State Department Relaxes Warning for Oaxaca City
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 01.18.07 | 9:54 PM ET
Instead of completely avoiding the Mexican city of Oaxaca, travelers should use caution there, the U.S. State Department now says. Translation: The place is beginning to return to normal after the protests and violence of last year. For those Oaxaca visitors ordering tasty mole in restaurants, we say: Exercise no caution. Go crazy. That stuff is good.
Related on World Hum:
* In Oaxaca, a Different Kind of Day of the Dead
Photo: Moody75, via Flickr. (Creative Commons License.)
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Ron Mader 01.19.07 | 4:06 AM ET
Mmmmm…. mole!
Good to see World Hum continue to pay attention to Oaxaca. I Just wrote about the new ‘realities tourism’
http://www.planeta.com/planeta/07/0701oaxaca.html
I have never had a front row seat to crisis before, so this is new to me. Speaking to neighbors, they are very much relieved by this update. As one hotel owner said, “Oaxaca now has the yellow light, which is better than the red.”
One question locals ask is why the travel advisories remain in effect so long. Governments are quick to alert citizens to possible problems, but they usually lag in letting travelers know when conditions improve.
Jim Benning 01.19.07 | 1:08 PM ET
Good point about travel advisories, Ron. Governments are slow to revise warnings when conditions improve.
That said, I think the State Department could have done much worse in the case of Oaxaca. Better to ease the warning now than months from now.
Ron Mader 01.21.07 | 8:55 PM ET
Certainly, the State Department could have done worse. Still, I would like to think it can do better. We all can.