With Spring Break travel around the corner, U.S. residents are being urged by the state department to avoid travel to Mexico, with all but two of the country’s 32 states under an elevated warning by the State Department due to the risks of crime and kidnapping.
According to warnings on the State Department’s travel advisory website, five states-Colima (where Manzanillo is located), Michoacan, Sinaloa (where Mazatlán is located), Tamaulipas and Zacatecas (where Zacatecas and Valparaíso are located) are under the strictest warning level due to crime and kidnapping. A sixth, Guerrero state (home of Acapulco, Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa), is also on the list due to crime.
Americans are urged to reconsider travel due to crime and kidnapping to Baja California State (where Tijuana is located), Chihuahua State, Guanajato state (where Guanajato is located), Jalisco state (where Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta are located) and Sonora state, as well as Durango and Morelos states for crime. Tourists are encouraged to “Exercise Increased Caution” in Aguascalientes, Baja California Sur (home of Cabo San Lucas), Chiapas, Coahuila, Hidalgo, Mexico City (home of Mexico City), Mexico State, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca State (home of Oaxaca and Huatulco), Puebla state (home of Puebla), Queretaro, Quintana Roo (home of Tulum, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel and Cancun), San Luis Potosi, Tabasco, Tlaxcala and Veracruz states as well.
The only two states where Americans are urged to exercise normal precautions are Campeche and Yucatan states.
The warning comes as the U.S. Treasury Department has warned Americans about Sergio Armando Orozco Rodriguez, also known as “Chocho,” a member of the Jalisca New Generation Cartel who is being sought for extortion in Puerto Vallarta, as well the state department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs warning about continued violence in Culiacan following the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, the son of “El Chapo.”
The warning also comes after California public defender Elliot Blair in January. Blair died at Las Rocas Resort and Spa in Rosarito Beach, which Mexican authorities said appeared to be the result of an “unfortunate accident” from a fall off a balcony at the resort, though local law enforcement told ABC News at the time that a specific injury on his forehead would not “have been caused by a fall.”
His widow, Kimberly Williams, has since revealed she believes her husband was killed as they celebrated their first wedding anniversary, telling ABC News this week that she has suspicions he was actually attacked. She also revealed that they had been extorted by local police earlier in the evening, after being pulled over on their way back from a local restaurant for allegedly rolling through a stop sign. The police who stopped them demanded the couple pay them cash, Williams said.
“We’ve never been pulled over before,” she told ABC News. “We were both rattled, but at the same time we both had this feeling of thank God they didn’t do anything more to us.”
AFP / Daniel SLIM
