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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
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Yesterday, I posted a boy combing the “fresh” arrival, while this man — the father — on the burned area to collect residue from aluminum cans and copper from electric wire. On my 4th trip to Mexico, I have not yet been in danger as told in the next passage. Instead, I met poor people whose lives depend on what the city gets rid of.
Welcome to Mexico. Please read this before booking your ticket:
(continued from yesterday)
The Federal District's 741 security firms employ 37,000 people, 10,000 more than the number of cops on the district's streets. Drug dealers and runners and other shadowy types have gone missing in the hundreds. They are called the "narco-disappeared." Union leaders and their followers are also increasingly failing to show up at home at night for dinner. Let's call them the "labor-disappeared." Now the cops are being replaced by soldiers. Some complain it gives the military too much authority. Others respond, "Hey, they've got bigger guns."
For the traveler, Mexico is filled with extremes and has a little danger for everyone.
There are approximately 600 official kidnappings in Mexico each year, around 1,860 over the last three years, and those are just the ones that are reported. With most families of kidnap victims believing it a waste of time to report the crimes to police (and the cops themselves being involved in a number of the abductions), it was only a matter of time before Mexico's bad guys would take the cue from their Colombian buddies and organize. The Arizmendi kidnapping gang-under the protection of two senior officers of Mexico City's anti-kidnapping unit as well as officials from Mexico and Morelos states (the kidnap capital of Mexico)-has snatched at least 15 victims, earning payoffs of more than US$6 million.
Guns are commonly used, and convenience store clerks should get combat pay. Tourists are under attack, often with more violent consequences than are found in many "uncivilized" countries. Mexico is still wild and woolly. Big, bad Mexican desperadoes still exist. Mexico's frontiers are rife with mean, dusty border towns where anything can be had for a price. Corrupt federales, will steal your money and sell you back your personal belongings. Cheap, dark bars still sell ammo, drugs and women. Convention hall-sized whorehouses feature nonstop knife fights. Petty crime flourishes in resort areas. (The World’s Most Dangerous Places — Robert Young Pelton)
"¡Pobre México! Tan lejos de Dios, y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos — Poor Mexico! So far from God, and so close to the United States." (José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori, 1830-1915)
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