CANCUN, Mexico, March 18, 2009
Spring Break In A War Zone
CBS Evening News: College Students Head To Mexico Even As Fighting Between Drug Cartels And Authorities Rages Around Them
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Play CBS Video Video Spring Break In Rocky Mexico A travel alert was recently issued warning U.S. tourists about the raging drug war in Mexico. But, as Seth Doane reports, thousands of American college students will celebrate spring break there.
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Tens of thousands of American college students flocked to Mexico this week for spring break in spite of the rising tide of violence between authorities and drug cartels in that country. (CBS)
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Americans watch as war is waged along their southern border, at the same time they're seeing thousands of U.S. students getting on planes, heading to Mexico, on vacation.
Spring break has always pitted parents' worries against students' wants, but rarely quite like this.
"I know my mom wasn't going to let me come," says bikini-clad Kimberly Tobey, from Wakefield, Mass.
"My parents especially were really scared, they begged us not to come," says another young woman.
If anything could detract from the pictures of sugary beaches in Cancun, Mexico, it would be this: an ongoing battle among drug cartels and against government forces across the country, which in the last 15 months has killed more than 7,000 people.
They're headlines that caught the eye of Marisa Jetter, a junior at Fordham University, as she prepared for spring break in Cancun. She read about the travel alert in a student newspaper.
"I opened up one of the papers and I was like… Oh, the first article 'escalating violence on the border'," Jetter said.
Mexico's fight against the cartels led the U.S. State Department to issue a "travel alert" on their Web site encouraging citizens "throughout" Mexico to "excerise caution."
"I'm nervous," Jetter said. "But then I keep talking myself down like, 'you'll be fine… you'll be fine.'"
It's a public-relations nightmare for a resort town that depends on tourism as its biggest money-maker, Doane reports. While most of the violence is in border cities far from Cancun's tourist strip, just last month came a grisly example of an unsavory undercurrent here.
A retired Mexican army general had has hands, wrists and ankles broken before his body was riddled with bullets. He was in Cancun to overhaul the local police force, after it was believed to be infiltrated by drug cartels.
Cartels operate in the shadows just a few miles from the tourist zone. Where heavily armed federal police, and even the military, patrol the streets. It was a reminder that Cancun is an important smuggling route for drugs headed to the United States.
Meanwhile, back on the tourist strip, police tell CBS News they don't see problems and don't expect any either.
Mexico's $13 billion tourism industry actually grew by 3 percent last year, but with violence lurking in the shadows, one the biggest battles in this part of Mexico, is to keep tourists coming.
By Seth Doane
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We ARE fighting a drug war up here. Most of our deaths are drug or alcohol related. Turf wars in cities and criminal activities related to theft for money to buy drugs.
another slanted new story. Why do you not interview about 100 hundred of the U.S. citizens out of about 1 million in Mexico to get a sampling about how we feel about traveling in Mexico? Svincil comment is 100% correct, and I live 70 miles from the border.
I am an American woman, living and working in Cancun. Your report could not be further from the truth. You start out by mentioning kids on spring break being just miles from the danger and violence. Cancun is 1000s of miles from the Mexico-US border, where the major violence is taking place. You specifically mention Cancun and that is just irresponsible reporting and nothing less than sensationalism.
Of course Cancun has crime. It is a city of nearly a million people. However, the tourist areas are safer than any place I've been/lived in the US though. You took ONE isolated incident of violence related to the ongoing drug war in Mexico...one that had absolutely nothing to do with tourists or the safety of tourists, nor did it occur anywhere near Cancun's city center or hotel zone...and you highlighted that incident to feebly support your story about Cancun being so dangerous.
As a resident of Cancun for nearly 6 years, I can honestly tell you that the most dangerous things I encounter regularly are uneven sidewalks, holes in sidewalks that would really do some damage if I fell in them, bad wiring, crazy drivers, sunburn, and second-hand smoke.
I can only hope that people thinking about visiting Cancun will actually do a bit of research on their own beforehand, because the so-called news agencies certainly aren't reporting any accurate information about my city.
When you get the facts, I'd love to see a report giving your viewers the CORRECT information. Until then, I'll continue tuning in to other networks.