Confusion

Hi Rob, thank you for your response. The points you make were not clear to me in your earlier posts, and the clarification helps. I was not attempting to “shoot the messenger” as much as I was trying to understand the message.

Of course we are aware of the crime that goes on around us in Guerrero.

Our visitors who drive from Morelia and points inland get their information from sources outside of Troncones, and they make their own decisions about coming here. If they have concerns about the drive and ask my opinion, I tell them to go with their instinct.

The “problem on the highway that passes Troncones” is the same problem that occurs along the 200 from Lazaro Cardenas through Zihuatanejo and on to Acapulco. Saying it’s “a problem that affects Zihuatanejo's reputation simply by virtue of our town's name being always used instead of Troncones to describe the location,” suggests that crime is a problem unique to Troncones, not the highway that passes near here, nor the region. Crime in Zihuatanejo and elsewhere in Guerrero affects our village as well, whether Troncones is mentioned or not.

Finally, I didn’t realize that your comment was “limited to the years-long problem on the highway that passes Troncones,” and not Troncones itself. That makes sense; I wish you’d said that in the original post.

Chris, I don't mean to imply the Troncones stretch of highway is the only place this is happening. But the news reports and the posts I see and the e-mails I receive keep mentioning hijacked cars on that particular stretch through La Unión going back at least 10 years now and including people I know, though it seems to have gotten worse in recent years, thus my concern with the comment that someone else made regarding the 10 cars robbed. Even when the cops recovered a bunch of stolen cars a couple of years ago I recall reading that the criminals went and stole them back from right under the noses of the police in La Unión, so it leaves few mysteries as to "collusion", to use the popular vernacular. I hate to discuss this crap here because it is only the surface of an onion that only requires more and more explanations when folks start asking questions of this nature. Much is not what it seems here, and though to outsiders this looks like a simple society and a simple place, it just isn't. The more one looks for answers to certain questions the more easily one gets to where you really don't want to know. And that's where lots of misunderstandings and misconceptions arise, and it becomes crystal clear that things like the persecution and trial of people like El Chapo are a joke based on hypocrisy and greed in places you would never expect.

While we don't need to paint DANGER on all road signs through La Unión, potential visitors need to have at least one place where they can find reliable info. That's what this website has always been about.

Almost makes me miss the days of La Guerra Sucia when things were so simple by comparison, back when I first lived here, when killings by criminals were few in comparison to the killings and desapariciones by the ejército and the judiciales and other forces of the government.