State Department claims the zombies are back again!

So we all know that no matter how many zombies are put out of their misery, there are always more of them in the shadows coming up out of the ground.

Well, it seems U.S. State Department officials have lifted their Mexico travel-warning script right out those zombie-movie plots.

On Tuesday, only a few days after a giant march in Mexico City in support of popular presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- who is not a favorite son of the Bush administration -- the U.S. State Department reissued a travel warning for the Mexico border region. The warning cites the continuing threat of violence against U.S. citizens due to violent narco-traffickers. From an Associated Press story about the recent the travel warning:

The warning singles out the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas.

More than 30 U.S. citizens have been kidnapped or murdered in the past eight months in that city. Daytime shootouts are not uncommon.

In January of this year, only a few weeks into the new year, the U.S. State Department issued its initial version of the travel warning, which also urged U.S. citizens to avoid the border area in Mexico because of escalating violence due to narco-trafficking activities.

At the time, Narco News debunked the warning by using the State Department’s own figures from a
report posted on its Web Site.

That report showed the following:

• In 2003, the first full year for which homicides figures are recorded, a total of 42 U.S citizens were murdered in Mexico. A total of 18 homicides that year occurred along the U.S.-Mexican border.

• In 2004, through Dec. 31, a total of 35 U.S. citizens were murdered in Mexico, with 17 of those homicides occurring along the border.

So the murder rate actually dropped between 2003 and 2004, yet in January of this year, the State Department was trying to tell us that narco-traffickers were responsible for a sudden surge in violence against U.S. citizens along the border.

At that time, Narco News also posed a reasonable question. If U.S. citizens are facing a greater risk to their safety along the border, shouldn’t there be a way of measuring that increased risk, an accounting of the increase in murders, kidnappings and disappearances?

We contacted the U.S. Embassy in Mexico for an answer. Here’s what we were told:

“We don’t have figures to respond to this question at this time,” said Diana Page, assistant press attaché for the U.S. Embassy Mexico. “The consular section is working on helping Americans, so getting statistics together has to wait.”

Narco News also talked with a State Department program analyst, Greg Blackman, who informed Narco News that the State Department would not likely be able to produce the information being sought. In particular, Blackman said he was not aware of any report that tracks kidnappings or disappearances of U.S. citizens in Mexico on an aggregate basis over the course of multiple years.

“... I severely doubt we have the information you're looking for, “ Blackman said. "... I have people looking into it now, so I don't know for sure what records are kept or how yet."

So it appears that the State Department is warning U.S. citizens about an increased danger to their safety in Mexico, yet they don’t even track, in a systematic fashion, how all those threats are playing out? So how can we trust their figures, particularly if the travel warnings appear to have an underlying political purpose, such as manipulating the upcoming Mexican presidential election.

Evidence that the travel warnings are based on fuzzy numbers was borne out even further when a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana claimed the following in a Jan. 27 story in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Liza Davis, spokeswoman at the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, said incidents along the Texas border were the "initial impetus" for the (travel) alert.

... With 39 homicides in the Tijuana region this year, "the embassy felt it merited inclusion in a general announcement to American citizens," Davis said.

Did she say 39? According to the State Department report, a total of seven U.S. Citizens were murdered in Tijuana in 2004. That figure was actually down from the 13 homicides recorded in 2003, the report shows.

So given that apparent exaggeration, what are we to make of the latest travel warning, which singles out Nuevo Laredo, claiming some 30 U.S. citizens have been murdered or kidnapped there in the past eight months? Well, remember the zombie movies. Simply shoot them in the head, and they will die – until the next one comes along.

Here’s one shot, from a story in the San Antonio Express-News concerning the April 26 State Department travel warning:

… Arturo Salgado, a spokesman for the Mexican Consulate in McAllen, said some of the Americans targeted in Nuevo Laredo are people involved in the drug business, including some with dual citizenship who have lived in Mexico most of their lives.

"It's totally inappropriate that (the State Department) would take this action on the citizens of Nuevo Laredo," Jack Suneson, vice president of the Nuevo Laredo Chamber of Commerce, said of the announcement. "It's not open season down here on Americans."

But a more convincing shot, one that should come close to taking out the head of this zombie warning, comes again from the State Department’s own report.

For all of 2004, there were only five U.S. citizens murdered in Nuevo Laredo -- and only two between September 2004 and the end of that year. The State Department wants us to believe that between September 2004 and the end of April 2005 a total of 30 U.S. citizens have gone missing or been murdered in Nuevo Laredo.

Given that we already know the State Department claims not to track kidnappings of U.S. citizens in Mexico and that agency officials have a proven propensity to be too busy to keep statistics or to exaggerate the fuzzy homicide numbers they do have, should we believe them when they cry wolf, now twice in less than four months?

Well, this time we won’t know for dead certain until the State Department updates its on-line report on U.S. citizens murdered in Mexico. It is now current through the end of 2004.

In the mean time, I’m inclined to believe their figures about as much as I believe in zombies.