I think of it as one of the best intros to Latin America. I knew 3 weeks was too little and also that it would dent my budget but couldn't think of a better place to start this trip.
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emil
2010-02-17

interesanta comparati mexic usa cu turcia versus europa. astept noutati legat de carnaval. pentru coata rica am un articol din ft luat la drumul de intarcere de la ny. pa pa

2025-02-12

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