Tropical resorts popular with Americans no longer ‘off limits’ for cartel killers: ‘The rules have changed’

Four warring Mexican drug cartels indiscriminately kill to assert dominance over an 80-mile stretch of resorts along the Caribbean coast to tap into the country’s $30 billion tourism revenue, private investigator Jay Armes III told Fox News Digital.

In the process, Americans — and visitors from around the world — have become collateral damage, seen gruesome violence or “just disappear, wiped off the face of earth,” Armes said.

Over the last two weeks, cartel members dismembered rival gang members with machetes in tourist hot spot Cancun; a California woman was killed in the crossfire near a popular Tulum beach; and an abducted New York man was left in a secluded jungle with his eyes taped shut. 

And that’s just what hits the national news.

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“It’s all horrifying to us, but to people in Mexico, it’s just a Tuesday. This happens all the time all over the country,” Armes said. “But now it’s happening in areas that used to be off limits.”

About 15 to 20 years ago, the heads of the cartels lived by a “code similar to the Italian mob,” the renowned PI said. 

“In the old days, you weren’t allowed to target women or children. You weren’t allowed to encroach on another cartel’s territory. And the resorts were off limits. … Cartels wanted to fly under the radar as much as they could.”

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A slain foreigner in a tourist area, especially an American, brought unwanted attention and “mandatory, swift” action from the Mexican government, military and law enforcement, Armes said. 

Government leaders wanted to protect tourism, which has been the country’s legal economic foundation for decades.

In 2022 alone, there were 66 million international visitors, including nearly 34 million U.S. tourists, according to Mexico’s ministry of tourism and statista, respectively.

Most of the travelers arrived through Cancun International Airport, which received 36.1% of all incoming flight passengers, according to a January report by travelinglifestyle.net, to vacation along the gorgeous, white sand beaches, thinking they were insulated from cartel violence. 

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In reality, they’ve become war zones. 

“The rules have changed,” Armes said. “All that old guard code is out the window. The resorts are open shop.”

“The rules have changed. All that old guard code is out the window. The resorts are open shop.”

He noted how travel bloggers and social media influencers have attracted an influx of travelers that the gangs have never seen before. 

“Who we see as tourists are potential customers or potential victims to the cartels,” Armes said. “Even if it’s 1% or 5% (of tourists to the resort areas), that’s millions of customers and a big chunk of business.”

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Four main cartels want all the business in those areas. That includes El Chapo’s old cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel; the Gulf Cartel; the Jalisco New Generation Cartel; and the Grupo Regional, a “smaller” cartel created by former Zetas, brutally violent cartel enforcers, Armes said. 

“With all these young kids coming up (through the cartel ranks), there’s no respect for anything,” he said. “It’s become a free-for-all.”

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And travelers are sucked into the violence, either as targets for robberies or sex trafficking or as innocent bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“One of the unfortunate byproducts of the drug wars and drug trafficking is, inevitably, some innocent person is going to get caught in the crossfire when the cartels are shooting each other,” Armes said. 

That’s what happened to 44-year-old Los Angeles native Niko Honarbakhsh, according to the Quintana Roo State Attorney General’s Office. 

On Feb. 9, Honarbakhsh was killed, along with a drug dealer from Belize who had cocaine and “transparent bags with red and orange pills” as well as bags with “brown granulated powder” in his possession when he was killed, the local Mexican AG’s office said. 

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That’s different from the men who were hacked to death in Cancun, Armes said. 

“That was violence among drug traffickers. That was a very public killing that was meant to be a warning,” he said. “When they leave the bodies to be found in the trunk of a car, inside a car on the street, in a public place hanging from a bridge, a cartel is sending a message to a rival cartel or put fear into the politicians.”

Violence makes Mayan ruins unreachable

Another popular tourist hot spot is the Mayan ruins in the Mexican state of Chiapas, about 700 miles east of the Caribbean Coast resorts near the Guatamalan border. 

They’ve virtually been cut off by cartel violence, the Mexican government admitted, according to a Jan. 27 report by The Associated Press. 

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Two tourist guides in Chiapas, who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity, said two other sites the Mexican government claims are still open to visitors can only be reached by passing though drug gang checkpoints.

“It’s as if you told me to go to the Gaza Strip, right?” one of the guides told the AP.

“They take your cellphone and demand your sign-in code, and then they look through your conversations to see if you belong to some other gang,” the guide said. 

“At any given time, a rival group could show up and start a gun battle.”

 

The government and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador have been downplaying gang violence, but starting around December, tourists have canceled about 5% of trips booked for the area.

Politicians pretending people aren’t being killed at an exponential rate or downplaying the violence is a major component of the entangled, complex web in Mexico that “basically gives the cartels immunity,” Armes said. 

Fox News Digital’s Mitch Picasso contributed to this report.