• U.S.

Mexico a Great Deal of Concern

3 minute read
TIME

Before returning to Washington last week for consultations about the safety of Americans in Mexico, U.S. Ambassador John Gavin met for 40 minutes with TIME’s Mexico City bureau chief Harry Kelly. Excerpts from the interview:

Q. How is Mexico coping economically?

A. They are doing some remarkably good things–for example, their attack on inflation, which was brought down from 100% to 60% last year. However, this year I don’t think they’ll hit their 35% target. Among their problems, they have 900,000 to 950,000 new people coming into the job market at this time every year. Soon it will be a million, and by the end of the decade it will be 2 million. Last year they managed to create 600,000 or 650,000 new jobs. The result is there are going to be people without work, hungry, and pressured to go north illegally.

Q. What will happen politically?

A. I think (the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party) has to consider the very real aspirations of more and more Mexicans. Some Mexicans attack the P.R.I. not only for not being revolutionary but for not evolving. Also, how it deals with opposition parties is going to be a question.

Q. Do you think the economic crisis is behind the increase in crime?

A. There is no question that it has contributed to it. People out of work and hungry will always cause this kind of thing to occur. The problem is what can be done to create security and protection for their citizens and for their visitors, since tourism is such an important industry here.

Q. Aren’t U.S. border inspections making it harder for Mexico to cope?

A. I don’t think by itself the border situation will exacerbate the economic situation deeply. Patently, this is an action taken by the United States Government because it feels that this is a way to encourage the prosecution of criminal elements, including drug traffickers.

Q. What about the drug situation?

A. We’ve had good cooperation over the past several years in attempting to destroy the production of the narcotics traffickers. Mexico provides the U.S. with about 38% of the heroin we receive. But as our own forces have grown in efficiency, the size and power (of the traffickers’) organizations have also grown.

Q. Should Washington issue a travel advisory?

A. We have a responsibility to warn our people that there are places where perhaps they should be more cautious.

Q. If the U.S. issues a warning to tourists, will it be for all or just part of Mexico?

A. There are arguments in favor of a generalized travel advisory, and there are arguments in favor of simply issuing advisories for specific localities. We have problems in places like Puerto Vallarta, which is part of the general problem in the state of Jalisco. In the past several weeks we’ve had seven robberies, one assassination and one rape involving Americans in Guadalajara. We have had seven American citizens disappear in just the past few weeks. We are having difficulty, perhaps, in conveying to our friends that there is a great deal of concern, in some cases outrage, about what is seen as the lack of vigorous prosecution of these cases.

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