SAFE in JALISCO

In a 2009 map showing SAFETY in various states of Mexico.  Oceanside towns vs interior towns.  Also the crime rate in Stockton, California has been celebrated in the final episode of the movie COPS in Stockton 2013! Border towns in the black state are easily avoided. SAFETY in Chapala is medium low.  I can’t even remember when I last experienced the beheading of a close friend. Everyone assumes it must be a weekly, or even a daily event: after all, I am moving to Chapala in 2014, but I have no fears because I am moving out of Stockton, famous for high rates of death by drive by shootings. Tourists in Chapala are as likely to be decapitated  — as likely as being murdered inside the gates of Disneyland. To be honest, Mexican gang members are conscionably lax about slaughtering tourists in Chapala, there are no statistics that prove otherwise. Mexico is BIG and 95% of its residents are Mexican and untouched by the drug war. In Chapala,expats and tourists are annoyingly safe.  To avoid all of Mexico because you fear drug violence, is CRAZY!

Would you cancel your trip to the Napa Valley because you hear that people are flying airplanes into towers in New York City? The homicide rate in most Mexican cities is just not very exciting.  Disney World is in Orlando. Orlando, Florida. Do you fear drug lords in Orlando? YOU SHOULD be trembling! The rate of violent crime in Orlando is really something. At the theme park itself you might not encounter drooling gangs with machetes, but the likelihood of getting slaughtered is much higher in the city of Orlando than it is in Mexico City. The homicide rate in Mexico City is sub-terrifying: 8.3 out of 100,000. What is the murder rate per capita in your town? If you’re truly bent on living dangerously, hit the French Quarter for a shot of near death experiences! New Orleans is gunning them down at a rate of 51 per 100,000. To be fair, that is an improvement upon the post-Katrina high of 71 or so. No doubt champagne is flowing at the tourist board. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu admitted — discussing a local high school — that for part of last year “a student attending John McDonogh was more likely to be killed than a soldier in Afghanistan.” Funny that people are NOT dissuaded from visiting New Orleans — or Disney World — by travel advisories that read like the script for the chainsaw massacre.  My response is WHATEVER!