Mazatlan is being treated more and more like a leper colony for tourists. Yesterday’s news was that the latest cruise-ship company to take a pass on the Pacific Coast resort is Carnival. It all comes from the perception — real or magnified — that Mazatlan is not a safe place to be, for anyone.
Okay, first of all, you can’t blame the cruise lines (Carnival is following Norwegian and Disney, of the majors). Port stops are their business. If their customers (people like us) think there is reason to be afraid of walking the streets of Mazatlan, they’re not going to 
book cruises that stop there. It doesn’t matter whether it’s safe or not…what matters is they think it isn’t safe, and what’s going to change their minds?
If passengers don’t book tickets to Mazatlan, the ships have no choice. They won’t go there.
There are two schools of thought, of course. One is that the recent crime wave, including the murder of a tourist, is reason enough to avoid Mazatlan. The other is that the reports are blown out of proportion.
We have friends who own a home in Mazatlan and live there half the year. On Christmas, they had some of their kids and grandchildren spend the holidays with them. Here’s a sample of what it meant:
“It was wonderful having our children experience our little piece of paradise, so that they could see why we are just fine, happy, and safe here. They have had such negative feeling of us being in Mexico.”
The point is, all of Mazatlan isn’t a combat zone. Chances are if you go in the wrong part of town, at the wrong time of day, you will put yourself at risk. Chances are if you don’t, you won’t.
The relative abandonment of this place becomes a vicious circle. The negative impact on the economy creates more poverty, and more poverty creates more crime. it’s one step down the road to making Mazatlan a tourist ghetto and, having been there several times, we think it deserves a better fate.
And on the subject of safety, how do you explain what’s happening here when river cruise ships are days away from resuming voyages down the Nile River in Egypt? Is that really less dangerous than Mexico?