Andrés Oppenheimer is the editor and syndicated foreign affairs columnist with The Miami Herald, anchor of “Oppenheimer Presenta” on CNN En Español, and author of seven books.
On Thursday August 24 he published an editorial on the Miami Herald stating that American tourists shouldn’t freak out over U.S. travel warning about Cancún and Los Cabos. Here’s what the expert has to say on the subject:
The U.S. State Department’s new travel advisory warning Americans about the risks of traveling to Cancún and Los Cabos should not be taken too seriously. Compared to some crime-ridden U.S. cities — or the deaths from recent U.S. mass shootings — these Mexican resorts look like safe havens.
The Aug. 22 U.S. travel advisory added the two Mexican tourism resorts, which get millions of foreign tourists a year, to their list of dangerous places around the world. Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur, the states where Cancún and Los Cabos are respectively located, have seen a surge of shootings between rival criminal groups in recent months.
In both cases, the State Department advisory says that “while most of these homicides appeared to be targeted, criminal organizations [and] turf battles between criminal groups have resulted in violent crime in areas frequented by U.S. citizens. Shooting incidents, in which innocent bystanders have been injured or killed, have occurred.”
The warning came as foreign tourism to Mexico rose by 12 percent this year, including an 11 percent rise from the United States, according to Mexico’s Secretary of Tourism Enrique de la Madrid. About 60 percent of foreign visitors to the country come from the United States.
Click here for full article on the Miami Herald
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article169187707.html
