(Mexico) State highway improvements in Chihuahua

[J N Winkler]

Chihuahua's Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas, which has responsibility for roads signed as Chihuahua state highways and also for certain capital improvements on Mexican federal highways in Chihuahua, has improved its website radically in the last few years.  This page deals with recent improvements to state (and, I think, federal) highways:

http://www.chihuahua.gob.mx/scop/Contenido/plantilla5.asp?cve_canal=2271&Portal=scop

The roads receiving major makeovers include the back way from San Juanito to Basaseachic, which I remember as being hard to find and impassably rough when I attempted it in December of 2002.  The major attraction in Basaseachic is a waterfall, said to be (IIRC) the second or third highest in North America, which falls into a small, steep-sided valley.  The back road is what you have to take if you want an easy way to see the full height of the waterfall.  If you approach Basaseachic from La Junta via the direct route (Mex. 16), you come out at the top of the waterfall and get a less-than-dramatic view of water running over the cliff edge just under your feet.

[realjd]

There are plenty of places in Mexico that I would have no problem visiting (QR, Mexico City, BC/BCS, etc.). Chihuahua isn't one of them. Aren't they #1 right now for drug crime? It's a shame. I'd love to get to go see that waterfall.

[agentsteel53]

There are plenty of places in Mexico that I would have no problem visiting (QR, Mexico City, BC/BCS, etc.). Chihuahua isn't one of them. Aren't they #1 right now for drug crime? It's a shame. I'd love to get to go see that waterfall.

Chihuahua is a big state.  The reason for the high crime rate is due to the presence of Ciudad Juarez in that state.  I'd have no worries about crime heading out to the rural areas of Chihuahua - my only concern would be to get a damn good map!  I looked on Google Maps and the route to the front of the waterfall seems to be quite the challenge to find.

Perhaps in the field it is signed well*, but when I type in Basaseachic I get a point seemingly in the middle of nowhere, with a "location approximate" qualifier!

if I were to do a Chihuahua run, I'd probably cross into Mexico at Nogales, try to get away from that city, and MX-15 as quickly as possible, by taking MX-2.  Then I'd take either MX-10 or even backtrack on MX-17 to get to MX-16.  I'd have to figure out the exact paperwork I'd need, as clearly Chihuahua is not covered under the "only Sonora" car importation policy, but apparently the Sonora/Chihuahua border on MX-16 does not allow you to get the correct Chihuahua vehicle permit, as it is completely out in the sticks and little more than two guys and an army jeep.

[J N Winkler]

Well, what do you know!  Mexico now has some Google StreetView coverage.  Here is the turnoff for Basaseachic:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Basaseachi,+Chihuahua&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Basaseachi,+Chihuahua,+Mexico&ll=28.209947,-108.208247&spn=0.019249,0.038581&z=15&layer=c&cbll=28.209947,-108.208247&panoid=TcIZ-hapPgUk2YFdVzNEAQ&cbp=12,288.83,,0,4.91

(I think I have eaten in the restaurant off to the left--quite good breakfast omelette, with refried beans on the side, but I don't think they had hot chocolate, which is a Mexican winter treat.)

Chihuahua is, in fact, the largest Mexican state and is signed as El estado más grande de la república mexicana on a cast-concrete welcome sign a few km east of where Mex. 16 crosses the Sonora state line.

http://www.cbrd.co.uk/international/mexico/sierra.shtml

[agentsteel53]

Well, what do you know!  Mexico now has some Google StreetView coverage.  Here is the turnoff for Basaseachic:

well I'll be damned.  I tried dragging the little man onto 16 in that area and got bounced.  Maybe I just wasn't zoomed in enough?

[realjd]

I recognize that the interior of Mexico is mostly safe, but Chihuahua is the exception. It's one of the only areas where Americans are specifically targeted, particularly for carjacking. Even the toll roads aren't safe. FWIW, it's the only Mexican state with a blanket travel ban for US military personnel. The other military bans are specific to border towns, not entire states. My understanding is that the state government has essentially collapsed. Rather than the normal police checkpoints, the cartels are openly running checkpoints along highways.

I tend to take US travel warnings and such with a grain and salt. I'd have no problem spending the day in TJ, and I'd love to make the drive down to Los Cabos along the length of thee Baja peninsula. But Chihuahua (and neighboring Durango) is a completely different story.

[mgk920]

I recognize that the interior of Mexico is mostly safe, but Chihuahua is the exception. It's one of the only areas where Americans are specifically targeted, particularly for carjacking. Even the toll roads aren't safe. FWIW, it's the only Mexican state with a blanket travel ban for US military personnel. The other military bans are specific to border towns, not entire states. My understanding is that the state government has essentially collapsed. Rather than the normal police checkpoints, the cartels are openly running checkpoints along highways.

I tend to take US travel warnings and such with a grain and salt. I'd have no problem spending the day in TJ, and I'd love to make the drive down to Los Cabos along the length of thee Baja peninsula. But Chihuahua (and neighboring Durango) is a completely different story.

I know that this is an off-topic thread drift, but I certainly hope that we won't have to see the USArmy take major action in Mexico again like they had to a century ago.  Things are not going well there and I do have a very real fear of a total collapse in much (if not all) of the country and a resulting flood-tide of millions of refugees heading north.

Mike

[agentsteel53]

I know that this is an off-topic thread drift, but I certainly hope that we won't have to see the USArmy take major action in Mexico again like they had to a century ago.  Things are not going well there and I do have a very real fear of a total collapse in much (if not all) of the country and a resulting flood-tide of millions of refugees heading north.

Mike

they won't do it.  more oil in Libya.

[J N Winkler]

I recognize that the interior of Mexico is mostly safe, but Chihuahua is the exception. It's one of the only areas where Americans are specifically targeted, particularly for carjacking. Even the toll roads aren't safe. FWIW, it's the only Mexican state with a blanket travel ban for US military personnel. The other military bans are specific to border towns, not entire states. My understanding is that the state government has essentially collapsed. Rather than the normal police checkpoints, the cartels are openly running checkpoints along highways.

I'm not sure I would go so far as to say "collapsed" across all sectors (SCOP's website is much more expansive than it was just a few years ago, for example), but it is certainly clear that law enforcement at all levels in Chihuahua--federal, state, local--cannot cope and has not been able to do so for a number of years now, and the violence is certainly not confined to Juárez anymore.

A couple of years ago there was a cartel shootout in Creel which was caught on video and uploaded to YouTube; Creel is a major tourist destination because it is the entrepôt to Copper Canyon from the east and a stop on the Chihuahua al Pacífico excursion train which leaves from the coast and follows the old KCM&O RR line across Copper Canyon en route to Chihuahua city.  (Creel gets its name from Enrique Creel, a governor of Chihuahua and one of Porfirio Diaz' científico advisors, who was one of the Mexican investors in the KCM&O RR.)

I also remember reading a year or two ago that the residents of Nuevos Casas Grandes, which is near the Paquimé ruins which are another important tourist attraction in Chihuahua, had gotten so tired of being pushed around by the cartels that they armed themselves illegally and organized themselves into a vigilante group.  Some cartel soldiers came through and the residents stiff-armed the police until it was time to collect the bodies.  The narcotraficantes had essentially been tortured to death.

Meanwhile, further north and east near the Texas border, the police chief in one of the border towns is apparently a woman under the age of 20, all her recent (male, older, more experienced) predecessors having been killed.  It's been some months since I read this news--I don't know if she is even still alive.

[vdeane]

Last I heard she was still alive... and hiding in the US.

Why don't they just get some automatic rifles and just get rid of the cartels?  They have to know who the members are by now.  I doubt even the meanest cartels could stand up to soldiers/police/citizens armed with automatic rifles shooting to kill.  I can't think of any other solution except ending the war on drugs.

[realjd]

Last I heard she was still alive... and hiding in the US.

Why don't they just get some automatic rifles and just get rid of the cartels?  They have to know who the members are by now.  I doubt even the meanest cartels could stand up to soldiers/police/citizens armed with automatic rifles shooting to kill.  I can't think of any other solution except ending the war on drugs.

Mexican citizens don't enjoy the easy access to firearms that Americans do (although full auto guns are a PITA to get even here). They would most likely have to buy them from the cartels themselves who wouldn't be keen on selling weapons to citizens willing to overthrow them.

Of course the US supplying arms to rebels worked so well in places like Afghanistan. Maybe we should have the CIA start arming villagers.

[nexus73]

Why would anyone in their right mind go to Mexico these days?  Would a smart person have decided their tourism for 1968 should include Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia?  The cartel wars have amassed over 30,000 dead in the last few years and that's more of a Vietnam War-type number so it's obvious it's a real war going on down there.  Iraq and Afghanistan by comparison are mildly contested occupations but I wouldn't put Baghdad or Kabul on my travel list either.

Rick

[agentsteel53]

The cartel wars have amassed over 30,000 dead in the last few years and that's more of a Vietnam War-type number so it's obvious it's a real war going on down there. 

that's not an accurate comparison.

1) US deaths were around 30,000 - the total combatant dead in Vietnam is about 250,000 south and 900,000 north.  Approximately.  And 2 million civilians.  Approximately.  But you see what I'm leading at.

2) Mexico is a much larger surface area than the part of southeast Asia which was at war.

so, to compare Mexico to Vietnam doesn't make much sense. 

[mightyace]

^^^

Agreed.  Saying that you're not going to say Cancun because of what's happening in Chihuahua would be like saying I'm not going to Bahrain because their's trouble in Iraq.

[J N Winkler]

The cartel wars have amassed over 30,000 dead in the last few years and that's more of a Vietnam War-type number so it's obvious it's a real war going on down there.

that's not an accurate comparison.

1) US deaths were around 30,000 - the total combatant dead in Vietnam is about 250,000 south and 900,000 north.  Approximately.  And 2 million civilians.  Approximately.  But you see what I'm leading at.

2) Mexico is a much larger surface area than the part of southeast Asia which was at war.

Vietnam also had a population of about 35 million when the Vietnam War was at its height in the 1960's, so those losses occurred out of a smaller population base than modern Mexico (population currently around 112 million).  The current drug war is not even the worst thing Mexico has undergone in the recent past.  At the time of the Mexican Revolution, which began with the anti-re-election campaign of 1910 and did not start to wind down until the adoption of the 1917 Constitution, Mexico had a population of around 20 million, about 10% of which died in the instability.

A better comparison would be with Chicago during the gangster era, but on a much larger scale.  In Chicago there was no general breakdown of municipal government, but there was widespread corruption and the police were unable to cope with organized crime.  It took federal intervention and the abolition of Prohibition (which eliminated a major revenue source for the gangs) to correct the situation.

P.S.  Vietnam aside, I don't think Cambodia and Laos in 1968 would have been any more odd as a tourist destination than Syria or Egypt in 2010.  Wasn't it actually Nixon who started the "dirty war" in those countries as part of his attempt to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail?

[nexus73]

Cambodia had the Khmer Rouge and Laos had the Pathet Lao, both of which were fighting guerilla wars against the regimes in the respective capital cities of Phnom Penh and Vientiane.  The Ho Chi Minh Trail and various sanctuaries/supply points were also found in those countries.  These nations were definitely war zones in 1968.

The latest casualty count from Mexico shows 38,000 dead over the last 5 years.  When I refer to Vietnam War-type numbers, I am talking about the total US death toll, which was a bit over 58,000 over nearly 20 years.

Just being argumentitive over trivial points and missing the fact that Mexico is VERY DANGEROUS these days shows some of you posters missed the point I was making.  Oh well!

Rick

[agentsteel53]

The latest casualty count from Mexico shows 38,000 dead over the last 5 years.  When I refer to Vietnam War-type numbers, I am talking about the total US death toll, which was a bit over 58,000 over nearly 20 years.

and what is the total US death toll in Mexico over the last few years?  the one source I can find says 850.  Seems plausible to me.  

but, if we're not going to compare apples to apples, why don't we talk about WWII?  over 20 million Soviets dead; does that mean Americans should stop going to the USSR?  Shit, better cancel my flight to Leningrad.

in fact, the Earth in general, throughout its history as a host to humanity, has seen over 100 billion people die.  I should probably launch myself into space, just to be safe.

Just being argumentitive over trivial points and missing the fact that Mexico is VERY DANGEROUS these days shows some of you posters missed the point I was making.

it is horribly dangerous.  why, out of those 850 dead, at least 3500 of them were me on my last trip.  I couldn't even take a minute to pee without getting killed six or seven times.  Gosh!  it got pretty irritating after a while.



typical scene of carnage and bloodshed in Mexico.  You may see my garishly mutilated remains in every pixel of this photo, including up in the air, because that is how thorough they were in killing me.

[realjd]

To illustrate the absurdity of foreign travel warnings, let's play a game. I'll post a travel advisory from a country's foreign travel department, you try to guess the location in question.

What super scary location is this?:
Violent crime remains a serious concern in [location]. Criminals have demonstrated that they will use violence with little or no provocation. Many attacks have occurred in the [city] area, and others have taken place on rural roads and at [highway network] rest areas. Some rest areas have dusk-to-dawn security on site (which is indicated on the highway sign). Proceed cautiously when exiting a freeway (including [freeway]) into large urban centres, especially after dusk. Theft has increased, particularly from trunks of parked cars in the [tourist city] area, [tourist area] and at airports. Be alert, as criminals use a variety of techniques to steal personal belongings.

[agentsteel53]

I actually guessed correctly, so I'm redacting my post so that others may guess.

hint: it's a place whose drivers I constantly bitch and moan about, but I never actually fear for my life. 

[J N Winkler]

The country in question is clearly one with which most of us are familiar to a considerable degree.  I thought the warning itself might be British, but British officialdom has a very distinctive diction which is absent from this.  The answer is here (scroll to bottom):

http://readingeagle.com/mobile/article.aspx?id=306541

Extracts from the actual British advice pertaining to the relevant country:

"A new immigration law in [state] which came into effect on [effective date] is currently subject to Federal injunction to remove some sections of the law. The law makes it a misdemeanour crime for any foreign national to be in [state] without carrying proof of legal immigration status. We advise that if you are planning a trip to [state], either on business or on holiday, you should carry your passport as a means of identity with you at all times.

". . . Medical treatment can be very expensive; there are no special arrangements for British visitors. The British Embassy and Consulates-General cannot assist you with medical expenses. You should ensure that you have comprehensive medical insurance, which includes hospital treatment and medical evacuation to the UK.

". . . There is a general threat from terrorism in the [country]. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers."

[agentsteel53]

The country in question is clearly one with which most of us are familiar to a considerable degree.  I thought the warning itself might be British, but British officialdom has a very distinctive diction which is absent from this.  The answer is here (scroll to bottom):

http://readingeagle.com/mobile/article.aspx?id=306541

the country issuing the warning is Canada. 

[realjd]

The country in question is clearly one with which most of us are familiar to a considerable degree.  I thought the warning itself might be British, but British officialdom has a very distinctive diction which is absent from this.  The answer is here (scroll to bottom):

http://readingeagle.com/mobile/article.aspx?id=306541

the country issuing the warning is Canada. 

I believe the British warning also indicated (or did at one point) that you are absolutely 100% sure to get cholera and dengue fever from traveling to this location.

[agentsteel53]

I believe the British warning also indicated (or did at one point) that you are absolutely 100% sure to get cholera and dengue fever from traveling to this location.

that's if you survive the flying cows with ray guns which roam the wilderness in great packs, destroying all in their way. 

[Brandon]

To illustrate the absurdity of foreign travel warnings, let's play a game. I'll post a travel advisory from a country's foreign travel department, you try to guess the location in question.

What super scary location is this?:
Violent crime remains a serious concern in [location]. Criminals have demonstrated that they will use violence with little or no provocation. Many attacks have occurred in the [city] area, and others have taken place on rural roads and at [highway network] rest areas. Some rest areas have dusk-to-dawn security on site (which is indicated on the highway sign). Proceed cautiously when exiting a freeway (including [freeway]) into large urban centres, especially after dusk. Theft has increased, particularly from trunks of parked cars in the [tourist city] area, [tourist area] and at airports. Be alert, as criminals use a variety of techniques to steal personal belongings.

Sounds like Miami and Florida.

[mightyace]

^^^

It is.

I live in that country. That country is the United States. That area spotlighted as a particularly crime-ridden area is Florida and, specifically Miami.

It was Canada issuing the warning.

And, the country that issued those warnings and advisories to its citizens? That would be our neighbor to the north, Canada.