I was able to spend two weeks in Mexico recently. I am originally from Mexico City, but have spent a large amount of my life in the U.S. and I have had the opportunity to work both in Mexico and the U.S.

During my two weeks in Mexico, I was mugged at gunpoint, visited three cities outside the capital ravaged by poverty, had my credit card illegally cloned, and experienced first hand the corruption of the police forces when I tried to report my mugging. I was amazed at how the general population has gotten used to being mugged, defrauded and mistreated. When I told this stories to my local friends, they were not at all shocked, it seemed like it was a normal thing, like getting a parking ticket for parking illegally.

I was mugged at gunpoint with a 45 Magnum at 2:30 in the afternoon in one of Mexico City touristy neighborhoods, Coyoacan. The people around me just responded that that same week three cars had been stolen from there at gunpoint. When I went to the police station to report the crime so I could claim my insurance in my watch I was taken to a shady room and basically asked not to report the crime. The police had to explain to me that they were not in collusion with the criminals, really? did we need to clear that? I would hope not, but yet again here we were.  Reporting the crime and getting a police report took over 4 hours in which I was taken to different rooms with very shady people. At some point I thought I was the criminal. In the end nothing got done, I was just able to leave with a piece of paper for insurance purposes.

Being that I hadn’t been in Mexico for two weeks in the last six years I had a lot of lunches and dinners with friends. I must say that Mexico City still has some of the most fantastic restaurants in the world. Amazing dishes, service and decor. However, I was trustworthy enough to have given my credit card to a waiter to pay the bill and I lost sight of it. A week later my bank contacted me letting me know that someone had bought a $1500 DL television in Best Buy. Amazing! you cannot even give  your card to a waiter without him cloning it.

I also took a trip to three towns outside of Mexico City and discovered that its cheaper to fly to Las Vegas than it is to fly to Guadalajara, Mexico’s third largest city. At the time I took that trip, Mexicana, Mexico’s second national carrier, had just filed for bankruptcy and today it was announced that the airline will stop all operations. Exactly what Mexico needs, more monopolies, now in the airline industry. Aeromexico, immediately raised its rates.

As I was leaving Mexico to finally come back to the US, 72 illegal migrants were murdered by drug dealers, and someone threw a grenade at a nightclub in Puerto Vallarta, one of the towns I had also visited in Mexico in  this trip. It was the first time in many years, in which I has happy to leave my home country and sad to see it in this present state.

I saw corruption, poverty, and worst of all not one single glimpse of hope. I have many friends in high ranking positions in the government and in one way or another they all agreed that the President is more worried about loyalty than merit, has a short temper and is difficult to talk to. We have three political parties that cannot get anything done, labor unions that are corrupt and are trying to cling to their privileges as much as they can, and 30 families that manage and protect their corporate monopolies. On top of that we have some of the most violent drug cartels and mass murder has become an every day thing. For normal citizens making it through the day without a shooting, mugging or kidnapping is a miracle.

A country in this dire situation, cannot become attractive for people to invest or even visit as tourists. Corruption is the main problem, everything in Mexico revolves around breaking the rules in one way or another. It seems to be something that is ingrained in society and people. Unless we start educating the people in a different way, Mexico will never become safe, transparent and most importantly attractive.

I cannot wait to hear what happens tomorrow and we hear about a new group of murdered people, or decapitated bodies found in some inhospitable hole…