The first quarter of 2026 is over, and the team at MND is very proud of what we have accomplished so far this year. Before I get to something I genuinely need your help with, let me share one number that stopped me in my tracks this week.
In the first three months of 2026, MND’s website, YouTube channel and social media platforms combined for over 10 MILLION reads and views. To put that in perspective, that’s a 10X increase in our reach since my wife and I acquired MND three years ago. Our goal from Day 1 was to reach 10 million people per month — and we are well on our way to hitting it. Thank you for supporting our independent, advertisement-free, agenda-free news platform.
Now — here’s why I’m writing today.
You’ve been asked the question by family and friends. You know the one. Do you feel safe living in, traveling to, or doing business in Mexico? For me personally, it is the single most common question I get asked. I’d be willing to bet it’s the same for you. Think about your own experience — has it come up at dinner tables, on phone calls, in text threads with worried relatives?
And here’s the question I keep coming back to: Would those same people ask you that if you lived in France? Or Italy? Almost certainly not. In fact, not long ago, a friend from Israel told me that even as conflict consumed the Middle East region, his friends kept asking him if he felt safe living in Mexico. Let that sink in for a moment.
So why does Mexico have this narrative? I think it comes down to two things.
First — Mexico does have elevated crime rates in certain cities and states. That’s real and it deserves honest acknowledgment. We at MND have never shied away from covering it, including our coverage of the fall of El Mencho in February, when foreign headlines ranged from alarmist to outright fabricated — including AI-generated images of burning airports that never happened.
Second — and this is where it gets frustrating — international media consistently and selectively focuses on violence in Mexico while often stripping away the context. The result is that millions of people carry a mental picture of Mexico’s safety that bears almost no resemblance to the lived experience of the people actually here. This is, in fact, the reason my wife and I bought Mexico News Daily in the first place. As I wrote in 2024, many media outlets have abandoned impartial coverage in favor of sensationalist stories and opinion masquerading as news. Mexico has been one of the greatest victims of that trend. And as Charlotte Smith wrote powerfully on MND just weeks ago — after watching lies outpace truth on social media in real time — “you don’t get to lie about my home.”
The Mexican government publishes detailed crime and safety perception statistics — but logically and understandably, the focus is on Mexicans living in Mexico. But what about the 2 million-plus expats who call Mexico home? What about the 30 million-plus foreigners who visit each year? What are their real risks? What do they actually perceive? Where are those risks highest — and what does daily life genuinely feel like for the people living it?
Nobody was systematically answering those questions. Until now. MND is launching the MND Expat Safety Perceptions Index™ — a quarterly survey conducted exclusively with expats, immigrants, and foreign nationals living in Mexico. Every quarter, we’ll ask the same questions to thousands of expats living across the country, then analyze and publish the findings as a formal, citable index. This is the kind of fact-based, context-rich resource that I believe the expat community has needed for years — and that the broader conversation about Mexico desperately lacks.
Here is what this will give you:
- Real data on what expats across Mexico are actually experiencing and perceiving — not what headlines say, not what government surveys of Mexican citizens show.
- City-by-city breakdowns so you can see how your community compares to others.
- Trend tracking over time — so we can all see whether things are genuinely getting better, worse, or staying the same.
- A fact-based resource you can share with worried family and friends — something credible to point to when the question comes up at the next dinner table.
But this only works if you participate. The more expats we hear from across more cities, the more powerful and representative this index becomes. And it takes you less than 5 minutes, four times a year.
If you are an expat, immigrant or foreign national living in Mexico:
CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE MND Expat Perceptions Index SURVEY PANEL — THE FIRST SURVEY GOES OUT NEXT WEEK
(It’s anonymous, takes under 5 minutes, and you can opt out at any time.)
And one more request: Please share this column with expat friends living in Mexico. The strength of this index is directly proportional to how many voices it includes. Your network will help make this index truly representative of the expat experience nationwide.
I’ve spent nearly 30 years living, working and building things in Mexico. I started a podcast named “Confidently Wrong” precisely because I’ve watched smart, well-intentioned people be confidently, completely wrong about this country — about its cities, its people, its risks and its rewards. This is our most direct attempt yet to replace confident wrongness with something better: real data from real people living real lives here. As I noted when examining the narrative being pushed around cartel violence, mainstream media continues to make Mexico sound more dangerous than it is — and in an era where AI can fabricate images of burning airports and deepfakes can manufacture “eyewitness” video of events that never occurred, the only reliable antidote is hard data collected from real people on the ground.
Imagine a world where the conversation about safety in Mexico is actually grounded in reality. A world where your family and friends asking “But is it safe?” can be pointed to hard data from thousands of expats, instead of an influencer looking for clicks.
Thank you for reading MND — and for helping us build something that will benefit every expat in this country, every future expat considering the move, and Mexico itself.
Travis Bembenek is the CEO of Mexico News Daily and has been living, working or playing in Mexico for nearly 30 years.
