Mexico: Acapulco gunfight is another setback for that country’s struggling tourism industry
Another major setback for Mexico tourism: A shootout on Saturday night in the resort town of Acapulco has claimed the lives of 16 gunmen and two soldiers.
The gunfight occurred “in a seaside neighborhood of homes and cut-rate hotels that is mainly frequented by Mexicans and sits several miles from the main strip of tourist complexes. Some guests were reportedly evacuated from nearby hotels, but no tourists were known to have been caught in the crossfire,” according to a Los Angeles Times article by Ken Ellingwood.
The two-hour battle was between soldiers and gunmen apparently holding police officers hostage at an Acapulco house, as reported in an Associated Press video posted on The Times website.
In their survey following the shootout, army soldiers recovered “49 rifles and handguns, 13 grenades and two grenade launchers,” according to Ellingwood’s article.
This incident was the “most deadly between gangsters and the army since early February, when soldiers killed 14 gunmen in Villa Ahumada, a market town on the main highway linking the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, to the Mexican interior,” reported the Houston Chronicle.
That this new incident in Mexico’s drug war occurred at all is, of course, tragic, but that it occurred in a resort locale like Acapulco is doubly grim for Mexico’s tourism industry, still trying to find its footing after the swine flu outbreak, and amid the economic crisis and the drug-war violence in other parts of the country.
The longtime drug war has largely taken place far away from the resorts. As I’d blogged in April, not long ago, the Mexico Tourism Board launched a public relations campaign assuring would-be visitors about the safety of travel to tourist centers, including Acapulco.
Though tourists were unharmed in the shooting, some reportedly did hear gunshots. For tourism and other sectors, the reverberations of the incident will likely extend beyond the weekend battle.
— Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Photo: A soldier during the shootout. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency
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June 8th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
There is no doubt in my mind that Mexico’s economy will badly from these activities. If the condition detoriates, we in USA will see even more illegal immigratiion. We were planning to visit Cabo this year but that plan is all but cancelled.
Infact I was reasing on a site called http://www.saching.com an article titled ‘Next wave of illegal immigration to U.S.: Chinese tourists via Mexico’. According to which Mexico may allow tourists from China without visa. This will lead even illegal Chinese across the Mexican border across the USA.
Mexican government did not initially act hard on these cartels because of all the dollars they bring in their country, but that soft approach has now backfired. They are forced to deal with it when it’s a huge problem.