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Mexico wants Mexican-Americans to reconnect with their roots through tourism

As Mexican officials deal with the perception of being an unsafe destination for tourists and the Trump Administration's heavily anti-Mexican rhetoric, Mexican tourism officials hope that a campaign aimed at attracting Mexican-Americans to vacation in Mexico and reconnect with their roots will help reshape that narrative.

Even though she’s never been to Mexico, Jasmin Torres of Dallas loves her roots and strongly identifies as Mexican.

If it were up to her alone, her bags would be packed and she would be on her way to visit her father’s hometown of Villanueva, Zacatecas. But her boyfriend’s fear of cartel violence and widespread crime is keeping her from reconnecting with Mexico.

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perceptions like the one Torres’ boyfriend has that Mexican tourism officials are hoping to dispel with

Viajemos Todos Por Mexico

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, an initiative that aims to attract U.S.-born Hispanics of Mexican descent to reconnect with their heritage by inviting them to venture beyond the sandy beaches of Cancun, Puerto Vallarta

Los Cabos.

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Mexico’s outgoing tourism secretary, Enrique de la Madrid, stopped in Dallas last week as his office introduced this U.S.-focused portion of the program, an effort launched in 2016 by the Mexican government to encourage Mexico’s residents to travel more within the country.

De la Madrid said Wednesday that this is Mexico’s open invitation to the millions of Mexican-Americans in Texas and the rest of the country to retrace their steps and experience the country their parents fondly remember.

“It is a place that is worth visiting because you’ll understand that you are not that different from them,” de la Madrid said. “Mexicans also have their ambitions. They also want to improve the standards of living.”

A flashy promotional video for the campaign shows colonial towns, sandy beaches and Aztec ruins while a narrator makes an appeal for viewers to reconnect with their past.

“We came from this world and the only thing we have to do to make it ours is to all travel through Mexico,” the narrator says in the video. “The question is not if we are going but how far we are willing to go.”

The Viajemos Todos Por Mexico campaign promotes more than 200 destinations across Mexico, such as the Mayan pyramids in Palenque, Chiapas, and the coffee-rich area of Ciudad Valles, San Luis Potosí. Also listed on the site are the various travel packages offered at these locations.

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For Torres, who works as a speech therapy assistant, the time to reconnect is now. She’s financially capable of going and feels she’s waited long enough. Her parents’ financial limitations kept the family in Dallas when she was growing up, and as their extended family gradually moved to Dallas and Los Angeles, the need to travel to Mexico became unnecessary.

As for the constant news of violence, Torres said she’s wary, but when she does travel back, she plans on exercising the utmost caution.

“You can’t be naive when going, is what my uncles have told me,” Torres said. “They’ve had bad experiences and faced some threats. But there is still a lot of beauty to see out there.”

Caution is what de la Madrid said he urges of people planning to visit Mexico.

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In 2017, nearly 30,000 homicides were reported throughout Mexico, making it the bloodiest year on record.

Last year also saw reports of tainted alcohol being served at Mexican resorts, something that de la Madrid has for months disputed as being untrue.

Still, those reports harmed Mexico, de la Madrid said, even though he said he knows of only one incident of tainted alcohol being served that he personally could confirm.

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“When we [conduct] an investigation, we find out that there has been a combination of excessive alcohol and drug combination,” de la Madrid said. “We’re not responsible for that. Be responsible. Don’t do in Mexico what you wouldn’t be doing in the States.”

Mexico's tourism industry was further put on the defensive back in February when the U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory under a revamped categorizing system, citing killings and kidnappings among main concerns. But de la Madrid argues that areas frequented by tourists are overall safe for them, and noted that Mexico is in the same travel advisory category as countries like Spain, Denmark, Italy and France.

That doesn't change the fact that Tatiana Mirutenko, a 27-year-old from California, was killed this month by a stray bullet in Mexico City while on vacation celebrating her first wedding anniversary,  fueling fears of violence.

Despite these factors and President Donald Trump's staunchly anti-Mexican rhetoric, tourism from the U.S. to Mexico hasn't slowed down. The first quarter of 2018 saw an almost 13 percent increase in foreign visitors over the first quarter of 2017.

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Mexico's Secretary of Tourism, Enrique de la Madrid, visits Dallas to tout a new marketing...
Mexico's Secretary of Tourism, Enrique de la Madrid, visits Dallas to tout a new marketing initiative from the Mexican Tourism Board aimed at inspiring Mexican-Americans to reconnect with their heritage and explore Mexico on Wednesday, July 11, 2018. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

De la Madrid points to that growth and the 700,000 people who fly from DFW International Airport to Mexico every year as proof that Americans and people from other countries are still willing to visit Mexico.

“For those companies that are really doing business in Mexico, their perception today is better than some months ago, and [crime is] not the No. 1 concern when you’re talking with them anymore,” de la Madrid said. “Nonetheless, when I speak to communities and people that are not necessarily traveling to Mexico but [are] watching the news, it is at the top of their minds.”

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That negative perception about Mexico in the U.S. is based around a lack of knowledge about the reality on the ground, de la Madrid said. He added that he strongly feels that those negative perceptions are prevalent even among Mexican-Americans who share a deep connection with the country.

“Some of them are not that knowledgeable as one would expect,” de la Madrid said. “Probably they have their connections to where they come from, but many of them really have not traveled that much around.”

Citing the fact that about 9 percent of Mexico’s GDP comes from tourism, de la Madrid said he hopes Mexican-Americans will want to travel to south to support their fellow Mexicans employed by the tourism industry.

“Many people had to come [to the U.S.] because they didn’t have the type of conditions that they would have expected,” de la Madrid said. ‘Well, why not help other Mexicans to have the conditions that you didn’t have?”

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For Torres, the wait has been long enough, and she hopes to travel to Mexico this summer, even if she needs some help getting around.

“I can’t even speak Spanish,” Torres said. “I think that if I go back people will say ‘You’re not Mexican or American — you’re just in the middle.’ But I just don’t care anymore.”