Polack Post: Caribbean Tourism Safety – Fake News Failure
From Peter Polack
Peter Polack
The heights of uninformed travel journalism reached a new crescendo when one outlet named Anguilla as the safest country in the Caribbean. It is unknown if that writer has ever visited Anguilla but he has brought his profession to new heights of misinformation.
Beleaguered Anguilla recently received eight much needed and additional policemen from the Cayman Islands to help with surging crime.
Repeating garbage is just that, it is unconscionable for a sector and country depending on safe travel for tourists to have to face a regular barrage of such nonsense.
The respective foreign departments of all the usual tourism departure points regularly issue fair and balanced advisories which are the better indicator. Originally meant as a soft way to encourage Caribbean countries to rope in excessive crime, the number of advisories is only matched by their citizens who ignore them.
Tourism is generally unaffected by heightened safety advisories to the traveling public and in the case of Jamaica at one point , it increased visitors.
Fake safety punditry, devoid of fact, accordingly have zero effect.
Latin America is mostly beaten by the Caribbean on violent crime led by the the destination diamond, El Salvador.
There have been mass shootings in Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada and the Cayman Islands.
These countries are all fabulous and interesting to visit so long as tourists apply common sense from the safety of their resorts or approved attractions. In some cases, places in the home country of tourist are even more violent and beset with gang violence.
In some countries you are more likely to be hit by a boat, drown or poisoned by carbon monoxide as happened to three young women in a Belize hotel. Actual crime plays little part in that faux recuperative experience.
Tourism is not some great conspiracy to lure unsuspecting tourists to far off locales with a suspect safety record.
Wandering about intoxicated or high at night in unknown areas is a bad idea, anywhere.
Act accordingly as a guest.
Notes
https://insightcrime.org/news/insight-crime-2024-homicide-round-up
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
His views are his own.
