Mexico - The Country

"So close, yet so far," is the headline on one travel agent's brochure. Honesty in advertising, finally.

A one-hour plane ride plane or a 30-second drive in a Winnebago, and you're there-in Mexico. Its currency is about as useful as a moist towelette. Drug dealers ring its borders like souvenir stands. Separatist insurgents in the south threaten to topple Ernesto Zedillo's government with toy guns and ski masks. Church groups raise money for real guns. Hired assassins from the U.S. cruise through the San Marcos border checkpoint without a visa, do their deed, catch a floor show in Tijuana, get a dozen free windshield washes and are back home in West Covina in time to catch Thalia in a Mari Mar rerun.

Tourists are attacked by Volkswagen Bugs in Mexico City. The president's son is the victim of a carjacking attempt-by a policeman. A policeman actually catches a pair of carjackers-attempting to carjack his car. A pizza vendor is robbed 23 times in a single year. The country's most violent rebels, the EPR, hold press conferences from their headquarters, only a short bus ride away from a Ferrari dealership, G-string-clad jet-setters and bronze-chested (if not medaled) swan divers doing sans-bunjee-cord jumps in Acapulco.

Mexico's woes are either so laughable or so pitiable, the Barcelona, Spain-based Clowns without Borders sent a fearless volunteer into Chiapas dressed up like Bozo to entertain villages victimized by clashes between Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Army. This is one NGO that seems to be perfectly at home here.

Imagine a bunch of armed Texans in ski masks in 100¡ heat rallying around a statue of Sam Houston and declaring the state an "autonomous region." On second thought, it isn't that difficult to imagine at all. On New Year's Day 1994, hundreds of armed peasants in ski masks-brandishing bolt-action rifles and sticks-declared their autonomy. They called themselves the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, after Emiliano Zapata, one of the leaders of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. They stormed a number of Chiapas communities, including San Cristobal, Ocosingo, Altamira and Las Margaritas. The uprising came with the January 1, 1994, implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Zapatistas said, and continue to say, that the agreement will essentially strip the indigenes of claims to their ancestral land. The tour buses that previously descended upon San Cristobal and the surrounding indigenous Indian villages in droves slammed on their brakes and stayed away.

Adventure nuts, daredevil tourists and bleeding heart Eurokids have been visiting the town of La Realidad in Chiapas since 1994, including high-profile visits in 1996 to Subcommander Marcos by filmmaker Oliver Stone and former French president Francois Mitterand's globe-trotting PC wife. Zapatourists who want to follow in the footsteps of MTV and graying left-wingers can now make the pilgrimage down the muddy path to the Zapatista camps deep in the jungle near Toluca. But they're not much welcomed anymore, with some 60,000 Mexican army theater ushers doing the collecting of tickets and pointing a flashlight to an empty seat. Subcommander Marcos made a rare appearance addressing 2,000 supporters on May 9, 1999, in southern Chiapas state near the Guatemala border-so near he could have been the Dalai Lama in exile. Still donning his trademark ski mask and pipe-the mask of Zorro-Marcos delivered a speech denouncing Mexico's political system. But few tourists could make the matinee.

Mexico has been faced with a triple-whammy. Not only have the Chiapas rebels been a thorn in the country's side, and the EPR threatening the discos at Acapulco, but, while the central bank wasn't looking, the peso crashed. Investors began makin' a run for the border in droves in January 1995. The peso dropped so low against the dollar that Mexicans stopped robbing other Mexicans. With armed insurgent highlanders brandishing black flags emblazoned with a red star stalking the southern rain forests, it's a wonder so many still venture to this part of the world.

It's thought that if a mere 5 percent of Mexico's 96 million people took to the streets, Mexico's criminal-laden government would collapse. But why isn't it happening? Namely, because folks are too busy trying to survive. As one Mexican activist commented: "Mexico is a culture of survival." About half of the working-age population in Mexico is unemployed. Families have seen their savings cut in half since 1982. Crime is soaring. Statistics aren't accurately compiled for Mexico's crime rate, but it is widely believed that crime between 1994 and 1999 has jumped an astronomical 80 percent in Mexico City alone. There has been a 100-percent increase in violent car thefts in the capital. Vigilante groups, private security "firms" and government-sanctioned thugs, called "Los Chombos," are doing what the cops won't: offing the bad guys-and also the good guys.

The Federal District's 741 security firms employ 37,000 people, 10,000 more than the number of cops on the district's streets. Drug dealers and runners and other shadowy types have gone missing in the hundreds. They are called the "narco-disappeared." Union leaders and their followers are also increasingly failing to show up at home at night for dinner. Let's call them the "labor-disappeared." Now the cops are being replaced by soldiers. Some complain it gives the military too much authority. Others respond, "Hey, they've got bigger guns."

For the traveler, Mexico is filled with extremes. Whether you want the coke-dusted lifestyle of the rich and famous on the Mexican Riviera, or like to shop for .45 caliber ammo behind the saloon in Sonora, Mexico has a little danger for everyone.