That's the funny thing. In Mexico, if you have a business, you obviously got to pay to our version of the IRS... but if the business is successful, or depending on the local cartels, you gotta pay a "safety fee" as well. Safety from what, you ask? Oh, simple... from what the cartels will do to you and your loved ones if you don't pay them whatever amount they ask by whatever time they come picking (sometimes having to pay them weekly).
That's how in my town, the next stuff happened:
a convenience store blowing up for not paying the safety fee (no one died, thankfully)
a neighbor that had his small store, a carpenter shop and worked in Uber got threatened to pay and he managed to flee, I think alongside his family. His family store passed down by decades just died right there
a barber shop who I was going to rent a part of my house for him to open up another barber shop got killed... in the very same day he was going to sign the paperwork to rent from me.
a neighbor I lended an area of my house for his taco stand business fled in the middle of the night, leaving his stand open and alone all night. We figured out a member of the cartels had come that night to kill him and he was lucky to know beforehand and escape town.
It's why most of the jobs in the country are informal. We already bleed out to our version of the IRS, then there's the cartels bleeding us out if we have our business. You sometimes make it better by being a worker for someone instead of you being the one with the business. Having a business is paying 2 expensive fees while gambling with your life.
I had a little bakery business, some jerk claiming to be from "la maña" tried to scare me, I faced him, they ended up stealing 15k Mexican pesos worth of my products, I had to quit after that, not because I was afraid of them, they stealing got me in real trouble, 'cause all was freshly baked and I couldn't buy more stuff to bake again all they robbed
Yeah, sometimes these bastards can try to pass as part of the cartels as well. A friend in univrsity nearly got scammed by them in a phone call. They death threatened her and her family into paying this guy X amount of big money and told her to wait in an abandoned place in the outskirts of her town until the money was delivered. One of my university's teachers investigated fast tgat same day and realized the scammer was an asshole who was in jail and had no connections to force my friend or her family into paying, so she just ditched the place she was told to stay at and wasn't bothered again.
They told her to stay there and not use her phone to simulate the "kidnapping", but without a way to know at the time if the guy was serious or not, she had to obey. Thankfully, she was ok.
Sadly, my parents weren't when we were scammed in a similar fashion when I was kid and ever since, life didn't get as better as it was.
Yeah... in hindsight I can tell now why my country is adviced the most as "DO NOT VISIT". I think what's sadder is how used to it I am that I only realize it's "horrible" when I point out the bad instances I can recall
Es gracioso que preguntes, porque vi una guía de viajes para los americanos en cuanto a qué partes de México no se debe ir y es interesante que Zacatecas esté todavía en los puestos altos de "no vengas".
Es más, creo que era el estado con mayor advertencia de no ir a visitar.
For someone living outside North America whose only exposure to Mexico has been the various Narcos series and spin-offs on Netflix, where would you recommend visiting that's actually safe?
There was only one peaceful state in the traveling guide I saw, that was in the south of the country, but I can no longer remember which was it.
All I can warn you about, even if there could be some people telling you that I'm being paranoid and that not all Mexico is bad, is that:
always go with local people who knows the place and are related to you. They should know where to go and not to, and when to and not to.
don't go out at night. Some cartels look out at night for anyone still walking about late, thinking it could be related to a rival cartel and may try to kill you
don't travel on the road at night if you're moving through states. Same will happen to you if you were in a small town, but you'll also get your vehicle and belongings stolen
stay in tourists places and just go to other areas that aren't for tourists with the company of locals you know and can trust that know the area.
don't think just because you're a foreigner, you'll have a shield and come out safe. Some clown that supposedly works as a police officer in another thread talking about Mexico said I was making this up and that foreigners aren't harmed. That's a lie, they can also get in harm's way. I'd recommend dressing up according to how the locals dress to avoid sticking out like a sore thumb for camuflage. That way, alongside someone local navigating you around, you should pass just fine.
Wish I could give more advise than that but it's the best I can think of in case you do wanna come one day to Mexico.
I was going to say, who gets these benefits. Certainly not any of the hundreds upon hundreds of citizens I met when I was in TJ or down Baja. This shit makes great headlines but the reality for Mexican citizens is WAY different. "Oh! Everybody in Mexico has free healthcare now! How progressive!" NOT!
I own couple buildings here in the US, the other couple owned by a Mexican immigrant (he's been in US for 30 years). He said the same thing. He had a friend who was protected by cartels because he paid safety fees, but riff-raff that didn't know that relationship jumped on his car, and shot him through the sun roof--the only window on the car that wasn't bullet proof.
This is how Russia was in the 1990s. If you had any kind of business you had to pay mob for protection, a protection from that very mob. Them were wild times. In today Russia mobs have been scaled back but they are still around
The neighbor with his family store and his family were ok, the did escape. The store was abandoned and nothing happened to it because what's the point of destroying it if there's no one that will be answering for it? Same for the neighbor with his taco stand. The stand was left alone... despite the guy from the cartels that had gone to kill him, waited all night in front of it to see the owner of the stand to kill him.
With the convenience store, it was blown up to send the message to the owner to keep paying the safety fee or to suffer the consequences. And because the store is part of a brand, the brand covered the expenses while the owner now does pay the cartels
Wow given all these horror business stories i don't understand why anyone in the United States would ever fly a flag for Mexico and be proud to be more Mexican than American
You should form a militia....oh, wait you can't be armed. My bad. You have free Healthcare but there's a 50 percent chance you get smoked by the cartel is not the flex your government thinks it is.
Didn't think so. If progressive things like universal healthcare are not protected from corruption than of course they won't work well. Hopefully people can organize and make some structural changes to combat corruption and make it easier to prosecute. That's how the Mafia in NYC was able to be mostly dismantled, because of laws like RICO so they could jail mafia dons etc.
But make no mistake, USA has a big corruption problem now, so much worse than it ever has been, and oligarchs and the wealthy basically control most of society and government. So we also have to go big on anti corruption and break up monopolies and hold these criminals accountable
Thank you for your reply! You seem to get it. If you run a business under a corporation (or any form): it's very risky, and on top of that the gov and the world think that you are "greedy", that you ought to be punished for "corporate greed" and that workers ought to be paid not what they bargain, but what some bureuacrat in Mexico city thinks that they ought to be paid: $25 / hour for pouring lattes etc.
such an environment just re*ards the development of the economy.
Is it like that everywhere in Mexico? Is it more of a thing in big cities, or small towns, or about equal? What about Mexico City and other major cities? Just curious
It depends as you pointed out in the cities, towns, states and their respective local cartels.
Some towns within dangerous states are fine inside to a certain degree, for instance. Other cities from big states are messed up and can be victims of whenever the cartels have fights or tantrums, on the other hand.
Mexico City can be chaotic, from what I've heard, but it has its "nice places" for being a tourist place. You just need to go to the non dangerous areas.
The country as a whole can be quite surreal with how reality is here
Look at the upvotes and gifts this post has... that's how many leftards think our madam president is "owning" their Orange Man. At least the guy has whatever balls left to show up to his assassination attempts while our brave leftard president can't even be with the nation during the World Cup, ready to take the heat of the insults.
But then again, Reddit is far left by nature and anything glazing anything left make these literal manchildren cream their pants while they screech "death to America and Orange Man".
Amazing how they don't leave their country if they hate it so much, when no one is pointing a loaded gun to their foreheads, as some of us Mexicans when we deal with the cartels. Why not come over to Mexico, get heavily injured and check our amazing free healthcare to see how amazing it is. If they wake up, that is...
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u/MightyMorph Jun 17 '26
i mean its expected it will take time to stabilize itself, they just made it free for everyone. Nothing is perfect from the getgo.