Thread: Number of Americans killed in Mexico continues to rise

Number of Americans killed in Mexico continues to rise

Deadly violence strikes areas once considered peaceful for U.S. retirees

By Dudley Althaus and Lise Olsen
Updated 11:40 p.m., Sunday, April 29, 2012

CHAPALA, MEXICO - Mexico's violence came crashing into the retirement dream of Houston's Lorraine Kulig and hundreds of other Americans last fall when gangsters shot it out and set off a bomb in this usually bucolic town on the shore of the nation's largest lake.

"We all know this is a gang problem. We have no connection with drugs," said Kulig, 55, who retired to the quaint small city of Chapala three years ago with her husband Michael and now helps run the Lone Star Club, a monthly gathering of Texans living in the area. "But we can be caught in the crossfire."

And not just crossfire.

In the neighboring town of Ajijic, where foreigners have been settling for decades, 69-year-old American Chris Kahr was unloading groceries from his car when a thief jumped him from behind, fired a single bullet into his chest and fled. The November murder was the third last year to strike an American from the communities along Lake Chapala in Jalisco state.

Last year, a record 120 Americans were killed in Mexico, compared with just 35 in 2007. Most happened in areas bordering the U.S. But for the first time, a significant number of murders occurred in previously peaceful areas like Jalisco state, where 14 Americans were killed, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of U.S. State Department data.

'Heads in the sand'

The Chapala shootout and Kahr's death punctuated months of insecurity - burglaries, assaults, gangland shootouts and executions - in the area since last summer.

American and other foreign residents with financial and emotional commitments to their adopted homes, tend to downplay such events. But more than a few have felt rattled.

"We weren't seeing anything here so we all, foreigners and Mexicans alike, kind of put our heads in the sand," said writer Judy King, 67, who has lived in Ajijic for 21 years and works part time dispensing real estate and advice to foreigners looking to retire. "And now it's here."

As Mexico's heightened criminal violence grinds into its sixth year, Americans traveling or living in the country increasingly find themselves at risk: caught in crossfire, assaulted in their homes or on the street, targeted by criminals for a range of reasons.

While still miniscule compared to the more than 50,000 Mexicans claimed by the violence, the annual tally of Americans slain has risen steadily since 2007.

Half of last year's American homicides happened in Mexican border cities and towns - a third in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez alone. Many involved lifelong border residents born in the United States. But the killings increasingly have occurred deep inside Mexico. The State Department issued a travel warning in February that advises U.S. citizens to avoid 14 of Mexico's 32 states and to use extreme caution when visiting four others.

The risks remain small given that 19.9 million Americans visited Mexico last year, and as many as 1 million U.S. citizens live there, according to U.S. government estimates.

Mexican gangsters aren't "going after Americans specifically in any way, either tourists or people involved in that business," said Hugo Rodriguez, head of the State Department's citizens services section for the Americas.

Highway shootings

Many U.S. citizens killed by cartel members involved cases of mistaken identity or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he said.

Five teenagers were among the Americans killed or seriously wounded after being accidentally caught in cartel shootouts in hotly contested areas in Michoacan, Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana last year, Rodriguez said.

Others fell victim to highway robbers or illegal roadblocks in volatile states like Veracruz and Tamaulipas. A U.S. citizen and her Texas-born daughter on their way to visit relatives for Christmas were killed when gangsters sprayed a passenger bus near the Gulf port city of Tampico. And a 59-year-old Texas-based missionary was fatally shot while traveling with her husband on a highway about 70 miles south of the U.S. border.

'My town has changed'

Though not necessarily tied to the drug war, recession-related increases in crimes such as ATM robberies, home invasions and kidnappings affect Americans as well as Mexicans, said Rodriguez. Peaceful ex-pat communities like colonial San Miguel de Allende and Lake Chapala each lost longtime residents to homicide.

Kahr's killing came days after the break-in and brutal assault of an American woman in her Ajijic house. The incidents spurred hundreds of American, Canadians and other residents to form a community watch group and pressure officials both for arrests and for better security.

"I hate that my town has changed," said Realtor Linda Fossi, who moved to Ajijic 14 years ago from California. "You can't hide behind a curtain and pretend everything is fine. Things are not fine. I am devastated by it."

Other victims

In addition to Kahr, last year's American victims from the Lake Chapala area included 65-year- old retiree Allan Turnipseed, apparently shot in the head by two U.S.-born teenaged brothers that he had befriended and invited into his home. Another longtime resident, David Reitz, was killed days before Thanksgiving in Puerto Vallarta by two men from Chapala, one of whom police say had a "sentimental relationship" with the slain American.

Kulig, who moved from the community of Walden on Lake Houston, and many other foreign residents refuse to be daunted, reveling in the new lives they've chosen.

David Truly, 56, who did his doctoral research on the foreign retirees 15 years ago, added, "The types of people who come here are very adventurous. They are used to adapting."

Number of Americans killed in Mexico continues to rise - Houston Chronicle

"kinda hid our heads in the sand" a quote from this story. That has been THE problem with the mexican border problems for 25+ years. As long as it did not happen to me or affect my family, it is someone else's problem. Study American history, and it is one of our largest defects of character as a nation. Are we strong enoiugh and unified enough now? Questionable, we've had our heads in the sand a long time over this one!

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