No Fun In Acapulco

With the murder of Adam Deprisio, a 19-year-old Canadian on vacation in Acapulco a week ago, there have been a lot of things flying around on the internet and into my inbox. One was a copy of a letter from Adam's aunt, Lucy DeFlippis-Pannozzi, which she has written to her Member of Parliament, setting out the events that happened and stating "Mexico is unsafe for Canadians". She is also asking him to "make others aware of the dangers in traveling to Mexico" and "have the Mexican government take ownership and made accountable of the fact that their civil workers (mainly the police and hospital) failed".

The other was an open letter by Nancy Leoni, someone who vacationed in Acapulco last year and had a similar incident happen to one of her travelling companions. Fortunately for her friend, he survived the beating. In her letter, she says: "We are the ones that support that country, tourism. Without our financial support that country (those dastards {sic} of Mexicans') would not be able to eat" and "We all need to stick together as a nation and teach a lesson to these ungrateful animals."

I am ashamed to call this woman a fellow Canadian.

I have an equal chance of being shot downtown Toronto while shopping. But, to be fair, the results will be different. Hospitals here don't require you to prove your ability to pay before you receive treatment. And the police actually caught the assholes who shot 15-year-old Jane Creba on December 26, 2005. Hopefully, our justice system will deal with them in due course.

The fact is, the government in Mexico, at all levels, is corrupt.You only have to follow world events to know this. Remember the last Mexican federal election? Remember the demonstrations all over the country, especially in Oaxaca? Acapulco is well known by Mexicans as being a dangerous place. That's why I don't go there anymore. And foreigners do not have any rights in Mexico.

This reminds of the time I was at a grocery store in Puerto Vallarta, in line behind a couple of American tourist who were buying Budweiser beer and didn't want the cashier to give them their change in "that money" (pesos). When the ex-pat in line behind me commented, in Spanish, that "someone should have told them they were entering a different country when they got off the plane", we both smiled those knowing smiles of experienced travellers.

Mexico is not Canada. It's a different country with different rules. When you're in their country, you live by their rules. It's as simple as that. And condeming an entire country because of the murderous actions of a few "dastards" is racism in its purest form. I like to think that Canadians, as a whole, are a little bit more open-minded than that.