Driving in Mexico

Driving in Mexico can be risky. Reports coming from Mexico on the afternoon of July 4, 2007 highlighted that fact. Those reports came out of a region of Mexico near the City of Eloxochitlan.

During that July afternoon, as residents of Texas had a rain-soaked Independence Day, people living south of the Rio Grande, residents of Mexico, also had to deal with the consequences of unexpectedly large amounts of rain. One man, Mario Jimenez witnessed first-hand just how that rain could make driving in Mexico a very risky undertaking.

Jimenez had approached to within about 35 feet of a bus when he saw that bus and its passengers become the victims of a tragedy. First rocks from mountains along the side of the road started to fall on the bus. Then, suddenly, a cascade of dirt descended on the moving bus. The dirt buried the bus.

An alert went out to the authorities in the state of Puebla, the state in which the tragedy had occurred. The authorities contacted German Garcia. Garcia then supervised the rescue effort.

Garcia watched as the first body, the body of a young woman, was unearthed by the rescue crews. That young lady would never again be driving in Mexico. Garcia was unsure how many more bodies might be uncovered. Estimates of the number of passengers on that buried bus ranged from 40 to 60.

The rains that hit Mexico in July of 2007 probably went largely unnoticed by many U.S. citizens, some of whom had experience driving in Mexico. One such naturalized citizen, a man from Iran, had enjoyed the challenges that Mexican roads presented to the driver. In some ways, the Mexican roads had reminded him of the roads in Iran.

Mexican roads, like the roads in Iran, were narrow. Mexican roads, like the roads in much of Iran, ran through mountainous regions. They forced the driver to follow a very winding path. Night driving on a Mexican road could lead to an encounter with a pair of eyes, eyes of a wild animal that was trying to cross the road during the dark of night.

A driver in Iran would, of course, see different-shaped eyes. Iran does not have the same wild animals as Mexico. There is, in addition, one further difference between driving in Iran and driving in Mexico. In Iran no one has sent reports about entombment of a bus by a mudslide.