Mexico 2006: ‘The Year of Traveling Cautiously’

That’s Los Angeles Times reporter Reed Johnson’s take on travel in Mexico this year. Johnson has been filing terrific culture-related stories from Mexico and the rest of Latin America for years. His assessment in Sunday’s newspaper sounds very reasonable—neither alarmist nor pollyannaish.

“Traveling in Mexico always has required a certain prudence beyond the obligatory caveats about not drinking the tap water. Visitors should avoid interstate highways and rural back roads late at night,” he writes. “They shouldn’t hail taxis off the street in Mexico City. And it’s wise to preface any request with por favor. Simple courtesy counts for a lot here. But a spate of killings and kidnappings, political crises and the aftershock of Hurricane Wilma [snip] over the last few months have combined to make 2006 the Year of Traveling Cautiously south of the border.”

Johnson focuses on the regions where exercising caution is especially important now: the border zone, Mexico City, and the southern Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas.

And what of the near future?

“[A] question mark hovers over Mexico City,” Johnson writes. “During the summer, the capital’s massive central plaza and one of its major thoroughfares, Reforma Avenue, were occupied for weeks by supporters of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who lost a disputed presidential contest to Felipe Calderón. The demonstrations, which were peaceful, have ended, but there is speculation that they may return in some form in the days leading up to Calderón’s inauguration Dec. 1. If that happens, and/or if the Oaxaca violence mutates, the ripple effects could be significant.”

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