Collegiate Times

Students from last year's trip to Mexico pose in Xalapas. This year's trip to Mexico has been canceled because of drug cartels and violence.

Escalating drug-related violence in Mexico between the government and wealthy drug cartels has prompted the State Department to single out the issue as one of the top threats to the United States in a recent report. Mexican drug cartels "dominate the wholesale illicit drug market" in the U.S., according to the February text.

As a result, safety concerns have altered some Virginia Tech programs. After six years of annual summer trips with students to Mexico, Tech Spanish professor Jacqueline Bixler was forced to cancel her plans for the 2009 trip, citing drug-related violence as the foremost reason.

Bixler's trip used to take students to Xalapas, the capital city of Mexico's state of Veracruz, each year.

"My friends down there say, 'It's fine, don't worry about it, everything's, you know, fine. That's just a bunch of hype,'" Bixler said. "I just think, 'Well, I think it's enough.' That's a lot of responsibility to take."

She made her final decision after she spoke with a student who had been studying abroad in Mexico last semester. The student had been advised by her program leader not to go out at night because of safety concerns.

"When she told me that, I thought, 'There has to be something going on here,'" Bixler said.

"We know there, these issues, and others (leading trips to Mexico) have been canceling left and right," said Matthew McMullen, program director for Education Abroad. "Now with the drug wars it's obviously too dangerous in certain parts of Mexico."

Bixler has been traveling on her own to Xalapa since 1973. In 2001, she initiated an exchange program between Tech and a local university, the Universidad Veracruzana. This summer would have been her ninth trip with students. None of the students who planned to go this year had applied formally or had paid any deposits for the trip by the time it was cancelled.

Still, McMullen added, Mexico is not inherently dangerous to visit, even now.

"They're not targeting American college students. It's just like any big city. Unfortunately, there's crime -- especially right now," said Jeremy Billetdeaux, associate program director.

The fear to speak out against drug violence is a major challenge in addressing the crisis, Bixler said.

"I think people are really afraid to go out and talk about this. There's a reluctance in Mexico for journalists to even publish this kind of stuff. So the question is, how prevalent is it?"

In 2008 alone, drug cartels fighting over the lucrative trade routes to the United States claimed more than 6,000 deaths.

"There's nowhere in the world where you have numbers that high," said John Boyer, instructor of geography.

Continue Reading: 12 Next »