Americans Warned to Stay Away from Mexico -- Again
Americans Warned to Stay Away from Mexico -- Again
Updated: Monday, 25 Apr 2011, 8:03 AM MDT
Published : Sunday, 24 Apr 2011, 11:13 PM MDT
WASHINGTON - In the Border Battle -- the U.S. State Department is warning Americans to stay away from even more locations in Mexico now.
Cutting off non-essential travel is the new warning from the State Department, and it means that most Americans should not go to parts of 11 Mexican states.
That almost doubles the number of states that the U.S. government had already been concerned about.
This comes after another outbreak of violence in the resort city of Acapulco.
At a time when many Mexicans and U.S. tourists would normally be heading for the beaches there -- six women, one of whom was just 14 years old -- were found naked and tied up -- brutally murdered.
Acapulco is in the state of Guerrero, and according to one Mexican newspaper, there were 137 drug murders in that state alone, just in April.
It's clear from this latest warning that the violence is spreading to areas frequented by Americans.
"It's now begun to creep into the tourist areas, where acts of criminality have occurred. So this is, I think, raising the profile of the drug problem in Mexico in a way that is hasn't been so far," said former Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.
Last week, more than two dozen bodies were found in a mass grave in the state of Durango, which was already part of a U.S. state department's travel warning.
The carnage from Mexico's drug war which started in 2006, has already claimed some 36,000 lives.
The latest reports of violence especially the murders in Acapulco, have to be deeply concerning for Mexican officials, because so much of the country's economy relies on tourism.
U.S. Dept. of State Travel Warning
Information on states in Mexico
http://travel.state.gov/travel
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/enterta ... n-04242011
