Further restrictions on Mexican travel by United States government employees have been widely interpreted as a new travel alert for several Mexican states, but they are not.
The U.S. State Department revised its travel advisory for Mexico yesterday by announcing that a July 13 personnel restriction against travel to the downtown area of Ciudad Juárez will continue until further notice because “the higher rates of homicides during daylight hours that prompted that determination have not decreased . . . .”
The Chihuahua border city has seen a drastic spike in homicides.
But nothing else appears to have changed in the Mexico travel advisory.
At least one Mexican newspaper implied that travel warnings for Colima, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Michoacán and Guerrero were new, where in fact they have not changed since January. Several U.S. newspapers offered similar reports, some linking the updated advisory to the violent murders this week of eight people in Cancún.
The bodies — three were dismembered and one was beheaded — were discovered during an eight-hour period on Tuesday in various parts of the city, bringing to about 350 the number of assassinations so far this year.
But there has been no change in the United States’ travel advisory for Cancún or Quintana Roo.
The state government said today that incidents that occurred this week are related to actions between organized crime groups and have not involved local citizens or visitors.
The violence is attributed to turf wars between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Los Zetas, as well as other regional crime gangs.
