The Secretary of Government of Oaxaca, Jesús Romero López, minimized the update of the travel alert for US citizens who want to visit Mexico, and which includes various states regarding the issue of insecurity.
In a document, the United States government asks to avoid mainly three municipalities in the Isthmus and Coast regions.
Romero López pointed out that this is not a tourist alert, but only for officials, dismissing that it is a guide for citizens of the neighboring country who visit Mexican territory.
On September 6, the government of Washington, through the State Department, updated the travel alerts, in which it warns its employees not to visit two regions and highlights criminal activity and violence throughout the state of Oaxaca.
Romero López acknowledged that Juchitán de Zaragoza, Salina Cruz and San Blas Atempa have suffered atypical violence in the last three months, with homicides as a result of the dispute over migrant trafficking.
For his part, Iván García, head of the State Secretariat for Security and Citizen Protection, attributed the violence that is taking place in these regions to drug control, the transfer of migrants, local groups, and emerging leaders.
Despite the cases of violence that are taking place in this area of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec –where the works on the Interoceanic Corridor continue– which in the first seven months of this year have left 155 homicides in total, the Secretary of Government of Oaxaca insisted that the alert issued by the State Department is only for US officials, so that they do not go to certain areas and may be subject to some type of aggression, detention or even some situation that may break the framework of the law.
According to the monthly crime incidence report prepared by the State Attorney General’s Office and updated every month, 568 intentional homicides were committed in the state, of which 310 correspond to the Isthmus and Coast regions, 155 for each of them.
Source: jornada
