The Myths and the Reality
Mexico City doesn’t exactly have the best PR team. Type “Mexico City safety” into Google and you’ll get a bunch of U.S. State Department warnings, overblown travel advisories, and wild blog posts that make it sound like you’ll be kidnapped the second you land.
Reality: 23 million people live in CDMX’s metro area. They go to work, send their kids to school, and live their lives without daily disaster. If the city was as dangerous as the headlines say, it wouldn’t function. Mexico City actually ends up being safer than a lot of big american cities.
Is Mexico Safe? Safer than the United States
After a group of Americans were kidnapped and killed around Matamoros, Mexico, Mexico's President AMLO decided to take a stand against all the people claiming that Mexico is "dangerous." His claim is that the criticism is extremely overhyped and America should be worried about its own increasingly dangerous cities. I can say I have lived here for multip…
Still… It’s not Tokyo or Zurich. CDMX has pockets of extreme wealth, poverty, and crime, sometimes within a few blocks of each other. One street feels like Paris with fancy restaurants and dog walkers; the next is you wandered into a bad movie set.
If you have a lot of street smarts. I think you can just look around and tell when youre in a bad part of town. But also given even some nicer areas might have pockets of disrepair.. here is a short guide to help in terms of
Which neighborhoods are safer for foreigners to live, work, or party ect
Which ones actually have risks
The street level smarts to help you out
What scams, traps, and bad decisions you might want to look out for .
I'll also write this in terms of whether youre visiting for a weekend or actually looking for a place to live long term.
Mexico City’s Geography of Safety
Slight amou of history, there are 16 boroughs (“alcaldías”) and hundreds of colonias (neighborhoods). Each has its own reputation, social class, and level of policing. Crime here is hyper local. It doesn’t really spread into other neighborhoods like in Americans cities.
But a general rule of thumb is..
North & East CDMX -Working-class and industrial zones. More poverty, more crime. Iztapalapa, Gustavo A. Madero, and Ecatepec (just outside city limits) are the names you’ll hear in crime stats.
South & West CDMX - Wealthier and more secure. Think Polanco, Roma, Condesa, Santa Fe, San Ángel. These have more police, more private security, and more foreigners.
Centro → Mixed bag. Packed with history, culture, and tourists by day; empties out and gets sketchy after dark.