Reply about gangs kidnapping people.

The question is:

"I have heard more news about gangs that are kidnapping people to hold them ransom. Has this been a problem in Culiacan or Mazatlan? Have tourists been targeted outside of the traditional tourist areas, for example?"

That's another problem, related a little bit more with the police than with drug dealers. The events I told you on one of my posts had forced to some police men to resign their jobs fearing that they are a clearer target by keeping them.

But they're too used to have good amounts of money from drug dealers to suddenly change to nothing, so one of the ways they take is kidnapping.

They use their former uniforms, batches, and knowledge acquired in their former job as police men, and command kidnappers gangs to keep their economic lifestyle as same as before.

They usually target successful business owners, politicians, doctors or their close relatives to extort them.

Remember that these are ex-police so they have a similar method to investigate, follow, and kidnap people, which wouldn't be easily applicable to tourists.

If you think a little, you'll know that is not viable to kidnap a tourist, for several reasons:

- They wouldn't be able to get their activities as they'd do with a regular citizen (work or school schedules, daily activities, etc.)
- They don't know how much money they could take from each of them (their economical status).
- They wouldn't know who to contact to extort.
- They don't want to mess with foreign law enforcement (they're not like ours).

There are some more, but I trust in your intelligence to imagine them.

I'm not saying that if they see the opportunity they wouldn't do it, but it's not in their minds as something worth doing or profitable.

There's this variation of kidnapping called "Express kidnapping" (Yes, we even have classifications)

This one is more feasible to happen. They take a person into a car, and give him a "ride" over the city, visiting some ATM's to make him take the money from his credit cards.

With some prevention methods this can be minimized.

And last but not the least. Talking locally. I'm not bragging about this, a decade ago we had problems with kidnapping in Sinaloa, but one of our former Governors (Juan S. Millan) created an elite force specialized on dealing with kidnappers. Since then, Sinaloa has one of the lowest rates on kidnapping in the nation.

I haven't heard about the kidnapping of a tourist anywhere in Sinaloa ever, I'm not saying it never happened, this is just my personal knowledge. There has been some deaths of tourist in Mazatlan, but not related to drug dealing or kidnapping, not even to violence, one committed suicide, and some die drowned trying to swim where is not allowed. I would tell you if I know something, as I'm telling you this:

They killed a French Science Teacher about 3 weeks ago in Mexico City. A gang of robbers followed him after he exchanged 5,000 Euros (not the exact amount) and some dollars at the Mexico City International Airport. It seemed that their method was to stay near the exchange place checking who exchanged a good amount of money, then followed him in several cars, hijack them, and go away with the money. In this case the French didn't want to let go the bag with the money and they killed him.

I'm saying what I know, and I'm not one of those people who tries to hide the truth, violence it's happening in Mexico, and unfortunately it was a foreigner at that time.

I don't know much about the rest of the touristic places in Mexico.

I hope this cleared some doubts on you.

Wish you an excellent life, don't waste it!!