Thieves target Mexico airport, shoot Frenchman

MARK STEVENSON, an Associated Press Writer, is quoted in InYork Website:

MEXICO CITY—Thieves apparently targeting people who exchange money at Mexico City's international airport shot a French citizen in the head on Tuesday, and authorities warned that gangs have put lookouts at exchange windows in the terminal.

Read the entire story here.

This is just one of many stories that is reported in the press. There are more stories I've heard from those who have personally experienced them.

A local Gringo business owner told me of his friend who went to Mexico City and who tried to use the subway system. A gang, armed to the teeth, confronted him. He forked over the money with no resistance and for his cooperation was promptly shot in the face.

And, get this, I get hate mail from readers when I write how dangerous it is to fly into Mexico City or even visit it.

Can you explain that?

Can you begin to explain why someone reading my book, THE PLAIN TRUTH ABOUT LIVING IN MEXICO, would, based the chapter on crime, offer such vitriol when I mentioned the dangers of even visiting Mexico City?

I wrote that chapter in 2004 and if anything, the crime is even worse!

Learning Spanish – You've Got To Do It!

ICESI, the Employers’ Confederation (COPARMEX) and security experts say that more than 90 percent of the crimes reported in Mexico City go unpunished.

In more than 350 online and print (print newspapers and magazines) articles, four books, and countless Blog and Website entries, I have stressed, among many things, the vital and even potentially life-saving importance of Learning Spanish if you want to live in Mexico. I would even go as far to say that to qualify for a FM3 or FM2 visa, you should be required to have an intermediate to high-intermediate proficiency in the language.

On so many levels this is such a demonstrable thing.

I've written about a friend who had a seizure in a town in Mexico where English was not widely spoken. She was rushed to an emergency clinic where no one spoke English. Though she turned out to be fine, she was unable to communicate her rather complex medical history to the doctor. My critics have offered the idea that there are English-speaking doctors in the town where this woman was an expat. However, "so what" is what I say to that! When seconds count in a life-threatening emergency, do you want to wait for the almost impossible task of finding an English-speaking doctor or some passerby who is willing to be a translator?

Here's another point about which I am convinced that no matter how hard and long I harp, Gringos from San Miguel de Allende to Puerto Vallarta will never concede.

If you can't read, speak, or write in the language, how will you ever, no matter how long you live in Mexico, know what to do when crime comes knocking at your front door?

A salient example of this was in the new "Gto_List". This stands for "Guanajuato List" and is a chat forum on Google created for expats in Guanajuato to keep in touch.

Recently, there was a posting on the Gto_List that detailed one of its members, a long-time expat, who was hit up (extorted) for money by the police. It was a "protection" money racket perpetrated by a young man dressed as Guanajuato cop. Now, whether this guy was a cop or not is anyone's guess. I would not have doubted it since the perpetrators in this sort of illegal racket are too often really police.

Anyway, the poor woman, the victim, wrote a plaintive cry on the Gto_List asking what to do.

What would you guess was the universal answer?

"CALL THE POLICE"

Language is the portal to the culture and once you walk through the portal of culture, linguistically prepared, you just may not like what you see.

To call the police to report the police is asking for trouble in ways unimaginable.

When Gringos gave the advice to call the cops, they were revealing their massive cultural ignorance and the fact that they can't read, speak, or write Spanish. If they had any ability whatsoever in the language, read the newspapers and watched the local news programs, they would have known that not even the Mexicans in this country call the police.

"To Protect and to Serve" is an American euphemism or axiom that reflects an American cultural set piece and not Mexican.

The police in Mexico are not seen as agents of "Protection and Service." In fact, most crimes in Mexico go unreported for the very reason that the police cannot be trusted.

And, you cannot possibly know this apart from reading, writing, speaking, and listening to the news reports on TV or in the paper.

What is utterly maddening about this is how I have been preaching this non-stop in my books, articles, and in anything else I can get published. And yet, the response from Americans has been invective, vitriolic, threatening on the same level of Mexican extortionists, filling me with as much terror as I feel when I read about local news events in the Mexican newspapers.

Here is an example of the mentally disturbed illusion that so permeates the Gringolandian's mindset:

"The people of Mexico routinely treat strangers with warmth and curiosity. The people here seem to have the ability to enjoy life, be more hospitable, more respectful of their fellow man. The people are almost always willing to stop whatever they are doing to be of assistance to a friend, a neighbor or a stranger. It seems they welcome any opportunity to be helpful. Isn't that the way life should be?"

Keep this phrase, "… more respectful of their fellow man…" in mind while reading the Guanajuato Newspaper, El Correo, which reports,

"According to data provided by the Federal Ministry of Public Security, in the first half of 2008 have been over 893 thousand attempted extortions.

Since 2001, more than eight million 770 thousand people have received calls of attempted extortion, which have been used more than 55 thousand 600 wireless numbers. 40 per cent of these numbers for the Federal District." (Sin opciones, los comerciantes se rinden ante extorsionadores; http://www.correo-gto.com.mx/notas.asp?id=101294.)

You can find cases in chat rooms and forum postings of allegations of Americans now receiving these "pay up or we kill your husband/wife" cell phone and home calls. I heard of one report right here in Guanajuato although I cannot confirm it.

If you can't read Spanish fluently (too bad for you), you are missing out on a heart-breaking interview in El Correo in which a Mexican businessman details his story of victimization by those Mexicans who are the people who "…seem to have the ability to enjoy life, be more hospitable, more respectful of their fellow man."

In the story, he asks rhetorically just how did these extortionists get his cell and home phone numbers and address?

The obvious answer is the widespread institutional corruption that dominates and permeates everything here. Telephone and cellular phone company employees would have sold the information to the extortionists.

And, by the way, the individual in El Correo interview did NOT report his victimization to the police.

For an English resource that seems to accurately reflect what you can read in the Mexican Newspapers, go to this site: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_970.html

So, if you plan on moving to Mexico, you've got to have the resolve to stay out of the uniformed Gringo Bubbles (Gringolandias) and stay informed through the local and national news media. To do that, you've got To Learn Spanish –You've Got To Do
It!

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Please check out my new book by Clicking Here.

Poodles, Eggplant, and Inbreeding

Let me just say that genetics is not considered when it comes to breeding poodles in this town. For some reason, and I think it is INBREEDING, all of the poodles in this town look absolutely the same and that is to say, they look like eggplants with legs.

Let me explain:

Imagine an eggplant with legs. The end of the eggplant that tapers to a small point is the rear end of the dog. The big bulbous end is the chest of the dog with legs, of course. Then, on top of the big bulbous end is another eggplant.

IT HAS NO NECK!

The bulbous end is where what might pass as ears sit and the tapered end of the eggplant is where the hideous little mouth is that does nothing else but squeak. I can't say that it barks. It is like a squeeze toy that sounds like it is caught in a vice and never stops.

The dogs, I am told, are poodles.

They are, in my view, an abomination.

Now, I love dogs. I love most animals except tigers that escape from zoo enclosures and which would try to eat me.

But, whatever it is that is passed off as poodles in Guanajuato is the most ugly thing I have ever seen that has fur and is suppose to be a dog.

And, I am so ashamed to say that when I see these dogs I feel like shrieking as though I was made to see a living nightmare that is, I should add, always trying to bite me. They have this deceptive appearance of a little lamb with that curly fur of theirs but don't let that fool you.

They are murderous.

Then, when I am forced to hear them squeaking like a furry stuffed toy bear stuck in the cog of some machine, making what is an ETERNAL noise, all I have are thoughts of euthanasia.

Learning Spanish and Frontal Lobotomies

"It has been documented that the older one gets the more difficult it becomes to learn a foreign language."

I have often speculated that the very existence of Gringolandias, Gringo Gulches, expat sectors, and the like is because of the linguistic barrier. I may be wrong but it seems a tremendous work of logic to conclude that if Gringos would learn Spanish, they would not have to migrate to cities in Mexico that harbor the most intensively organized Gringolandia infrastructure.

There are exceptions.

I have collected over the years quotes by Gringos who live in these Bubbled compounds and who have either told me to my face or I've read their statements online. There are those Gringos who move to places like San Miguel de Allende and who will say something like:

"Why should I learn Spanish? These Mexicans are not all that interesting."

"Anyone who works for me has to speak English so why should I bother to learn it?"

These are but two statements that seem to be the dominate thinking for these English only Gringolandia.

Others have told me they are much too old to acquire a second language. Other than the Gringo, Carpet bagging mostly American the "too old" factor is cited most often as their reason for not learning Spanish.

Actually, there is no credible evidence to show that the older one becomes the more difficult it is to learn a foreign language. This belief is almost an urban myth and is not linguistically sound.

It is an emotional issue that prevents adults from trying and succeeding to learn Spanish.

Researchers Krashen, Long, and Scarcella showed that,

"Studies comparing the rate of second language acquisition in children and adults have shown that although children may have an advantage in achieving native-like fluency in the long run, adults actually learn languages more quickly than children in the early stages. (Krashen, Long, and Scarcella, 1979)."

The conclusion this study draws is adults can develop a working ability in the target language much faster than a child can. So just where did this hideous stereotype about adults learning foreign language originate? It came from some very old science.

There used to be a theory on "brain development" from the 1960's that taught that there was a "crucial period" an individual had before the brain lost its "plasticity," making learning a second language too difficult. (Lenneberg, 1967)

It was a belief that if you didn't get your second language learning done before puberty, your goose was pretty well cooked. Modern studies have shown though some differences between how a child and an adult learns a second language do exist, the older learner has the distinct advantage. The adult learner of Spanish can learn the language faster because of the following:

1. The adult's maturely-developed brain has the superior ability to understand the relationship between semantics and grammar.

2. The adult's brain is more mature in its ability to absorb vocabulary, grammatical structures, and to make more "higher order" generalizations and associations.

3. The adult learner's better-developed brain is better at "putting together all the pieces" with a more developed long-term memory.

The biggest obstacle for the adult is the emotional factor. Adults have bought into the myth that they just cannot do it. They are also afraid of making fools of themselves. I have often thought this is the reason children seem to learn Spanish faster than adults do-they are not afraid of the embarrassment factor.

Children also seem to learn Spanish faster because of the natural method to which they resort. They approach learning a foreign language in the identical manner they did when they learned their native language. If you have children, you witnessed this event. Was there not a time when you just knew that your "yet-to-speak anything other than goo-goo and ga-ga" child understood far more than he was letting on?

A chief problem is in the phrase, "language learning." What most people do not realize is there is a difference between language acquisition and language learning. Language acquisition, the ability to engage in spoken fluency, involves a different area of the brain than does language learning.

Unless you've sustained a horrid brain injury like a lobotomy, you can learn Spanish or any foreign language you desire. The research proves this is not only possible but that if you resort to the "Natural Method" of any second language acquisition you will succeed.

The Steps to Fluency in Any Language

1. Listening First

Why You Have to Listen First and Speak Later in Second Language Learning

Learning Spanish - Begin By Listening - Part 1
Learning Spanish - Begin By Listening - Part 2
Learning Spanish - Begin By Listening - Part 3
Learning Spanish - Begin By Listening - Part 4
Learning Spanish - Begin By Listening - Part 5
Learning Spanish - Begin By Listening - Part 6

2. Production in the Language

The Learnables - This course will offer you a "listening only" introduction to Spanish, and other languages, that will build a speech center in your brain for your targeted language. You need this "period of silence" of training your ear to the sounds or music of the language.

Rocket Spanish– This begins the second stage of acquiring spoken fluency. First, you engaged in INPUT with The Learnables. Second, you begin your OUTPUT stage with Rocket Spanish. This is your first attempt at speaking the language. You will develop much vocabulary and learn how to speak the language.

Lately, I have been recommending the Rocket Languages after The Learnables for your introduction into the Production Stage of second Language Acquisition.

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3. Mastering the Rapid Fire Spanish

Immersion Plus Spanish – One of the most misunderstood parts of becoming fluent in any language is the need of training your ear in the target language. What I mean is, if you cannot hear the euphony or music of the language, you will rarely, if ever, be able to understand what someone is saying to you in the target language. I live in Mexico. I can tell you though I went through massive preparation before coming to Mexico, I did not count on the speed at which the locals speak. It is remarkably fast! This course, by design, will help you with this problem. It addresses this common issue.

SMART SPANISH – This will help further train your ear in the music of the language. It is a great program because it records live interviews with Spanish speakers from Colombians to Spaniards. It dissects the interviews for grammar and vocabulary. Then, the speakers speak at different speeds so you can follow with or without a transcript.

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"That's where they got the gringo."

I thought of posting this as a "Most Hated Gringo" segment but since it was found in the news media perhaps the Gringolandians will hate them and only hate me in a smaller sense for posting it.

In eateries, abduction a la carte

By MARC LACEY

The New York Times

SALTILLO, Coah. - Until recently, before a customer was abducted outside its front door, La Mesón Principal del Norte was known simply as a great place to get meat, usually roasted on a spit in northern style.

But ask a hotel concierge in this industrial city about La Mesón these days and the gastronomy may not come up first. "Be careful," one whispered conspiratorially last month. "That's where they got the gringo." ... Click Here To Read Entire Article

And, before you send me mail on how "Only Those Involved in the Drug Trade" are victims of violent crime, have your read about the Canadians who were shot in a bar? They were enjoying themselves in a bar with no involvement in the drug trade.

###

What bad timing to bring my tourist targeted book out when the crime in Mexico is now affecting even Gringos.

Buy A WALK THROUGH MEXICO'S CROWN JEWEL: A Guanajuato Travelogue and get $28.00 in free gifts! CHECK OUT MY FREE OFFER

The Most Hated Gringo in the World -- 30

a: A person of local or restricted interests or outlook b: a person lacking urban polish or refinement -- Webster's.

It can refer to someone who has a limited, restricted, or non-sophisticated mentality or habits, stereotypical of an inhabitant of "the provinces" (areas distant from the national capital) -- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The only explanation I can offer for many of the most amazing examples of the behavior of "some" Guanajuatenses (those born and bred in Guanajuato) is provincialism. Now, when I say "some" Guanajuatenses are Provincial, I do so to stave off the 1.5 billion emails I will get from the Bubble People (Americans who live in Gringolandia) who will call me all known profanities as well as give me a generous dishing out of death threats.

In realty, I believe that most, if not the majority, of Guanajuato defines provinciality.

The clause, … has a limited, restricted, or non-sophisticated mentality or habits, stereotypical of an inhabitant of the provinces... is what I want to write about today.

Car ownership in Guanajuato is one of the most bizarre things in this culture to observe. Here you have a town in which owning a car is, at least for those living in El Centro, not necessary. The exceptions are, of course, those who live here and have to work in Silao, Leon, or Irapuato. These folks (and we know a lot of them personally) have to drive a car.

The rest of the Guanajuatenses drive, drive, and drive some more when it is not necessary at all. Car ownership for them is not so much needed as it is craved.

A study done in Mexico City found that car owners owned cars for the reputation of owning cars. It wasn't that they needed them; it was to put on airs for the neighbors. You are considered a modern Mexican if you own a car.

PROVINCIALTY: a limited, restricted, or non-sophisticated mentality

Cars are killing the environment and the people who have to live in it but they drive to prove they are modern. It is a matter of increasing one's social standing or class. I asked this Mexican pal why he owned a car and drove it instead of taking public transportation.

Convenience was the man's answer.

The truth is that on almost any day of the week in Guanajuato you can easily witness the most intense traffic jams with cars, taxis, and buses belching bluish-black smoke into the air. In a city that was designed for pedestrian (walking) traffic, you can also witness many pedestrians who have had to don blue surgical masks to protect themselves from the heart-stopping and lung-melting car exhaust. Convenience?

Another thing you will see is a prime example of the angelic patience Mexicans seem to be renowned for in the Gringolandians' web sites and books. These Bubble People will tell you things like:

The people here seem to have the ability to enjoy life, be more hospitable, more respectful of their fellow man.

The woman who made this quote (her name is "Barbie") apparently lives in some other Mexico that I've never heard of in my life.

Someone who talks of the infamous Mexican patience and "the ability to enjoy life" has not ridden in a car with a Mexican driver or watched and listened to Mexicans in cars.

I am supposing here that in the Mexican Driver's Handbook, drivers in Guanajuato missed the section that made the point that "Traffic Jams" would be something with which they would have to contend when driving a car in a city that is not equipped to handle thousands upon thousands of cars that are not needed.

Whatever Mexican patience Gringolandians refer to doesn't exist when a Guanajuatense gets behind the wheel of a car.

Though never arriving on time for anything, Mexicans, when walking on a sidewalk or driving a car encounter someone in front of them, lay on the horn and scream such epithets out the window like,

"You poorly-educated and ill-raised heathen, get the hell out of my way…"

Or something to that effect.

It is truly a mystery worthy of an episode or maybe even an entire documentary on the History or Sci-Fi Channel.

Mexicans will never, ever, get to an appointment on time. And yet, they walk down a sidewalk like someone is chasing them. The drivers drive like they are the ones chasing the pedestrians.

It is an incomprehensible phenomenon. Scientists from all the civilized countries of the world should send teams of researchers to figure this out!

When Guanajuatense Mexicans walk (run as if their hair is on fire) down a sidewalk or drive a car, they can't stand the thought, I can only guess, that someone is in front of them. It must trigger some sort of primordial something or other in them and they will push past you on a sidewalk (I mean push in the most literal sense) or lay on the horn until you get out of their way.

Just this morning, I was walking to the neighborhood store when I witnessed a very salient example.

A lady in a cream-colored sedan had somehow parked (the wrong way, if you must know) in front of a hardware store. Parked the correct way was a truck in back of her car and a large, whale-sized Coca-cola delivery truck that was also parked the right way in front of her. There was no room to get out no matter what feat she resorted to. And, you can bet the farm on the fact she was not in a hurry to get anywhere on time…so, what did she do?

She honked.

The woman laid on the horn as though she had just had a heart attack and was slumped in a heap against the steering wheel. I know this wasn't the case because I stood with the policemen who were standing outside their little police shack watching her. I stood with them as this woman gesticulated wildly and screamed something that sounded vaguely like she wanted the police to come over and do something. The police, now get this, waved at her as though exchanging friendly salutations.

I just love this country!

My landlady is another example. I actually love riding with her when she's driving. While tootling down a street, she will honk at every cross street when there is a car trying to make a left or right turn onto the street she is driving. In parking lots, she NEVER stops to allow someone to back up. Instead, she honks and makes the person pull back into the parking slot so she can pass. When coming up our dead-end street (these are called Privadas), if there is another car coming the opposite way, she will lay on the horn and scream out the window something to the Mexican effect, "You can't find your butt from a hole in the ground…GET OUT OF MY WAY!"

She is unrelenting and makes them back up until she can pass them.

And, if you must know, she does the same thing in the Supermarket when pushing a cart around the store.

She is a barrel of laughs.

So, when you read that Mexicans are some of the most patient and endearing folks on the earth in those web sites written by The Nirvana Syndrome-afflicted Gringos, don't believe it for a minute when coming to Guanajuato!

The Most Hated Gringo in the World – 29

I just got a message from a very nice lady who is a liberal and who reads this blog. She made a some really good points that were a counter-argument, of sorts, about my raging and ravaging liberal comment in The Most Hated Gringo in the World – 28...

I should have made the distinction, but didn't, and am now, that not all liberals without exception are loony. I do not believe that they are and I should have said so. In the areas of environment, animal rights, you could see me in the woods hugging trees with the best of them. I think whales and dolphins are sentient and that it is murder to kill them. So, there you go. I am a closet liberal-conservative hybrid.

However, I have to stick to my position about the Gringolandians in Mexico.

Once, one of my liberal pals (non raging and ravaging,) asked me just why the Gringos in GTO and SMA want to see me die before my time.

And, I have the posts from the death-wishers in case I ever get the ganas to post them on this blog.

My pal went on to say that he had read most of my work and wanted to know what in my writing so enraged them to the point of making death threats.

I just had to shake my head and tell him: "It beats me!"

Read my article in my online article directory and tell me which articles is worth killing me over.

I have not then nor now ever been able to come up with a reasonable answer why they would want to see me dead over my castigating them over the fact the vast majority of the GRINGOLANDIANS don't, and should, learn Spanish.

You tell me!

In the meantime, check out my newest book, A WALK THROUGH MEXICO'S CROWN JEWEL, and the free offer I am making!

The Most Hated Gringo in the World – 28

What I did not count on when I began writing was the multitude of readers who would buy the books I wrote and, in turn, try to give a "reader's review" of the book on Amazon.com which, in essence, amount to personal attacks.

You've got to know something that I have, in recent days, figured out. There are two types of Gringos who move to Mexico. What I am talking about is a kind of demographic of immigrants (if you can even call them immigrants) of those who move here and call themselves expats (fakepats?).

One type, and this is a rare minority, is the Gringo who moves here with the intention of learning Spanish and trying to integrate into the culture as much as is humanly possible. This type will have some variations but there is this drive to be a part of Mexico. Whether or not they make it is dependent upon all manner of variables, but they seem to stay in there swinging that linguistic and cultural bat.

The other type definitely makes up the majority of Gringos in Mexico. They tend to be liberals in both politics and religion. That is to say they are democrats and more or less have no religion. They tend to be of a certain temperament type, which is, I must insist, the stereotypical American that most of the Mexicans we know believe is true of all Americans. They know virtually no Spanish and care only that the culture of Mexico is there to serve them.

Now, here's where it gets very interesting. Type one will buy our books, read our articles, and review them. What I mean by review is that they will make critical remarks and you can tell from how they refer to examples in the books and articles that they've actually read them.

Type two, the ravaging and raging liberal, also buys the book…maybe. Some of them read the free chapter, look at the table of contents, read the other liberals' comments, and then launch into something like this:

P. Chapin "patchapin" (Pahrump, Nevada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

If you want to find out about Mexico, don't buy this book! Not only badly in need of editing, it is so far out of line with Mexico the fool might as well write about living on the moon.

It is so inaccurate, so filled with Anglo-only perception, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. This person just loves the sound of his own voice and opinions. He manages to miss the target no matter how he approaches it.

pat chapin
www.patchapin.com

The real expatriate, not the Fakepatriate, tends to write something like this:

The Plain Truth About Living in Mexico

Highly Recommend, September 8, 2006 By Bruce Drake (Washington, DC) Former Editor with NPR News As someone who has visited Mexico several times as I struggle with my study of Spanish, and who is thinking of moving there, I found this book to be far superior to the general run of guides on the expatriate life or retiring in Mexico. Some of the others of this genre just lack the ring of authenticity, or seemed to be aimed at people with a lot of bucks who are headed for a gated community or an expensive house in Cabo San Lucas. But the Bowers' book has that ring of authenticity and is squarely aimed at the (for lack of a better cliché) "average Joe" who is looking for a life that is different and/or better and needs down-to-earth practical advice on how an American can make this transition.

To date myself, the Bowers' reporting reminds me of the usefulness of a Travel Forum I used to frequent on one of the pioneer online services, CompuServe, where I got the best travel ideas and advice ever from the many participants who gave their firsthand reports, and to whom you could pose the kinds of questions that you don't see answered in newspaper travel sections or guidebooks.

So, if this is the kind of information you are looking for, buy this book as well as the Bowers' book on Guanajuato.

How does one reconcile this? How does one put the pieces of this puzzle together? Here you have a woman, who is an artist and this, frankly, explains a great deal, who resorts to a personal attack in calling me a "fool" while the other reviewer, with impeccable journalistic credentials, reviews the book favorably.

One woman from New York (also explains a great deal) wrote on Amazon.com that she was going to get on a plane, come to Guanajuato, Mexico (where I live), find me, and then was going to slap the stuffing out of me. Amazon.com took off that threatening review.

I've gotten death threats.

I've also had Americans who have come to Guanajuato, found my home, and thanked me profusely for writing the books and for my honesty about life as an American expat.

Just the other day, a couple from Dallas bought us coffee and breakfast to thank us for the help the books have been to them in deciding to come here for language school and eventual expatriation. I was so embarrassed at the praise this kind-hearted woman and her husband were heaping upon me that I thought I would sprout wings and a halo.

Here is a quote from a reviewer of another popular book about Mexico on Amazon that pretty much sums up the truth about touring or living here:

"Having traveled around Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Baja by bus, camioneta, bicycle, and foot, I was amused by the authors' insight.

But Mexico is DANGEROUS, and this book wishfully and flatly denies it. I and other Mexiphiles that I traveled/consorted with are survivors of violent muggings. One, a Mexican-American who went to Mexico City for back surgery, was kidnapped (and miraculously, released alive after three harrowing days). YMMV. Thugs know you're unarmed and carrying what to them is serious cash, or that you are a woman with no recourse.

This book has a strong following among those who have yet to meet with danger. There is just no getting through to these industrial-strength deniers. I stayed with some in an expat colony (read "trailer park") in south Baja. They vaunt this book for telling it like it is but they rarely venture beyond their fortified perimeter.

For a realistic, balanced perspective, at least glance at the country info sheet for Mexico on the State Department's travel site. Try The Daughters of Juarez for insight about the police, if you don't have enough of your own already. Google for "CNN kidnappings."

And Mexico is no longer as cheap as the authors pretend: Mexico's economy has reached the trillion-dollar mark due to trade opening up via customs unions such as NAFTA. Prices are generally rising because more of the people are prosperous and are spending more. Some were left behind, and here's hoping you don't encounter any of those at gunpoint. (In Guadalajara, expect high U.S. prices on everything.)

This is good for exploring backpackers (as opposed to vacationers who just stay put in a pricey resort), but more caution and funds are needed than the authors let on.

UPDATE: In the latest edition, they open their chapter on safety by stating that personal crime stories outlive actual conditions by years. Then they "prove" that the U.S. is more dangerous than Mexico by quoting books published in 1908 and 1931! Hypocrisy.

There is an undercurrent of anti-Americanism throughout. No surprise, I guess, considering the title.

An example of the carefully-crafted sentences in the safety chapter: "In fact, statistics show that you are more likely to be the victim of violent crime while in the United States than in Mexico." But "in fact" they don't cite any statistics. They don't even name their source(s). They don't explain that violent crimes commonly go unreported in Mexico for a variety of reasons and ergo aren't reflected in any statistics. I asked a priest why they didn't report a robbery of the rectory ("Please don't say anything!"). They didn't want the newspaper advertising them as a lucrative target. A woman who tries to report an assault is humiliated in front of male officers and/or a waiting room full of people who are there to report other crimes. Many locals dismiss the notion of reporting a crime to the police as futile; even if they report it, it doesn't get entered and tracked in a computer system. Statistics are often scrubbed when reported to higher-ups to make it appear that everything's fine. "

This reader's statement found in the quote, "For a realistic, balanced perspective..." is absolutely what I have been trying to do: present a reality check for those who could be fooled by the hype (deception) that is designed to get you to buy real estate.

By the way, the book this large quote is referring to is one of the many I've read. Those who detract my books refer to it as the book you should read if you want to know the truth about Mexico.

Type two Gringos do not want their illusions questioned. They want to think of Mexico and Mexicans as safe, sweet, endearing, honest, waiting to serve the American, etc.

They will not entertain one word that says anything else.

And, that's all I am saying!