If you have ever mentioned Mexico to a friend or family member, there is a good chance someone asked the question before you finished the sentence:
“But is it safe?”
It is a fair question. And it deserves a better answer than either “Absolutely not” or “Of course it is.”
Mexico has serious security problems. Some places are dangerous. Some roads should not be driven at night.
But Mexico is also 32 states, thousands of communities and millions of ordinary mornings (including 2M foreigners who call it home) —people walking dogs, meeting friends for breakfast, taking grandchildren to school, standing in line for tortillas, going to work, going home.
We recently asked foreign residents living across 29 Mexican states how safe they feel in the places where they actually live. Their average answer was 88.97 out of 100.
That is not a sales pitch. It does not erase the hard news. It is simply another piece of the truth—one that your television or news media are unlikely to show you.
Good decisions require both truths.
Read more before you decide what you think:
- How safe is Mexico according to its foreign residents? The survey results — What 773 foreign residents in 29 states said about their actual daily experience.
- What people say vs. the hard data: A perspective from our CEO — Travis on why MND believes data should complicate, not confirm, our instincts.
- INEGI: Fewer Mexicans feel unsafe in their cities—but the picture remains complicated — The necessary counterweight: why national and local realities cannot be treated as the same thing.
- Confidently Wrong about safety in Mexico — A deeper conversation about the gap between the Mexico people fear and the Mexico many foreign residents experience.
Travis Bembenek, CEOThere is a difference between being well informed and being well frightened. We think you deserve the first.s.
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