The U.S. Embassy in Mexico issued a security message Friday warning U.S. citizens to avoid the Pacific resort of Acapulco because of violence and protests.
In yet another blow to a coastal city once favored by U.S. movie stars and jet-setters in the 1950s and ’60s, the embassy said its personnel “have been instructed to defer non-essential travel to Acapulco, by air or land,” and added that it “cautions U.S. citizens to follow the same guidelines.”
The alert noted that “protests and violent incidents continue in Guerrero state in response to the disappearance of 43 students there.”
Demonstrators have blocked highways to Acapulco, hijacked buses and blockaded the city’s airport to demand the government find the students who disappeared Sept. 26 in the nearby city of Iguala. Prosecutors say local police working for a drug gang probably turned the students over to gang members, who may have killed them and burned their bodies.
In early November, demonstrators blocked Acapulco’s airport for hours carrying clubs, machetes and gasoline bombs, causing hotel reservations on a subsequent three-day holiday weekend to fall about 35 percent, said Javier Saldivar, head of Acapulco’s business chamber. Hotel occupancy that should have neared 95 percent was only about 60 percent.
“We suffered a serious loss,” Saldivar said.
While U.S. tourists account for about 55 percent of foreign visitors to Mexico, relatively few of them go to Acapulco any more. For example, while Mexico’s most popular cruise ship port, Cozumel, handled 894 cruise ship arrivals in 2013, Acapulco had only 9.
Drug gang violence has also played a role. In recent years there have even been some shootouts on Acapulco’s famed coastal boulevard, but those incidents have calmed somewhat in the last two years.
Acapulco was once a well-regarded destination. It was during a vacation there in the 1960s that novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez came up with the idea for “100 Years of Solitude.” It was there that Bill Clinton took a young woman named Hillary for a honeymoon in 1975.
But in the 1970s and ’80s, the resort’s infrastructure crumbled, and poor, crowded settlements sprung up inland from the bay, sparking rising problems of unemployment, crime and pollution.
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Like it is safer in the U.S. Just one EX—Ferguson
Sad news…and especially worse at the start of the tourist season!
the news is worse for the mothers and fathers of 43 students in Iguala
Alejandro Cuviertas I absolutely agree. But what is even worse is that the violent protests are not coming from those families or student protester, the violence is coming from thugs who don’t care about the problem, they just want to loot places and cause chaos. So now the international media is talking about violence and not the important issue of corruption in the government. Violent protests only keep the corruption going because all the talk is about violence and not 43 missing students. Get rid of the thugs and the parents and students should publicly say that this type of protest is not acceptable, it hurts Mexico and keeps corruption alive. Those parents have every right to be angry, everyone in Mexico should be angry, but to let thugs be the center of the issue will solve nothing.
Sorry, I did not mean to minimize the horror of these missing students, I just meant that the far reaching effects of this horror are more far reaching than we will ever know…..
William has made a good point, yes it’s extremely sad for the parents of the missing students but it’s going to be very sad for the families who rely on tourism to feed their families, they are going to have a tough winter and that’s through no fault of their own.
Hate to hear this!!!
The US press is all over this story. This is not good for all of Mexico not just Acapulco.
Better change your flights and go to Puerto Vallarta instead