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Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

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Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#41

Post by dariusm5 »

burglekutt wrote: post #31
dariusm5 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Mexico for a few years but decided to leave last year after getting married and having a child. It's an awful place if you value things like safety, health, education, infrastructure, and most importantly, the rule of law. For me all the news reports of kidnappings and violence were just background noise until it hit close to home. My wife's sister-in-laws family was kidnapped and badly beaten to the point…

What city was this in? Every state and city in Mexico can be a different story, but it seems to change every year. Guadalajara seemed safe a few years ago and is now considered dangerous, for example. Yucatan seems like it has been safe for a decade.

Both kidnapping cases were in towns in Jalisco, not too far from Lake Chapala.

Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#42

Post by cloverich »

_robbywashere wrote: post #4

Mexico is a scary place. Violence and or the threat of violence reigns supreme. People are afraid to be outside at night. Every scalable wall is covered either with broken glass or razor wire.

When I lived on the border I was at a family gathering once and was mingling with some folks who used to do business in Mexico. These are all legal and normal businesses run by people with ties to Mexico -- friends or family on both sides, completely bilingual, etc. One by one they were recounting their "The time I decided to close shop and stop going to Mexico..." and I was impressed -- every single story was effectively "Fear local police will kill me". My friend's dad was held at gunpoint, forced to go to an ATM and withdrawl cash, then driven out to middle of nowhere where they pretended they were going to kill him for fun. Like -- super petty lawlessness stuff. Not high brow "send a message" cartel activity. Totally nuts.

These kinds of stories aren't hard to find in people that immigrate from border towns on the Mexican side to the other -- they are everywhere. It made me so sad to live on the border for multiple years and feel too unsafe to ever venture over.

Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#43

Post by stickfigure »

jevoten wrote: post #32
unixhero wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh like the United States is too right? [0],[1],[2],[3]? 0, https://www.dailynews.com/2021/12/28/parents-of-girl-14-kill... 1, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/matthew-wi... 2, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th... 3, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...

If by "like" you mean "1/6th as much", then yes. Homicides per year per 100.000 inhabitants ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... ): Mexico: 29.1 United States: 5.0 Czech Republic: 0.6

Homicide is a local phenomenon that national statistics don't really convey.

The homicide rate (per 100,000) for a few cities in the US:

    New Orleans, LA - 30.5
    Detroit, MI - 41.5
    St Louis, MO - 64.5

Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#44

Post by burglekutt »

dariusm5 wrote: post #41
burglekutt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What city was this in? Every state and city in Mexico can be a different story, but it seems to change every year. Guadalajara seemed safe a few years ago and is now considered dangerous, for example. Yucatan seems like it has been safe for a decade.

Both kidnapping cases were in towns in Jalisco, not too far from Lake Chapala.

Interesting. Chapala is a major gringo enclave and it’s got a rep for being safe.

Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#45

Post by emerged »

stickfigure wrote: post #43
jevoten wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "like" you mean "1/6th as much", then yes. Homicides per year per 100.000 inhabitants ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... ): Mexico: 29.1 United States: 5.0 Czech Republic: 0.6

Homicide is a local phenomenon that national statistics don't really convey. The homicide rate (per 100,000) for a few cities in the US: New Orleans, LA - 30.5 Detroit, MI - 41.5 St Louis, MO - 64.5

Wouldn’t it make sense then to also provide the rates for the worst cities in Mexico?

Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#46

Post by dragonwriter »

stickfigure wrote: post #43
jevoten wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "like" you mean "1/6th as much", then yes. Homicides per year per 100.000 inhabitants ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... ): Mexico: 29.1 United States: 5.0 Czech Republic: 0.6

Homicide is a local phenomenon that national statistics don't really convey. The homicide rate (per 100,000) for a few cities in the US: New Orleans, LA - 30.5 Detroit, MI - 41.5 St Louis, MO - 64.5

> The homicide rate (per 100,000) for a few cities in the US

And a few in México, for comparison:

Tijuana, B.C.: 134.2

Ciudad Juárez, Chih: 104.5

Uruapan, Mich.: 85.5

(These are also the top 3 in the world for cities not notionally at war, and the next 3, plus one more of the top 10, are also in México.)

Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#47

Post by dragonwriter »

serial_dev wrote: post #10
Torifyme12 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Well, that is clear (at least it's clear for anyone who knows a little bit about Mexico). What I believe the original comment meant is when a journalist is killed, at least we should attempt to include specific information about the journalist's recent articles and investigated topics in articles about a journalist's death. It's not very specific that "he investigated the ties between cartels and local officials".

> What I believe the original comment meant is when a journalist is killed, at least we should attempt to include specific information about the journalist's recent articles and investigated topics in articles about a journalist's death.

“We” who? Especially for ongoing investigations, the only people who have that information are employers/coworkers who are likely also known to (and often explicitly under threat from) the same actors.

It's easy as a reader to say to them that “we” should share this information, but it’s not really a “we” that you are part of.

Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#48

Post by helloworld11 »

unixhero wrote: post #37
helloworld11 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claim and links are the classic example of using scary specific cases and anecdotes to extrapolate an argument while ignoring statistical and general tendencies. Mexico's homicide rate is several times higher than that of the U.S. as a whole and the two countries simply don't compare in terms of insecurity, at all. Nor do they compare in sheer crappiness of police response. People may complain about U.S police h…

While I can agree that it is several order magnitude higher in Mexico. That does not change my point. Also the links from Wikipedia are statistics on a national level, so I am not cherry picking data. Let's remind of what my point is: it is bad in Mexico, AND it is bad in the United States.

I disagree. Generally it is not terrible in the U.S. and it's much, much worse in Mexico. Truly you miss the basic point on the differences between violence down here and what happens up north. There are certain U.S. cities with abysmal murder rates due to certain parts of them, granted, but most people living in most of the country are incredibly safe and can can count on remarkably effective justice/police institutions from their government compared to the majority of what's the case in Mexico. For much of the U.S. murder rates by area or state are at western European levels. Your comparison is off base enough to be a case of whatsaboutism.

Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#49

Post by AtlasBarfed »

goodguyamericun wrote: post #38
baybal2 wrote: post #24

USA has a country with a de-facto slow going civil war on its border, and it doesn't seem to even notice.

It does. Trump even offered to send marines. But was rejected

What a nice guy.

When has letting US Soldiers in ever helped a country?

The "Defense Department" doesn't care about freedom. The State Department doesn't care about freedom.

They are extensions of US Corporations, the State Department leaks showed that loud and clear. Corporations only care about control and extraction. If you let US Soldiers into your country, you are ceding control of it to multinational corporations.

And you do realize that the worst of the modern cartels were trained by the US Military and US Intelligence in the "School of the Americas" in espionage, counterespionage, guerilla warfare, asymmetric warfare?

The cherry on top: US Soldiers in another country can rape and murder with impunity. They are immune to prosecution, legally and practically.

And even if you bring in the soldiers... Look at Afghanistan and it's poppy fields. Our little puppet government was producing opiates for the entire world, controlled by Karzai's family. We setup a Narco state. And you think we'll waltz into Mexico and fix things with M-16s and F-35s?

What Mexico needs is decriminalization of drugs in the USA. I used to be opposed to any degrees of legalization because the most abused drugs are the legal ones. But the US needs to deal with its addiction problems itself, without causing a civil war in Mexico and Central America and everywhere else it sources its drugs.

It's what makes the anti-immigrant stance of the right wing so infuriating. How much illegal immigration is the creation of the right wing war on drugs? You think people are traveling the length of Mexico from Central America because it is an easy and safe trip?

Re: Fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year

#50

Post by stickfigure »

dragonwriter wrote: post #46
stickfigure wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homicide is a local phenomenon that national statistics don't really convey. The homicide rate (per 100,000) for a few cities in the US: New Orleans, LA - 30.5 Detroit, MI - 41.5 St Louis, MO - 64.5

> The homicide rate (per 100,000) for a few cities in the US And a few in México, for comparison: Tijuana, B.C.: 134.2 Ciudad Juárez, Chih: 104.5 Uruapan, Mich.: 85.5 (These are also the top 3 in the world for cities not notionally at war, and the next 3, plus one more of the top 10, are also in México.)

The obvious retort is don't go to those cities. I've never heard anyone pitch a relaxing holiday in Juarez.

On the other hand, there are plenty of cities in Mexico with lower rates than major cities in the US. I've had perfectly lovely times in New Orleans and St Louis, despite the murder rate. I've also had perfectly lovely times in:

    Zacatecas 43.0
    Morelia 39.7
    Guadalajara 38.07
...and dozens of other Mexican cities that didn't make the top 50 list so I'm having a hard time finding statistics.

If you're comfortable in Baltimore or Detroit, you should be vastly more comfortable with most of the cities in Mexico.

"Country XYZ has more murder hotspots" is a useless metric. One of the parent comments said "Mexico is a scary place. Violence and or the threat of violence reigns supreme. People are afraid to be outside at night. Every scalable wall is covered either with broken glass or razor wire." That is nonsense, it's a huge country and very little of it looks like Juarez.

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