A run across Mexico
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
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.
2. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/cyclists-on-round-the-...
For more context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... has the risk of death by traffic in Mexico as 0.01%
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.
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
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.
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention the 43 students.
> 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.”
What a solid sentence.