Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Universities: Spring breaks south of border to be avoided

Going to Mexico for spring break is practically a rite of passage for college students in Arizona, but the state’s three public universities want to warn young revelers about stepped-up violence south of the border.

The University of Arizona in Tucson has issued a travel advisory urging students not to go to Mexico, and officials at Arizona State University in Tempe and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff said they have similar plans to warn students. The schools’ spring breaks fall on the second or third weeks of March.

In its notice to students, UA cited a travel alert issued by the U.S. Department of State in October warning travelers that crime rates have increased sharply in Tijuana, Juarez and Nogales - all Mexican cities that have experienced public shootouts during the daytime in shopping centers and other public places. The department warned that criminals have followed and harassed Americans driving in border areas.

Universities that warn students of violence in Mexico are providing “sage advice,” said Special Agent Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“We have had documented violence, attacks, killings, shootouts with the drug cartels involving not only the military but law-enforcement personnel,” he said. “It is indiscriminate violence, and certainly innocent people have been caught up in that collateral damage.”

Mexico’s drug cartels are waging a bloody fight for smuggling routes and against government forces, dumping beheaded bodies onto streets, carrying out massacres and even tossing grenades into a crowd of Independence Day revelers - an attack that killed eight people in September.

Mangan said most of the violence is taking place in border towns and along roads at night, not at most popular tourist destinations.

More than 100,000 American teens and people in their early 20s travel to resort areas throughout Mexico during spring break every year, according to the State Department.

Becca Hull, a senior at UA, said she and her friends are going to Las Vegas for spring break because of the weather and good deals they found.

She said they thought about going to Mexico but didn’t want to spend the money on plane tickets or risk taking their cars there - not because they were worried about violence.

“When I think of Mexico I don’t really think of the violence issue because usually when you’re in a resort area or one of the hotels it’s all tourists,” said Hull, 22. “In my mind it never would have been a factor.”

Violence also isn’t a factor for UA sophomore Daniel Wallace.

He is driving with seven friends and his father four hours from Tucson to the resort town of Puerto Peñasco, also known as Rocky Point, and will spend his entire spring break there.

“I feel most of the violence is in Texas, even in Nogales, but less so on the road to Rocky Point and in Rocky Point itself,” the 19-year-old said.