Quarter of American deaths in Mexico were homicides - Las Cruces Sun-News

Slightly more than a fourth of U.S. citizens who died in Mexico over an 8 1/2-year period beginning in 2003 were homicide victims, according to an El Paso Times analysis.

Juárez, with 96 homicides, and Tijuana, with 114, were the cities with the most slayings.

In Juárez, a city of about 1.5 million, the killings of U.S. citizens rose dramatically from three in 2003 to 37 in 2010.

The analysis was based on 1,904 total deaths of U.S. citizens reported to the State Department between Jan. 1, 2003, and June 30, 2011.

The rest of the deaths were scattered across Mexico, including the states of Chiapas, Jalisco, Quintana Roo, Zacatecas, Nayarit, Sonora, Tamaulipas and Mexico City. Accidents, drownings and suicides accounted for other deaths of U.S. citizens.

The total number of U.S. deaths represents a fraction of the entire U.S. population in Mexico, which appears to live unaffected by the violence that's ravaged parts of the border.

"A million American citizens live in Mexico and approximately 10 million Americans visit Mexico every year," according to State Department officials.

Many expatriates live in enclaves with large U.S. populations like San Miguel Allende, Guadalajara and Cuernavaca. Others live in Mexico City, in the desert border communities of northern Mexico, in exotic beachfront cities along the coasts, and in semi-tropical states such as Chiapas and Oaxaca.

They contribute to Mexico's economy and some of them have businesses there.

Despite the headline-grabbing violence of recent years, foreign companies have not stopped investing.

"More than 18,000 companies with U.S. investment have operations there, and the U.S. accounts for nearly $ 100 billion of foreign direct investment in Mexico," State Department officials said.

Mexico had 112.4 million people in 2010, according to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Fact Book. Since 2007, the country has reported about 60,000 homicides, which authorities attribute mostly to the drug cartel wars.

Juárez, which has about 1.5 million people, has had 9,137 homicides since 2008.

Mexican officials have said that about 30,000 U.S. citizens live in the state of Chihuahua.

Bob Ailes, 59, and John Eidschun, 58, are U.S. retirees. Ailes has lived in a Mexican border community for more than 10 years, while Eidschun makes frequent visits across the border to spend long spells with friends, including expatriates.

"I've lived in several European countries and in different parts of the United States, and I've been to Canada, but Mexico turned out to be my best option for retirement," Ailes said.

"The United States is the best country in the world, but there is something about Mexico and its people that draws you," Ailes said. "I didn't speak Spanish when I got here, but learned the language and the local customs. I feel connected to the people."

Ailes said he found he could afford to live on his retirement pension in Mexico. He knows and socializes with other expatriates like himself.

Eidschun said most of his social life takes place in Mexico.

"I stay with friends, eat in the restaurants and shop at the malls," Eidschun said. "I am careful but not afraid to come here."

Ailes said he's learned that it's best "to not put your nose where it doesn't belong, and no one will bother you."

The number of expatriates who live in Mexico or spend long vacations there could be higher than the figure cited by the State Department, according to websites catering to expats.

Steve Schwab, 39, who works in the real estate industry, moved to Mexico in 2000 and created a website for expats called Mexico Online (www.mexicoonline.com).

For him and other U.S. citizens, safety in Mexico can be a matter of perspective or where one lives.

One of Schwab's online postings said, "The number one retirement destination in the world is Mexico. There are already over 2,000,000 U.S. and Canadian property owners in Mexico. The most conservative number of American and Canadian Baby Boomers who are on their way to owning property in Mexico for full or part-time living in the next 15 years is over 6,000,000."

His posting also said "that the horrific violence in Mexico is over 95 percent confined to the three transshipping cities for these two businesses, Juárez, Tijuana and Nogales."

Homicides in Juárez rose after the drug cartel that controlled smuggling in the border city split into warring factions led by the Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman Loera and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes drug-trafficking organizations.

The conflict has led to unprecedented regionalized violence marked by unusual brutality and to significant numbers of slayings of journalists, politicians and human rights activists across Mexico.

Barbara Eckrote, another expatriate from the United States, agrees that the violence in Mexico has been exaggerated.

In 11 years of living in Mexico, "I have never felt unsafe or had any incidents," she said.

"I got Interpol stats and the most current FBI stats, and I was actually astonished to discover that no major city in the U.S.A. is as safe as all of Mexico," Eckrote said. "For instance, the homicide rate in Philadelphia is 78 per 100,000.

According to the 2011 "United Nations Global Study on Homicide," the murder rate for Mexico in 2010 was 18.1 per 100,000 of population; federal police reported a total of 20,585 murders (intentional homicides).

In the United States, the murder rate was 5 per 100,000 population in 2009 (the latest year for which information was available), with 15,241 murders reported.

The State Department offers plenty of tips on safety and issues travel alerts on places of concern through its website at www.state.gov.

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; (915) 546-6140.

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