by Mexico’s president has claimed his country is safer than the US amid a row over drug cartel killings.
Four Americans were kidnapped and two killed earlier this month while traveling to the city of Matamoros.
A video of the men’s bodies being dragged into the back of a truck in broad daylight shocked the American public. Several members of a violent cartel were arrested shortly thereafter.
“Mexico is safer than the United States,” Andres Manuel López Obrador said Monday. “There is no problem traveling safely through Mexico,” he said at a news conference in response to a question about US travel warnings for Mexico.
The State Department issued a Level 4 travel advisory for six Mexican states in October. Last Friday, the US embassy and consulates in Mexico issued a warning following reports of the kidnapping.
Mr. López Obrador cited a recent surge in the number of Americans residing in Mexico as evidence of an improving security situation in the Central American country.
He said criticism of the country’s handling of crime was part of an “anti-Mexico” campaign by conservative US politicians who wanted to prevent its development.
Murder rates in Mexico were about four times higher than in the United States in 2020, according to data released by the World Bank.
The State Department now considers only two of the 32 states in Mexico safe to travel.
Congressional lawmakers are asking the State Department to issue a travel advisory warning Americans that some Mexican pharmacies are selling counterfeit fentanyl and methamphetamine pills as legitimate drugs.
Senators on Friday sent a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging the department to “immediately warn Americans traveling to Mexico of the dangers they face when purchasing pills from Mexican pharmacies.”
The United Nations has said the crime was allowed because of the impunity with which criminals operate in Mexico. More than 94 percent of crimes in the country remain unsolved.
Mr López Obrador said last week he did not want the tragedy to be picked up by the American media to portray Mexico as a dangerous country. He went on to say that Republican politicians would also use the crime as an opportunity to advance “their agenda.”
He dismissed claims that Mexican drug traffickers were responsible for the flow of drugs like fentanyl into the US.
“Here we do not produce fentanyl and we have no consumption of fentanyl,” Mr. López Obrador told reporters. Of the US, he said, “Why don’t they take care of their problem of social decline?”
