Security in Mexico. Retired in Mexico.

hello so I'm walking alone with my new gimlet there you smooth for a bit of a learning curve for me to figure out how it's all working but I think I'm going to like it in light please enjoy my stories or whatever else might be on my mind today I've been working on my chain-link gate here and in doing so I've been thinking about security you see I have barbed wire up there at the top and it's padlocked it's all chained linked and I much done right and I was working with the chain-link that's this down here and I wanted to show you something watch this [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] this big and the point is that all of that chain link and chain link fence is this pretty easily defeated no I don't know if it's real world I haven't been to a lot of prisons but in the movies you always see all these chain-link fences around the prison yard man it's with me what 10 seconds with a hole that chain-link big enough to go through hard ten sockets and I want to make a point about that well I thought I'd do this video from a different place today so I'm coming up here to my bedroom and maybe I'd like to see the view out of my bedroom window and I'm gonna sit right over there in that chair and talk to you today about security in Mexico so security in Mexico or security anywhere a lot of what I want to say today has to do with security in general well let's talk about Mexico for a minute those of us who are retired in Mexico and live here mostly full-time or asked quite often do we feel safe living in Mexico and the answer is yes we absolutely do feel safe living in Mexico I think we should focus upon the important word in that sentence yes I feel safe living in Mexico it's not about safe it's not about security it's about how you feel we feel safe here we feel safe here because we don't experience that media news that reports the nature of news and the nature of news is that it doesn't report that we had a nice Pleasant wonderful day here there wasn't any cartel shootout we weren't burglarized we weren't murdered we weren't threatened it is the nature of news not to report the norm but the abnormal news reports the unusual news reports the thing that never happens because it happened today and if you form your opinion about whether a place whether it's Mexico or any place else in the world upon the news reports you may very well form a wrong now let's discount the middle-east and all of that mess and war that's that's a different thing I'm talking about normal comfortable society so do I feel comfortable living in Mexico yes I absolutely feel comfortable living in Mexico because my experience in 16 years of living in Mexico is that yes I've read in the paper that there have been beheadings and hangings and murders and cartel shootouts where people have been killed I have read that there are burglaries and kidnappings but it hasn't happened to me in 16 years and I don't think that's just because I'm lucky I think it's because I'm normal that's the point uh in 16 years there was one incident of a personal well a person that I know personally that was injured here in a act of violence criminal violence friend was working on his computer in his very large house and he heard a knock at the front door and he went to the front door nobody was there and by the time he got back to the room where his computer was which also had an external door he was met by a young man with a pistol and the young man marched him through the house and my friend kind of tripped on a rug in the kitchen and turned to catch him set off and the guy shot him through his hand that happened not too far from where I lived at a friend's house the horror of that story didn't stop there and this may give you pause he went to the Red Cross which is one of the places that you can go for emergency treatment here Cruz Rojo and they couldn't treat him because it was a criminal act and they couldn't address his wound and the police investigators got there to assess his wound so it was several hours before the doctors at the Red Cross could treat him that may be different than where you live and it may give you pause Oh does it bother me that this happened it bothers me that had happened to my friend and of course it was something we all talked about it's time but it's not something that we dwell upon every day in our normal day-to-day existence it happened many years ago my personal take on security is that it's in your mind and that's why I concentrate on the word how you feel not is there security or is their safety or is it safe or is it dangerous it's not about the barbed wire on the top of my chain-link fence and it's not about security doors and it's not about razor wire less than a block from here the guys all surrounded by razor wire which you can cut with a pair of pliers I've got at least four tools in my workshop that'll cut a padlock like that security is a mental thing it's a mental state if you feel like you're safe then that's what you want to go for trying to secure yourself physically in the outside world is just something that makes you feel better it's not something that actually changes the real world let me give you some examples a friend of mine was gonna rent his house so he had a room that he wanted to secure in order to put his personal stuff while the house was rented and there was an open arched doorway that he wanted closed off because it wasn't right in the right place that he wanted so he was going to build another doorway over here in the cement reinforced concrete wall with bricks in the middle and plaster and whatever and then he was gonna put a big metal door there with a big you know secure lock on it so I can lock up his stuff and I was there the day that the workers came to make the hole in the wall before they closed off the old open door you know Lord just make the new metal doorway and it took them about five minutes to get through the wall so I'm thinking okay you're gonna put in this big heavy metal door with a big secure lock on it and it takes five minutes to get through the wall over here and a hole big enough to crawl through so what have you done you slowed somebody down five minutes that's what you've done I'll give you another example I used to live in a 7,000 square foot mini mansion in Portland Oregon and I didn't have anything in the house of my personal possessions that I felt couldn't be replaced but I felt a responsibility to this house it was built in 1919 and it was a historically registered property and my wife and I were fortunate enough that the time before our kids were in school to spend three or four days a night a week overnight on our boat so we're gone and sometimes a lot of times and like I said I felt a responsibility to protect this property that was built in 1919 before I was born and was going to certainly last a lot longer than I was going to be around then I had big you know oak pocket doors and rosewood paneling and original gas light fixtures and things that a vandal could do thousands of dollars worth of damage to and certainly it would be covered by insurance but I again felt a responsibility to the property to protect it so I called it the Portland Police and said the burbling a burglar division robbery division whatever that they they would at the time do a security evaluation of your house and the concept was that if you could slow it robber down by one or two or three minutes that he would probably go to another place that was easier to access instead of your house so they came out and they said yes you should put 13 gauge steel mesh over your basement windows huge basement windows all the way around the foundation the foundation was six foot tall the windows were on the four foot wide five foot tall anyway yeah so I did that with the steel mesh over the basement windows turned out that was a code violation recommended by the police that's another story the police recommending that I do a code violation because it was egress to a sleeping quarter anyway another one of their recommendations was to hold black of that whole the whole back of the house was a lot of glass a big expanse of glass with big huge glass wall that looked out over a deck and into the woods and it was in the back of the house away from the street where you couldn't see it from the street and they said you should cover that with lexan polycarbonate which is bulletproof glazing which I did at some expense and I used to love to go back there and show people what I had done and I would go in and our goal come against the lexan polycarbonate and make a big noise and say wow look how strong and secure that is and then I had a friend come over one day and this friend well he had some street smarts about skills that we're not couldn't to talk about anyway I made my big demonstration to him and he said you know right there by the deadbolt on the door it would take my little propane torch about 15 seconds to get through that bulletproof glazing burst my bubble did I feel less secure well yeah but I also realized that the security I had felt was in my mind my neighbor when I first moved in here I had an open driveway and he built a rather horn eight gate and today was finished he called me over and said look at my wonderful gate I built and I asked him do you feel safer now that your gate goes across the driveway and he said well of course and I said I think you built a ladder and I climbed up one side and down the other into his driveway and burst his bubble and I felt bad for him because this security thing in his life I had taken the wind out of that sail but again my point is that security is in your mind I have a safe it's one of those kind of safes that you find in in a hotel room or and you put your own combination into it then you lock the door a friend of mine saw my safely said you know you can open that with a potato I didn't believe them but I went on the internet and I looked at it it's actually true there's an electronic plunger and if you hid it in the safe door in just the right place the plunger will jump and you can open it so if you're a burglar if that's your profession you're probably going to know these things the hotel safe can be opened with a potato and if you lock your stuff with a padlock that security is going to keep out the honest people it's not going to keep out the burglar because padlocks are easy there are some padlocks and by the way I own 1,000 teeth catalyzed another story you can hit a lot of padlocks with a hammer and the plunger there will jump and come over if you hit them just in the right place anyway security is something that you have to learn to have in your mind and why am I talking about security when I told you I was going to talk about you know is it safe to live in Mexico because we feel safe in Mexico and we feel safe in Mexico because we're experiencing the day-to-day norm not what the media presents as the unusual the abnormal and the thing that is only news because it doesn't happen very much so yes I feel comfortable living in Mexico now in spite of that we do take some precautions I brought a visual aid with me today and it's a flashlight it's also a strobe light and it's a stun gun I was doing this out the window one night just scared the neighborhood dog that was barking and I touched the screen and it transferred the electricity to the body of the flashlight and I jerked like that and it was over here at this window and it hit the wall here and broke this is a different flashlight my arm did not work the same for about a week I'm pretty sure that will put you down why do I have that well I have it because it's a novelty and I have it because it's scary but my real attitude towards it is that I hope it's like the fire extinguisher in my house I hope it's always the worth most worthless thing I own useless thing so to conclude about is it safe to live in Mexico it's not about where you live that's my point it's not about Chicago or Los Angeles or Houston or Guadalajara or ajijic it's not about chain-link fence and razor wire it's not about the incidence of crime it's not about a rich society in the poor Society and the fact that this creates a dichotomy in the economy so that some people need to rob from some other people it's not about those things those things are the things that make news because they're unusual when abnormalities happen do I feel safe living here absolutely don't let the news make up your mind what you think about security I'm sure that I didn't convince anyone that's dead set on the idea that it's dangerous to live in Mexico I I talked to a person who was doing some electrical work for me a lady actually in Gresham Oregon in a rental house that I used alone and I said I have a home in Mexico and she said oh I want to go to Mexico no no no no my brother was mugged and robbed down there I said really well what did that where did that happen she said I was outside of a bar in Tijuana I am NOT going to form my analysis of the security risk in Mexico based upon what happened outside of a bar in Tijuana that's not part of my experience my experience is that normal day-to-day life here is not very newsworthy because it's just pleasant thanks for watching hey if you like me give me one of those thumbs up and please subscribe and hit that little bell so you know when I post next please share me with your friends on social media thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed what was on my mind today

Channel: JC Travel Stories

Views: 106,628

Rating: 4.9172478 out of 5

Keywords: Security in Mexico, Is Mexico safe?, Retire in Mexico, Ajijic, Chapala, Guadalajara, rv living, rving, gorving, Mexico, retired life, retirement home, cheap living, full time RV life, motorhome, rv hacks, rv modifications

Id: c11Jbz49s8o

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 01 2018