> I've heard that parts are basically all ex-pats

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.

Non-Mexican tourists aren't targeted, so it's not really part of their world.

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.