Don't go to Mexico
As people of a more twittery or facebooky nature may be aware, I'm currently at a conference in San Diego. Now, I have a little time for tourism at the end of the conference, and San Diego is right on the Mexican border, and on the other side of the Mexican border is Tijuana. Tijuana is, at least in popular myth, a seedy, decadent place, home to Tijuana bibles[1], knockoff goods, drugs, drink, probably-apocryphal in the present day donkey shows and so forth. So for a while I considered the possibility of pootling over the border and wandering around the safer parts, in a social-anthropology kind of way. Now, it turns out that the US government has a warning out not to go there because of recently-increased border-related drug trade violence, and is also turns out that my fine university-provided insurance doesn't include Mexico. So my 1 1/2 days tourism in San Diego are likely to include cuddlier things such as pandas and lighthouses instead. But just out of interest I started asking people at the conference what they thought of the day-trip idea. The results were kind of interesting from a perception-of-risk standpoint.
Some context which may be useful: recently, a 17-year old girl was raped and murdered in San Diego. A suspect was identified very quickly, and there appears to be a strong case against him. The story was a national news item in the kind of feverish 24-hour breaking-news reporting way that US news does.
So, the actual safety implications of what happened, assuming they have arrested the right person, are IMHO the following:
* San Diego is now a bit safer for teenage girls than it was previously
* The safety of San Diego for me is pretty much unchanged
* The safety of Tijuana for teenage girls may have gone up slightly, but for me is pretty much unchanged
* FFS, people, these events make national news because they are very, very rare. It is equally death-inducing to be killed by a car whilst crossing the road as it is to be murdered. Except that when a hot teenager gets killed crossing the road it doesn't tend to make national US news, because there is no whodunnit mystery involved and it happens too often for it to be considered of interest. This is a shitty way to propogate a realistic sense of risk, but arguably that's not the function of TV news (news centred on accurate reporting of risk would be a bit strange and dull, I suppose?)[2].
In terms of the safety of Tijuana in general, the US government warning suggests that the biggest dangers are likely to come from knowningly or unknowingly interacting with drug dealers, and/or getting caught up in general violence. AFAIK ones general risk of getting caught up in violence is much higher if one is male. This is certainly the case in the UK. Travelling on ones own I would guess is more risky in general (e.g. for being mugged) than going in a group (although it is something I am fairly used to doing). I also guess that there is some female-specific risk of being subject to seedy come-ons, although I've not really found this much of a problem in parts of the world where it's been flagged up as an issue. Probably this is because of my champion skills at ignoring people.
As you may by now be expecting, the universal chorus of "Don't go to Tijuana" from everyone I mentioned it to centred very strongly on the risks of being a woman, particularly given the recent San Diego murder case. It's OK, guys. I get that there are risks. But I find it kind of annoying that as far as I can work out people aren't concentrating on the right risks[3].
[1] A bunch of which are scanned in here, for history-of-porn scholars.
[2] There is an interesting effect like this with regard to media reporting of air crashes, at least anecdotally. Air safety used to be pretty bad in places like Africa and Russia. So when, say, Aeroflot steered an Ilyushin into some outcrop in the Urals, it didn't tend to make Western news. Air safety in these regions has now improved a lot; enough that crashes there now do make the Western news. So the casual observer in these parts might conclude that the number of crashes has gone up.
[3] FWIW some extra reasons were provided too, to wit:
The probably fairly realistic: "You will be ripped off."
The very South-Californian: "You can't take your rental car over the border."
The local: "I come from Tijuana. You don't want to go there. It's really touristy."
The cryptic: "I went there once. I wish I hadn't."
Some context which may be useful: recently, a 17-year old girl was raped and murdered in San Diego. A suspect was identified very quickly, and there appears to be a strong case against him. The story was a national news item in the kind of feverish 24-hour breaking-news reporting way that US news does.
So, the actual safety implications of what happened, assuming they have arrested the right person, are IMHO the following:
* San Diego is now a bit safer for teenage girls than it was previously
* The safety of San Diego for me is pretty much unchanged
* The safety of Tijuana for teenage girls may have gone up slightly, but for me is pretty much unchanged
* FFS, people, these events make national news because they are very, very rare. It is equally death-inducing to be killed by a car whilst crossing the road as it is to be murdered. Except that when a hot teenager gets killed crossing the road it doesn't tend to make national US news, because there is no whodunnit mystery involved and it happens too often for it to be considered of interest. This is a shitty way to propogate a realistic sense of risk, but arguably that's not the function of TV news (news centred on accurate reporting of risk would be a bit strange and dull, I suppose?)[2].
In terms of the safety of Tijuana in general, the US government warning suggests that the biggest dangers are likely to come from knowningly or unknowingly interacting with drug dealers, and/or getting caught up in general violence. AFAIK ones general risk of getting caught up in violence is much higher if one is male. This is certainly the case in the UK. Travelling on ones own I would guess is more risky in general (e.g. for being mugged) than going in a group (although it is something I am fairly used to doing). I also guess that there is some female-specific risk of being subject to seedy come-ons, although I've not really found this much of a problem in parts of the world where it's been flagged up as an issue. Probably this is because of my champion skills at ignoring people.
As you may by now be expecting, the universal chorus of "Don't go to Tijuana" from everyone I mentioned it to centred very strongly on the risks of being a woman, particularly given the recent San Diego murder case. It's OK, guys. I get that there are risks. But I find it kind of annoying that as far as I can work out people aren't concentrating on the right risks[3].
[1] A bunch of which are scanned in here, for history-of-porn scholars.
[2] There is an interesting effect like this with regard to media reporting of air crashes, at least anecdotally. Air safety used to be pretty bad in places like Africa and Russia. So when, say, Aeroflot steered an Ilyushin into some outcrop in the Urals, it didn't tend to make Western news. Air safety in these regions has now improved a lot; enough that crashes there now do make the Western news. So the casual observer in these parts might conclude that the number of crashes has gone up.
[3] FWIW some extra reasons were provided too, to wit:
The probably fairly realistic: "You will be ripped off."
The very South-Californian: "You can't take your rental car over the border."
The local: "I come from Tijuana. You don't want to go there. It's really touristy."
The cryptic: "I went there once. I wish I hadn't."