Visitors from the United States in general and California in particular are becoming increasingly reluctant to visit Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, especially without a secure hotel room. The Reuters online news network has reported that weddings have been canceled. Lobster houses are nearly empty on the normally well traveled New Year’s weekend.
While the Mexican Government has reportedly been handing out maps of trails for immigrants to enter the U.S. illegally, it is somewhat ironic that many Americans are deliberately avoiding mexico.
Americans have long tolerated shakedowns by law enforcement authorities south of the border who all too routinely supplement their income by pulling over drivers for supposed traffic violations, and visitors have long realized that some sections of Baja California are a hotbed of narcotic-driven violence. Yet a number of assaults in the last few months by masked and armed bandits,
a few of which have been using flashing lights in order to look like the police, seems to symbolize a whole new low which has scared even veteran visitors.
Lori Hoffman, for example, who happens to be a San Diego nurse, stated that she was sexually assaulted on October 23 by 2 masked men right in front of her boyfriend, San Diego Surfing Academy owner Pat Weber, who was forced to kneel at gunpoint for some forty five long minutes while they raped her. They were at a campground with at least thirty tents, about two hundred miles or so south of the California border.
The masked Mexican men shot out windows of their trailer and forced their way inside, ransacked the cupboards and left with about $7,000 worth of merchandise such as computers, video equipment and even a guitar.
Weber, who has taught dozens of students in Mexico over the last ten years, will not be returning. “No more Mexico,” stated Lori Hoffman, who reported the attack to the Mexican authorities. perhaps not surprisingly, there have been no arrests.
News of these horrible assaults on U.S. tourists has begun to overwhelm this appeal, especially in the northern region of Baja California, which is a haven for lawless narcotic gangs. The relatively isolated southern tip of Baja, meanwhile, with several popular resourts, remains safer, relatively speaking and is still quite popular with many celebrities, anglers and visitors fromother countries as well.
Local media and also various surfing sites which promoted Baja California previously have reported a number of horrific crimes which U.S. and Mexican officials alike consider to be credible. Some Longtime visitors are especially wary of a toll road near the border which runs through Playas de Rosarito, also known as Rosarito Beach.
At the end of November, for example, as they returned from the Baja 1000 off-road race, a San Diego family was pulled over on the toll road by a vehicle with flashing lights. A number of heavily armed men then held the whole family hostage for some 2 hours. They finally released them but stole their vehicle, leaving them stranded and in shock.
Before dawn on Aug. 31, three surfers were carjacked on the same stretch of highway. Gunmen pulled them over in a car with flashing lights, forced them out of their vehicles and ordered one to kneel. They took the trucks and left the surfers.
Aqua Adventures of San Diego scrapped its annual three-day kayak trip to scout for whales in January, ending a run of about 10 years. Customers had already been complaining about longer waits to return to the U.S.; crime gave them another reason to stay away.
In the meantime, the State Department has long been prudently warning motorists on Mexico’s border to watch for people following them, though no new warnings have been issued.
