Dec 21

Written by: host
12/21/2010 12:25 PM 

I completely understand how people could feel concerned and intimidated regarding the notion of traveling to Baja given, what we call, the mischaracterizations in the press.

It is always interesting to hear what people think about crime in our little area. As a person who lives here with the other 14,000 Americans who call this home I can assure you our chance of being involved in a violent crime is likely less than people who live in Southern California. We see the news from LA and people are murdered, mugged and carjacked every day. But I'll bet it is not part of YOUR life. I'll bet it only affects your thoughts about going to south central? We don't hang out in east TJ and fact is if you don't participate in the drug business and you don't look for trouble it won't find you. Sort of like where you live.

The sad thing is that in my 30 years of coming to Baja I can honestly say that it's safer and more comfortable here than it has ever been. The law enforcement here has been completely transformed into a bilingual, friendly, service oriented organization. They doubled their pay and got rid of the bad ones about 2 years ago. They cross train with San Diego police and there is a special "tourist police" unit that is focused on making your stay a great one.

We live here with our 7 year old daughter (yes, she goes to a great private bilingual academy) and drive up and down coast in an Escalade. We travel through Tijuana at least once a week to cross the border. We NEVER have any problems and we love living here. We have hosted celebrities (Mel Gibson has been here quite a few times over the last few months and Cuba Gooding lives here on and off) and have many affluent neighbors who live here.

As far as the press is concerned there are stories for them to write about Baja that do get you to read. There are bad things that go on in the city of nearly 3M people… but there are bad things everywhere. I realize they are a little more sensational in nature but at the core they are the same. What they write about is horrible but does not affect the average person's life. Much like the horrible crime and gang violence in LA does not affect your life. They never put things in context and their reporting is held, by themselves, to a different standard of the US news than it is of México. They need to do no fact checking for Mexico and they don't.

  For example; a story about a recent shooting at the border neglected to mention that ALL the shooting was done by border agents while the coyotes trying to get into the US illegally had no weapons. There was a well known twist to this story. It was known by US reporters that a border patrol agent had been bribed to let the van through but the driver went to the wrong lane. This was never reported as the editors at the Times were not comfortable with the level of fact checking. They did not bother to check that the coyotes did not have weapons.

Several months before they reported that 4 US tourist were slain in Rosarito in random violence. Later it was found out that all four were Mexican and that they were all convicted drug felons. They were far inland from Rosarito and it was obviously a drug business related incident. No fact checking took place and the story appeared on the first page of the paper. However, the story was retracted A WEEK LATER ON PAGE 16.. It was the equivalent of people saying that 4 European tourist were murdered in Malibu when it was actually a rival gang shooting in South central… However, the damage to the innocent town was done. Just to put things in perspective there were over 1400 drug related deaths in Southern California in 2008 alone. But it is likely not part of YOUR life!

They love to drag out the reports of three carjacking's that happened 2 1/2 years ago and make it sound like it was yesterday. Those were terrible crimes (happens in LA too) but the criminals were caught, put in jail and there has not been a serious crime involving a tourist since.

if you enjoy Baja you should come down and enjoy it again. We have instituted a policy that if you get down here and are uncomfortable at any time you can retreat to the states with a 100% refund from us. However, if you do enjoy it we ask you to write us a testimonial; in exchange we'll give you a great discount on your stay…

Since we started this policy about a year ago we have had only positive comments (see some here). Our Oceanfront resorts are beautiful and like nothing in southern cal. Baja is better that ever and all we ask is the opportunity to prove it to you.

Come on down and join us!