Drug war: Stay out of the west and the border states, and your odds of dying in the drug war in Mexico suddenly become roughly equal to getting hit by a meteor.

Quote:

The geographic pattern of drug violence is still mainly concentrated in northern border states and some western states. Chihuahua was still the most violent state with 2,289 deaths in 2011 (Jan-Sept) for a rate of 90 deaths per 100,000 per year. Other states with high rates were Guerrero (61), Durango (58), Sinaloa (53), Tamaulipas (45), Nayarit (42), Nuevo León (33), and Coahuila (28). Note that four of these states are along the border and four are in western Mexico.

At the other end, Yucatán had only one death for a rate of 0.07. Other states with low rates were Tlaxcala, 0.8; Puebla, 1.22; Querétaro, 1.24; Campeche, 1.62; Chiapas, 1.73; Hidalgo, 1.75; and the Federal District (Mexico City), 1.83. It is very interesting that the drug war death rate in the capital city was one of the lowest in the country and less than one eighth the national. A future post will investigate drug war death rates in Mexico City.

http://geo-mexico.com/?p=5961

That said, the reason the American media is nervous discussing the drug war is that any in depth analysis quickly comes to the conclusion that the evil facists such as Rick Santorum that lobby for the war against drugs have the blood of innocent Mexicans on their hands.

Check this out, there was an 7.9 earthquake simulation drill taking place at the same time 12:00 pm, in Chiapas (next state over from Oaxaca) on the same day.

Very strange ... the same drill for the same emergency for the same day for the same time for the same size earthquake.

See video from dutch: http://www.youtube.com/user/dutchsinse?o....

Here's the poster announcing from there FEMA type org, think it was circulated March 2,2012.

Just type into google search: "mega simulacro" and have goo translate.

Az, I saw that, very strange, poster was created March 2nd for a simulation on March 20th quake with a magnitude that actually happened.

Best simulation ever?

I'd be shocked if there are no fatalities after a 7.6 earthquake. That's a damn strong earthquake that could level poorly built unreinforced structures, if close to the epicenter. As a comparison, the 1994 Kobe earthquake was a 6.9 and it caused some significant destruction within some areas of the city, and killed a few thousand souls.

If the fatality count remains zero, then the Mexican building codes deserve a SERIOUS hat tip. However, I'm suspecting that the epicenter was probably in a more remote area... and I'd wager a guess that there are some more isolated and less developed townships, which are outside the immediate reach of the 24 hour news cycle, that have been significantly destroyed... and we'll be hearing of casualties from there as the reportage of this expands out from the urban areas.

Still, even if in one of the major cities that weren't in the epicenter, I'm just shocked that with an earthquake of that magnitude there weren't at least a FEW people who were in a "wrong place at the wrong time" situation and had something fall on them. Even at a distance, a 7.6 will knock down masonry and decorative flourishes on building facades, and bridges.

I hope what I suspect isn't the case... but the Mexicans should count their blessings that this didn't hit directly under a more populated area.

Maybe the fact that there was little material damage from such a large earthquake will be a lesson to Americans that Mexico is not the 3rd world jungle that they think it is.




Urm, nope. Not going to get my hopes up.

I checked out that story about an earthquake simulation drill in Chiapas. The answer was that yes there was a drill. No it was not sinister. Apparently, earthquake drills go on all the time down there. As frequent as the drills are, and as frequently as the tremblors occur, the two had to coincide at some point.