Horror on the coast of Oaxaca, a tourist paradise plagued by mass disappearances
english.elpais.com
english.elpais.com
On Monday, attention shifted back to Puebla. Brenda Mariel Salas was found alive there, according to the Oaxaca Prosecutor’s Office, which did not explain when she had been found, nor in what condition, nor how she had arrived there, hundreds of kilometers from where she had been with her friend Angie. Brenda was found alone.
> authorities have acknowledged that they are investigating possible involvement by the police
If it's true, or even if there is a non-zero probability of this, I would not expect official organization like "Oaxaca Prosecutor’s Office" to admit this easily.
Occam's Razor would suggest that if 9 people are kidnapped simultaneously, murdered and transported across state lines to complicate the resulting investigation, it's pretty likely that the cartels are involved and they were targeted for a reason, as opposed to being the work of (say) an extremely efficient random solo mass murderer.
Of course, it doesn't mean they personally did anything, the cartels can and do regularly kidnap and murder relatives, people in the wrong place at the wrong time etc just to send a message.
I am sorry to hear of this shift. At one time, the original population of Mexicans was forcibly moved to government land which is arranged in a grid pattern, our guide lived in sector “U2” for example. You can see the grid where the local people live in google maps.
As far as traveling by air to the known locations. Keep in mind, that a LOT of tourist just don't take it seriously, the simple rules "don't buy drugs offered on street", "don't follow people into weird dark alleys", "don't be alone", "don't get drunk and wonder in the streets at night". Those will get you in trouble here in US, in any other country, and Mexico is not going to be an exception. Even two years ago we have heard some stories about being robbed on the street, and the question was "how did it happen?" - looking for drugs in the middle of the night, already being drunk. Sure, those cases might be different.
We have few friends who go there (not specifically here) even with kids, mostly due to low costs, stating all is fine and beheadings are happening 100/200km further away but I can't even begin to explain how stupid such argument is. To each their own.
Firstly, it probably wouldn't because that program only began a long time after the majority of the improvement had already happened: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_a... Bukele only began the mass incarceration after El Salvador had roughly the same number of homicides per person as the USA.
Secondly even if it really had been that program that produced the improvements, the gangs in El Salvador were very different to the gangs in Mexico. I found https://mattlakeman.org/2024/03/30/notes-on-el-salvador/ interesting for background on the gangs.
Versus that time a few years ago where two Mexican girls were on a night mangrove boat trip near Puerto Escondido, left the boat to go swimming, and were attacked by crocodiles. Something like that does hit the gossip circle among tourists because those crocs do target tourists.
For example, the group of people in TFA were from Tlaxcala, a big human trafficking center. Who knows what they were involved in. Maybe they escaped from something or were involved some other way.
It's kinda like those burial grounds that are all over Mexican news. The people who were killed there were local Mexicans recruited for fake job ads by narcos and then forced into being hitmen and things like that. It's not something that you should be worried about when you plan a week trip in Guadalajara.
I was astonished to chat to someone who lived there and remote worked for an Australian company. Curious to me!
No, not in Puerto Escondido.
It's hard to get real info as an outsider since everyone has a motivated reason to say things like that about everywhere. Tourists like to try to sound well traveled by pretending a place is beneath them because they weren't the only tourist in a beach club that they walked into that was playing Journey on the sound system and then scoff like they took a wrong turn and meant to go to some run down reggaeton club on the poorer side of town.
Everyone wants to be the last person allowed somewhere, and when they're not, they just complain about how much better things were N years ago. It's like listening to someone sitting in traffic complain about traffic without realizing they are the traffic.
But, one of the things about Puerto is that it's a tourist destination for Mexicans. They even just finished a huge highway that skyrocketed Mexican tourism to the place. I've been here on and off starting 10 years ago, so I've been talking about finding the "next Puerto" for a while now, but this place is hard to beat for surfing.