Am I Safe ???

Am I Safe ???

Last evening, around 9:3pm a man was abducted in our town. I have heard two possible theories on what has happened.
1) Men posing as fake agents of the Mexican FBI took the man and his car into custody because the car had U.S. plates and they claimed they needed to investigate. Their intent being to steal the car, his money and probably ask for ransom. When the Presidente (Mayor) contacted the FBI they said they had no operation going on in San Diego.
2) The second theory is that the man allegedly had drugs in his car and was taken by the Secret Police to a prison in Guadalajara.
Either way nerves are shaken for we are living in what is considered a very safe part of Mexico.

Am I safe ???
This is a question I am constantly asked.
A better question would be…
Do I feel safe ???
Yes
I believe that I have a heightened sense of my surroundings since moving to Mexico.
Maybe it is because I am an outsider and don’t always fit in.
My morning walks alone in the countryside have now ceased since the happenings of last night but even before I was always aware of approaching people and cars and knew my escape route.

I was planning this story to be posted in the next couple of weeks but it seems timelier for today.

Over the past few years in my visits to Mexico I became somewhat used to the military roadblocks. They still tend to unnerve me but the soldiers have always been courteous. Recently there was a checkpoint in town and as we were standing outside the car the soldiers were very patient in trying to get me out of the way of a truck they were pulling over.
On the other hand when we were on our way to Puerto Vallarta in June we were traveling an old mountain highway and were flagged down by soldiers. The soldiers were asking us to help another motorist. The driver approached our car and was asking for a tire iron, my friend who was driving said we had nothing to help them and drove away. The whole situation felt wrong – first soldiers helping a motorist in trouble, then the number of tires lying around the vehicle and finally the fact that between the motorist and the army vehicle they didn’t have a tire iron that would fit. My friend said that it was a set up to rob passing cars.

I have read everything that the U.S. State Department www.state.gov has to write and have registered with the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara. I have looked up reports on the abduction and violence towards U.S. citizens. It would seem that the targeted victims are primarily of Hispanic descent and most of the victims in other cases are innocent bystanders. And when you consider that there are over a million U.S Citizens living in Mexico the percentage touched by violence is negligible.

We will be heading to Guadalajara in the next couple of weeks to live and there is a huge English speaking population. In many areas surrounding Guadalajara English is spoken more than Spanish because of the number of people from the States and Canada.

NPR recently had a very revealing article on the history of the violence in Mexico and how effectively the previous ruling party had controlled the DTO’s (Drug Trafficking Organizations) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129009629

As I have expressed to friends back home part of the problem is if you are in trouble you don’t know who to go to as the police and military are sometimes involved.
We tried to visit an old abandoned hacienda out in the country and found it was being “protected” by the army.
The airport in the neighboring town of Lagos De Moreno has rocks blocking the entrance so you need to enter in a serpentine manner. Again it is “protected” by the army but popular knowledge is that the army is protecting the drug cartels and their shipments.
This morning we were parked downtown across from the police station. I was going to wait in the car while my friends ran errands. The joke was do I feel safe parked in front of the police station or should I be worried

There is so much to write on this subject and as I said in my introduction I would leave the news to the professionals.
My goal here was to let folks know that overall I feel safe, mainly because I am not out there taking chances. One of my dreams was to travel around the countryside by myself taking photographs. I have never done this and probably never will. At this point I never leave the house unless someone is with me and plan to get the cell phone charged and purchase credit.

On a lighter note as all this was happening last night we had been visiting folks at their ranch in the country. When we were leaving I got out to open the gate and stepped in a very soft, squishing cow patty with my right foot. After I expressed a few expletives, with everyone laughing at me as they drove through, I closed the gate and my left foot found another cow pie of its own.