Baja Rental's Blog

Crime in Baja – A Local’s Perspective

jennifer@baja-rentals.com — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 20:25:00 GMT

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!

More ...

Letter to NPR from Mexico

jennifer@baja-rentals.com — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:05:17 GMT

As an American living on the coast in Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico I can’t disagree more with your caller from San Antonio. She is not here and only gets the view of the press and those involved in the violence heading north who are almost exclusively people involved in the drug trade.

We are not affected AT ALL by any drug violence. We live in a quite beautiful community with nearly 15,000 other Americans. None are leaving and none of them feel unsafe. No tourists have been involved in any of the drug violence in all of Baja. Quite the contrary, going to the states is a stressful event for us. I live here with my wife and 6 year old daughter and she benefits from an incredible education at a private bilingual academy. We cross the border every week, drive up and down the coast in a nice car every day and do not restrict our movements at night. WE NEVER HAVE ANY PROBLEMS!

There are parts of Tijuana that we will not drive through in the middle of the night but that can be said of any large US city.

The hysteria in the press is unfair and unfounded. It only exacerbates all of cross border issues. By creating the hysteria the tourism economy of México is being decimated; especially in the border areas of northern México. No one is leaving this area because of violence. Mexicans are leaving because they can not find work.

The US, México and the press need to work together to solve the drug issues created by the unquenchable thirst for illegal drugs in the United States. México could just give up and export the problem to the US. I don’t think anyone wants that.

More ...

An American Living in Baja

jennifer@baja-rentals.com — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 06:15:00 GMT

On January 7, 2009 ABC decided to air yet another story about Pat Weber’s incident in Baja. ABC portrayed the story as if it happened yesterday in the middle of Rosarito Beach. When in fact, that incident happened 3 hrs south of Ensenada in a remote area in September 2007.

If you GOOGLE these key words: ‘Pat Weber Baja’ you’ll see that this same story has been reported, re-reported, re-re-re-reported in the US media via TV, Natl and local Newspapers, AP etc since Oct 2007. GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS RETURNED 13 pages/10 articles on each page about Pat Weber’s horrible experience. Yet ABC's ‘news’ reporting gives the impression that it just happened and incidences like theirs are happening over, and over and over again. Yes it was horrible what happened to Pat Weber, but random violence happens everywhere. Why doesn't the media report per capita statistics. I challenge the media to do some real investigating reporting and find a violent crime against a American born (not Mexican national turned US Citizen) not associated in any way with the drug trade in the last year (2008) in Rosarito/TJ area. They can’t. That is why they have to keep reporting about Pat Weber – the one true born and raised American that something bad happened to.

I’m an American living in Baja with my 6 year old daughter and husband. We live and travel freely in Rosarito and cross the border weekly WITHOUT FEAR. My daughter goes to a private bi-lingual school and we drive her to meet her school bus in Rosarito every morning. We live in a community of 30,000+ Americans that DO NOT LIVE IN FEAR IN MEXICO. Why don’t they do a story about the us? Because FEAR sells !

Fact: the 50 US citizens that ABC reported that are being targeted are MEXICAN nationals who happen to have US Citizenship. In other words, they are Mexicans that have US citizenship. Yet, the media never explains that fact. They just portray them as ‘Americans’ and they make sure the word “American” is in your headline to maximize the fear factor. Truth is: They are Mexican nationals that are either part of the drug trade or have lots of enemies.

Fact: Pat Weber did not use 'any common sense' when traveling in Mexico; parked in an isolated area, and put himself in 'jeopardy's way'. Those who know Pat personally in my community do not give him much credibility AND believe he was out there to promote his business. Most of the Americans living in Baja 'full-time' place the majority of the blame on Pat Weber who did not use common sense when traveling in Mexico.

The media’s slanted and gross misrepresentation on the truth is appalling. Where are the dates, times, places, un-bias statistics in your story ? I know that fear mongering helps their ratings but, if the media would realize that because of their irresponsible reporting, they are causing unwarranted suffering to the hard working people of Mexico who depend on tourism. Because of the sensational reporting about Mexico, the people of this community are having a hard time maintaining their businesses and supporting their family.

More ...

BAJA’s BUM RAP… An examination of the Facts

jennifer@baja-rentals.com — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:19:02 GMT

Last month I took a trip up to Los Angeles to visit my mother in the hospital. She was recovering from surgery and I spent an afternoon with her. My wife, my daughter and I spent the night with my father at my childhood home. I woke up the next morning, made coffee and turned on ABC channel 7 morning news. The chain of reports that proceeded was horrifying. There were three separate stories regarding local drive by shootings, mass shootings in public places and the shooting of children while they waited for a bus. There was a story about another murder in Beverly Hills and another about a woman found frozen in dry ice in a posh Newport Beach hotel.

All of this was shocking to me… As an American living in Baja what came next shocked me even more. The next story was a 15 second blurb that basically said the following:

“Americans are being kidnapped, and murdered in México”. It proclaimed that the US embassy had released a “Travel Warning” regarding this situation to warn tourist. As a person who lives in the area and being very tuned into what is going on in Baja I was shocked and perplexed by this. I know of no such kidnappings or murders of Americans or tourist. I was pretty certain that this was a gross misrepresentation of the truth. I decided to try to verify this story.

Newsless Reports

On the Wednesday after Super-Tuesday, a day not lacking for news, a report that provided no real news but rather purported that “kidnappings of US citizens is on the rise” was published in the San Diego Union Tribune. The report went on to talk about 26 residents who were kidnapped last year. As it turns out none of these were US citizens but rather Mexican nationals who owned a residence in the US. On the same day a woman was brutally murdered for her wallet in the parking structure at Nordstrom’s in fashion Valley, San Diego. Yet this story only made one paragraph on the third page.

If you look into all the reported kidnapping incidents along the US-México border the overwhelming majority of victims are clearly involved in the drug trade, related businesses or are not US citizens. None are American tourists. In one story they were talking about this poor man from Tennessee who was kidnapped and brought into México. The incident was in El Paso, Texas and the poor man from Tennessee was a 27 year old who was a soldier for the El Paso Barrio Azteca gang. He was involved in the drug trade

Several reports have been claiming that kidnapping of US tourist in Baja is on the rise. They site a Tijuana US Embassy issued “TRAVEL WARNING” as their source. This is simply NOT TRUE. There was no Travel Warning issued. Travel Warnings are a specific type of admonition, issued by the state department, for places of grave danger. Go to the state department site and you will see there is no Travel Warning for México:

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_1764.html

More ...