Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador claimed that Mexico is safer than the United States.
Obrador made the comments amid increased scrutiny over violence in his country. The scrutiny comes after the violent kidnapping of four American tourists — two of whom were murdered.
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“Mexico is safer than the United States. There is no issue with traveling safely through Mexico. That’s something the U.S. citizens also know, just like our fellow Mexicans that live in the U.S.,” the president said during a daily morning press briefing, CNN reported.
He pointed to the large number of American tourists who routinely visit the country as proof of its safety and dismissed the U.S. government's concerns over safety as "paranoia."
“U.S. government alerts say that it’s safe to only travel [in the states of] Campeche and Yucatan. If that were the case, so many Americans wouldn’t be coming in to live in Mexico City and the rest of the country. In the past few years is when more Americans have come to live in Mexico. So, what’s happening? Why the paranoia?”
He went on to say that there was “a campaign against Mexico from conservative U.S. politicians that don’t want this country to keep developing for the good of the Mexican people.”
Despite Obrador blaming conservative U.S. politicians for the security woes, the Biden administration's State Department has instituted several travel warnings to those traveling to Mexico.
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"This is an area that we categorize as a level four — we have a level four travel advisory, meaning that Americans should not travel to this particular Mexican state because it is dangerous. We have seen incidents of criminality, of violence, and we certainly don't want to see Americans unnecessarily in harm's way," State Department spokesman Ned Price said last week.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that Mexico's murder rate in 2020 was over four times that of the U.S. There were 28.37 murders per 100,000 people, compared to 6.52 murders per 100,000 people in the U.S.