11/21/14, "US warns citizens to avoid resort of Acapulco," AP, Mark Stevenson, Mexico City
"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."
via Drudge
.
No comments:
Post a Comment