Lions and Tigers and Bears

I'm in Mazatlan now. It´s a port city on the Pacific ocean directly East of the bottom tip of Baja California Sur. (The penisula that sticks off the side of North Eastern Mexico). Once again my start date at work has been pushed back - due to the papers from the Mexican embassy in Canada being delayed - so I decided to spend my last week travelling. I have a checklist of places I want to see in this wonderful country and Matzalan is one of them. But now that I'm here I'm not really sure why. There is a strip of beach, and it's really hot here but there's not a heck of a lot to see. But I digress...
One of the things I´ve been thinking a lot about lately is the heightened security in Mexico. On the 12 hour bus ride from Toluca the bus was pulled over twice - once by the police and a second time by the military. A police officer came aboard and interrogated every passenger. Of course I forgot my passport in Toluca, so I was lucky that my birth certificate was enough identification to prove I am who I say I am. The extra security is a result of an incident that happened during the El Grito celebrations in Morelia, Michoacan (where I happened to be two weeks ago). Two grenades exploded simultaneously, only blocks apart, in Morelia's historic center, allegedly thrown by suspected drug cartel members killing eight and injuring more than 100 in a terrorist attack. The drug cartels move marijuana and cocaine into the United States, the government beefs up security and the gangs have responded with daytime shootouts, assassinations, beheadings and massacres.
As you can imagine this has caused a lot of fear in Mexican people. Morelia is a pretty chilled place where nothing ever happens of interest, so the message has been delivered: no place is safe. Nora told me that she doesn't want to go anywhere near the centre of Toluca on Independence Day next year. And Nora's father told me to take extreme care when travelling to Zacatecas (which is my ultimate destination this trip). But I don't know. I'm not that worried. Perhaps I should be, but I just don't see how anybody could protect themselves against these kind of things. I've travelled a lot in Mexico and met a lot of Mexicans, and I've never once felt threatened or in any danger. These random terrorist attacks are just that. Random. People who see Mexico as a dangerous place forget that this past summer in Canada a person was beheaded on the bus. It could happen anywhere...
Everywhere you go in Mexico it's the same thing - military in parks, or police with machine guns on beaches. Nora told me that in the morning at the shopping mall in Toluca you can actually see snipers waiting on the roof ready to take out any suspicious looking people. A little excessive if you ask me.
While I know a lot of people would disagree with me, I think the media is selling fear, and the people who are buying it, are the ones most likely to find it. It might sound strange but logically if you heard about two people travelling, one with insurance and one without, who do you think is mostly likely to have something bad happen to them? I would place bets on the person without insurance. I refuse to live in fear. And therefore fear refuses to live with me. Nuff said.