A friend of mom's is getting married in Cancun so she decided to make it a trip for both me and her, and it's been interesting since we first got past TSA, which was interesting itself because the TSA at our first airport (the smaller local one only about 20-30 minutes from the house) had zero white people as staff, at least at the moment.
We flew American Airlines, with American Eagle for the connecting flight, and the one "interesting" thing about it was that the sole flight attendant, a black woman with short hair, once we landed at the larger airport we flew to Mexico from, decided to talk about an "all-female flight crew", which for that connecting flight was a grand total of herself, as the pilots were two white dudes. Just something I wanted to put in since it came to mind.
The flight to Mexico was itself uneventful, we had a crew of 4 white, female flight attendants and two white guys as the pilots.
Once we got to Mexico, there's a place to scan your passport and your face, or you could go in line to get the stamp. Once it scanned my face, I got a receipt paper printed out with a QR code that functions as the stamp, as we cannot get out of Mexico without scanning that QR code at the airport. Once we got the taxi van to the resort we're staying at though, we passed by like five or six trucks of fully armed Mexican feds brandishing assault rifles openly. I knew the cartel problem was bad, but I didn't think I was going to pass by that many feds. We also passed by a Nickelodeon themed water park, which looked interesting because at the top of the gate was Spongebob, Arnold, one of the Rugrats, Timmy Turner and Jimmy Neutron, simply due to the character selection as three of those series have been dead for over 10 years.
That's all for tonight, as I came back from dinner at the resort and am now in the room hanging out as I didn't really wanna hang out with mom's friends, but the trip to Mexico and the resort was a bit eye-opening, if only because of that one flight attendant.
How did you know they were feds? Maybe they were cartel-in-training.
All the trucks had "guardia nacional" on them, which is their National Guard, as Mexico unified the Federal Police, Military Police and Naval Police into one branch, the National Guard/Guardia Nacional
Cool, just be aware that the military-cartel pipeline is a thing. Los Zetas in particular was founded by Mexican special forces. Just because they wear the uniform doesn't mean their allegiances are with the state.
Mexico can be pretty safe as long as you stay in your designated gringo zone. Bad tourist experience means less protection money from local businesses for the cartel, so they clamp down on petty crime. Unlike the bleeding vaginas in New York
ShCity or Los Angeles, they know what side their bread is butteredWhat's the difference?
One is hard on crime and generally cares about the welfare of the community, and the other is the feds.
Daaaaayuuum!
Por que no los dos?