News Flash: American Hostage Freed in Mexico
Moving to Mexico reversed the brainwashing that began at an early age
Most people don’t know this, but I was taken hostage as a child. Mysterious men showed me bad things on TV and made one violent movie after another about Mexico, which poisoned my young mind. I never knew why that did that to me.
Once a mind is poisoned, the cure becomes difficult. Read on to find out why.
***
Let the Brainwashing Begin
As a child, I learned a lot about Mexico and Mexicans, and most of it was bad.
The Frito Bandito, a mock-Mexican bandit created by an ad agency to boost sales of corn chips, began appearing in TV commercials when I was nine or ten.
The animated bandito, who popped up during commercials, said he wanted to take my Fritos. I clutched my bag of Fritos, tossed some in my mouth, and crunched.
Mexico was, for me, a mysterious, far-off place, not on my way to or from school, yet near enough to be a frightening menace in my impressionable young mind.
Hoping to escape the terrifying tales of Mexico seen in cartoons and in commercials, I switched channels to watch a movie. Bad idea.
Movie images of Mexico were even worse. When gringos went down to Mexico, the Mexicans were usually shown as the bad guys, even in their own country.
In The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a sweaty, dirty Mexican bandito, who claims to be an officer of the law, sneers at a prospector played by Humphrey Bogart.
Bogart asks to see some ID.
“Badges?” the Mexican bandit hisses, “We don’t need no stinking badges!”
No one had to spell it out: Mexicans seemed evil; Americans wore the white hats. Great messaging for kids, guys. Thanks, Hollywood.
The problem was compounded by my growing up in the Midwest in the 1960s. I didn’t know any Mexicans. There was not much for me to go on but cartoons.
We had one Mexican girl in my grade school class. Her last name was Vargas. She had long, dark hair and dark eyes. A timid girl, she didn’t look like the rest of us.
In high school, we had one Latino in our class, Jorge (“Hore-Hay”). We all called him “George.” I never heard him correct anyone.
Our life then was like a hot dog on a plain white bun for lunch every day.
The brainwashing was unrelenting.
Fast forward to the 70s and 80s: the story remained the same. Only the movie titles and types of villains changed. The movies featured drug cartel massacres.
A few Mexican Americans made us laugh. Comedians Cheech and Chong from East L.A. showed us that if they were really stoned, they were quite harmless.
In La Bamba, a Mexican-American with a guitar and a girl was a good guy, too.
I Went Anywhere But Mexico
By the time I got to college, it was clear that going south across the border was a bad idea. Nothing good would come of it. But where should I go?
If I stayed in the US, I’d remain hostage to toxic tales of Mexico on TV and in movies. I escaped to France and later to Morocco as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
My wanderings in Africa continued until 2020. Then the COVID pandemic began, and we all came home to America.
But when I got back, the drumbeat about Mexico continued. Big bad Mexico.
Hola, This is Mexico Calling!
Eventually, I visited all 48 states and ran out of places to go in the US. Winter set in. Mexico smiled warmly. The cacti called me: “Carl, it’s time to come visit.”
It was a prickly decision. I had questions.
I contacted my old Peace Corps buddy, Mark, who lived in Arizona on the border. He and his motorcycle buddies had been going down there for years.
They had never been kidnapped and had not been killed, not even once.
“Mark,” I asked, “Is Mexico as dangerous as our government says?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all. You just need to take some simple precautions.”
“Like what?” He ticked off three key points.
One, stay on the main roads; drive during the day.
Two, don’t sneak around on backroads or on private property taking pictures of, say, marijuana fields or fentanyl factories.
Three, don’t get into stupid arguments with strangers, and don’t indulge in road rage incidents.
“But why does our government say it’s too dangerous to go there if it really isn’t?”
He shook his head. “Who knows?”
I said, “Mark, I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“Look,” he said, “Who are you going to believe, our government, or a Peace Corps volunteer you knew when we were both young and stupid and drank lots of beer?”
His logic was impeccable. “I should believe a guy I knew in the Peace Corps!”
***
I drove across the border at Nogales, Arizona, and arrived in Sonora, Mexico. I pretended not to be afraid, but inside, I was scared shitless. Every time I looked at the car next to me on the highway, I saw the Frito Bandito smiling back at me.
Was I seeing things? He waved his pistols. His gold tooth flashed in the sunlight.
I arrived at my destination, Kino Bay, a small fishing village located on the Gulf of California, and drove straight to the friendly RV park Mark had recommended.
Islandia Marina was a haven for aging hippies from north of the border, and for Canadians who came south for cheap living, good eats, and spectacular sunsets.
In my mind was a nagging question. Where is the cartel that people talk about?
In this dry, dusty town of 5,000, as I drove the streets, I looked for a sign saying “Cartel HQ,” and for “Cartel Only” parking spots in front of stores and restaurants, but I never spotted any.
It was a peaceful, quiet town, where the only real danger was the topes, the ubiquitous, unmarked, unofficial speed bumps on almost every street in town.
I remained vigilant, but not once in my three months there did I spot a sinister cartel character. But I did see a lot of Mexican police, army, and national guard.
The cartel issue remained shrouded in silence and mystery. No one in Kino Bay ever talked about the cartels, so neither did I.
Eventually, someone explained it to me. “The cartels aren’t looking for old hippies living on the beach. They have revenue targets to meet. Drugs are big money.”
I felt a bit offended at their lack of interest, but frankly, I wasn’t worth their time.
The next winter, 2025, I headed south from the California border to Baja, crossing at the remote, desert town of Calexico, California, into the town of Mexicali.
I drove south on the Federal highway, eyes wide open, watching for the cartel. I imagined them crouching behind cacti and lurking inside the carnicerias.
Yet my second winter there did not allay the fears of people I knew back home.
When I posted beautiful pictures of sandy beaches, sea birds, or tropical flowers, family and friends would ooh and ahh, but then say, “But isn’t it dangerous there?”
I imagined them looking at each other, shaking their heads, pointing to their skulls, twirling their index fingers. “Crazy Carl is going south again. He’s nuts.”
How could I explain that traveling to Mexico enabled me to take off the blinders and see Mexico as it really was for the first time? The people I met were honest, law-abiding, and hard-working. Not angry, or violent, or argumentative.
We had been hoodwinked. I had to ask myself, “Wait, who’s the hostage now?
Things that Go Boom in the Night
I was not able to convince folks that visiting Mexico could be done safely. The fact that I went unharmed was perhaps seen as a fluke or a stroke of luck.
My only brush with death was while having drinks at a friend’s house. An Australian friend accidentally exploded a cloud of propane in front of us.
We were a meter away when the fireball ignited. Who needs eyebrows anyway?
Unfortunately, folks back home see the news of gruesome killings that make the headlines. These gory reports punched holes in my otherwise reassuring narrative.
Two Australian surfers camping in a remote spot argued with a young Mexican. He wanted the tires from their off-road vehicle. Tempers flared; a fight ensued.
Their mutilated bodies were found at the bottom of a nearby well. It happened six months before I arrived, but the story kept circulating my entire time there.
People back home said, “See? We were right. It is dangerous!” What can I say?
For me, the idea of camping alone was as scary in America as it was in Mexico.
Myths and massacres mess with your brain. Is anywhere really safe?
I See Red
I spent a winter in Sonora, and a winter in Baja, both rated Orange by the US State Department. Reconsider Travel. In other words, don’t go there. I did.
Nothing bad happened.
Those trips were a warmup for the winter of 2026, when I finally went to a Mexican state coded Red by the State Department, meaning Do Not Go.
But I did.
Tune in next week to find out where I went and what happened when I got there.
Afterword
First, allow me to conduct a couple of reader polls, please. What is your reaction to or feeling about my using AI-generated images to illustrate my blog posts? I was experimenting with AI to illustrate scenes for which I could not take photos.
While I began experimenting with AI after I took up writing, and have grown used to it, and know its limitations, it came to my attention that some people have a strong reaction to it, and I began to wonder if AI enhances my posts or not?
Second, I face an ongoing dilemma around my time in Mexico. It would be nice to have my family and friends visit me, but most people tend to avoid Mexico due to US government travel advisories, except perhaps for flying to expensive resorts.
I don’t want to twist people’s arms to visit me if they feel unsafe, and I can’t deny that there is violence in Mexico related to the drug cartels, but in my experience, daily life for most people here, myself included, has been peaceful and calm.
Which of the following describes how you would feel about visiting Mexico?
Thanks for taking the polls. It really helps to get your input.
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Hi Carl! Here I am again. When I left my poor paradise in Valparaíso, I was five years old and we moved to a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Viña del Mar. From then on, cable TV became my life—that’s how I learned English. And what was I watching? American movies.
Let me tell you, most films back then in the '80s and '90s—and honestly, for much longer—heavily pushed the narrative that the whole world was bad, except for the United States. The influence was so massive, portraying the U.S. as a dreamland, that every movie practically told you: "live like us, it’s better."
It was in details as seemingly 'unimportant' as breakfast. Every single movie showed families eating cereal morning after morning. That custom didn't exist in our country; our breakfast was savory, without sugar. Around that time, American corporations pushed hard into our market with their cereals. Today, they own their share of the market, selling that 'healthy sugar' to children who used to eat well. Anyway, I could go on and on. Cinema remains a powerful tool of influence to this day.
See you in the comments, Carl!