I applaud the spirit of adventure in this but also think and really, really hope he's both careful and prudent, along with a strong dose of simple luck that he'll also need. Mexico is not what it used to be. Some parts are okay still but much of the country, especially outside the cities, has become extremely dangerous even to people not at all involved in organized crime or other idiotic things.
A few years ago an American cyclist did the same thing, with a cross-country trek that garnered media attention. At one point he disappeared and only later was found dismembered next to the wreck of his bike. Some local drug trafficker was blamed (maybe dubiously) 1. Again in 2018, two European cyclists passing through the south of the country on a similar sort of trek vanished and were later found mutilated and murdered at the bottom of a ravine. 2. There was even one case I recall but can't find in which a cyclist was killed and also dismembered specifically because military security was provided to him while passing through a certain crime infested region. Apparently the local criminal groups felt insulted by this, but who really knows.
There have been other incidents, many, and many that simply get too buried in the waves of violence to receive media attention.
Useful for knowing the language, customs and basic ropes of social risks sure, but 36,000+ native Mexicans per year still die from the abomination of violence that has swept this beautiful country. If anything, being a foreigner offers some marginal protection due to criminals avoiding an added risk of police and political scrutiny from diplomatic pressures. Marginal protection, and only sometimes. Nothing to rely on.
You're kidding right? For one thing, these statistical odds do nothing to change the tragedy of death or disappearance for the families of any of those people. Secondly, the numbers don't include unreported murders and disappearances.
Even if you still try to minimize these factors with dry presentation of statistical odds with these additional causes of death/disappearance included, remember that certain activities dramatically increase the odds of being a victim. These activities are far from strange things. They include things like frequent travel, driving or travelling alone, especially at night, walking certain areas at certain times and so forth. The dangers are very real and affect people's behavior in many unfortunate ways that don't easily show up in a trite statistical summary.
I'm not trying to be dramatic. over 120 million people in the country live their lives every day and millions of them still do lots of interesting recreational things, but there is a shadow across much of what in other places would be much safer.
Just saying "36000 die" by itself doesn't tell me very much about how dangerous it is - expressing that as a percentage gives much more information I think.
As another person points out 0.03% is 3 times the risk of dying in traffic which, before looking at the numbers, I would have guessed to be the most dangerous aspect of a trip like this.
You seem to think I am being trite and using a "dry presentation" of statistics to minimise the risks of being murdered by a cartel but I actually find this presentation brings the (large) risk of it home to me much more clearly than with a contextless number like 36,000.
E.g. for the UK the numbers are 0.001% murders and 0.003% for traffic
As of 2018 (and it's gotten a notable bit worse since then if we look at absolute numbers per year), it stood at 29 per 100,000. This is four times higher than the U.S homicide rate by the way, and the U.S homicide rate is itself considered high by the standards of other developed nations.
In the other hand to be fair, Mexico isn't in the top ten of most violent countries by murder rate. Most of those top ten aren't war zones either, while Mexico technically is.
Both incidents you link are cases where foreigners traveled through notoriously dangerous territory (Michoacan narco territory, and the 195 route between San Cristobal and Palenque) alone, which is totally careless and not really applicable to the story in question.
Jonas Deichmann [1] recently finished a triathlon around the world, part of which involved a run across Mexico through some cartel territory. In these areas, he was often accompanied by local police.
The article mentions he's run into armed groups, but it hasn't posed an issue.
> Not infrequently, Silva said, he has been stopped at checkpoints manned by cartel gunmen. Once, in Durango, cartel members poured into the hotel where he and his crew were staying, guns slung over their shoulders.
> [...] But during each confrontation, Silva described his cross-country run, and the armed men let him continue on. In several cases, gunmen radioed ahead to other checkpoints, telling their comrades to expect a runner entering their territory. Sometimes Silva handed out running shirts to their children.
> “If they know you don’t pose a threat to them,” he said, “they don’t do anything.”
It makes sense. Why would they hurt a runner that has local and international press coverage, that would be idiotic and potentially bad for their business.
A few years ago an American cyclist did the same thing, with a cross-country trek that garnered media attention. At one point he disappeared and only later was found dismembered next to the wreck of his bike. Some local drug trafficker was blamed (maybe dubiously) 1. Again in 2018, two European cyclists passing through the south of the country on a similar sort of trek vanished and were later found mutilated and murdered at the bottom of a ravine. 2. There was even one case I recall but can't find in which a cyclist was killed and also dismembered specifically because military security was provided to him while passing through a certain crime infested region. Apparently the local criminal groups felt insulted by this, but who really knows.
There have been other incidents, many, and many that simply get too buried in the waves of violence to receive media attention.
1. https://archive.ph/Ux4WP
2. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/cyclists-on-round-the-...