Heightened Unease about Security

Everyone in our household will be a bit sluggish today as we had a good night's sleep interrupted.

I'm not really sure what time it was - I'd ballpark it around 4:30 a.m.ish - but our reliable guard dog got excited and started barking and growling.

At our apartment, this meant either a dog was in the hallway, some kids were running past our door or someone was at the door. And all of that would have been fine here as well, if she were barking and growling at the front door. After all, that leads to the street where anyone who got home late could be.

But Tiffy was growling at our backdoor, which leads to our walled-in backyard with spikes on top of the walls and where you need to know the secret handshake to enter.

Our initial reaction was to settle her down and get back to sleep; it was early, we were tired, and Tiffy sounding her alarm was nothing new to us. Nothing new to us in the States at least. It was new to us here. Especially at night.

So a couple of minutes passed and Natalie asked if I still was awake. Yeah. Should we (me) check the back door? Yeah, I think so. Peek through the blinds and couldn't see anything.

House is locked, right? Yeah. Maybe we (me) should lock the panic room just in case. The "panic room," by the way, is nothing more than an extra set of iron-rod gates that divide the house in half. My general feeling is that if someone managed to get through the gated community's security measures, past some of the other surprises the State Department provides and into our house, which requires getting through at least one more set of iron-rod gates and locked doors, and beat the security system (beginning to sound like Ocean's 11), I don't think another set of iron-rod gates will slow them down that much.

But it is early in the morning, we're both more than a little perturbed by Tiffy's outburst, so I more than willingly oblige. And it was a good thing I did, too, because it revealed a chink in our home's armor.

Another crucial part of the intricate security system is changing the locks between every resident. In changing our panic gate locks, it appears they didn't do such a good job in realigning the lock. The dead bolt hit the door as opposed to going through the hole in the door. Oops. Guess what it is getting fixed today.

So instead of easing the situation a little, trying to lock the panic gate probably only upset us a little bit more (at least it did me). The air condition would turn off, and it would be silent and I would listen for any sound. Then the air conditioner would kick back on, and I could hardly hear anything at all above the racket.

Eventually I heard Tiffy let out one of her big sighs, and I knew she no longer was upset about whatever she thought she heard in the backyard. And that finally let me try to get comfortable and fall back asleep. Which I eventually managed to do, though for had to be only a short period of time.

I have no idea what she thought she heard. Perhaps there was a critter lurking about. Maybe it was the Chupacabra. Maybe she heard something on the street behind us. In all likelihood, she was just having a bad dream.

<--- (Was this in our backyard? Consider it an unsolved mystery.)

But she did manage to draw our attention to a flaw in our fortress, and we only paid for it with a few hours of sleep. Nothing a large cup of coffee can't fix, so I walked to the nearest convenient store and indulged myself. (Ha...I bet you were anticipating another welcome kit rant. Not this time.)

"Welcome to Hermosillo, This Way to Your Cell"

Mexico is a dangerous place these days.

Just before we started our journey, we were greeted with this news about a gang fight outside Nogales (where we crossed the border) resulting in 21 dead. The cynical (i.e. Me) wouldn't be too upset by this news as it does not appear any innocents were harmed. In my book, this is somewhat akin to Taliban and al Qaeda killing each other. We should be so fortunate - no tears were lost by me.

And then during our first weekend here, the big news was the car bomb triggered in Juarez (can't pronounce Juarez without "War").

Perhaps coincidentally, less than two weeks after the Nogales incident (but before the latest in war-zone-esque Juarez), the State Department issued yet another travel advisory in Mexico. I'll outline some highlights of this lengthy report:

Common-sense precautions such as visiting only legitimate business and tourist areas during daylight hours, and avoiding areas where criminal activity might occur, can help ensure that travel to Mexico is safe and enjoyable.

Continued concerns regarding road safety along the Mexican border have prompted the U.S. Mission in Mexico to impose certain restrictions on U.S. government employees transiting the area. Effective July 15, 2010, Mission employees and their families may not travel by vehicle across the U.S.-Mexico border to or from any post in the interior of Mexico...This policy does not apply to employees and their family members assigned to border posts (Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, and Matamoros), although they may not drive to interior posts as outlined above.

And finally, the one of most interest to me:

Travel is permitted between Hermosillo and Nogales, but not permitted from Hermosillo to any other interior posts.

Not sure if your familiar with the Mexican map, but there is nothing of interest along the road between Nogales and Hermosillo. We can't drive east or south due to this most recent travel advisory. Fortunately, we can still go west to the beaches, but I imagine we are one incident away from losing that privilege as well.

As a reference, I've brought back this Mexican crime map from an earlier post. Sonora, the state we live in now, is the big yellow one in the upper left. Working your way right, you have the more dangerous, reddish states of Chihuahua, Coahuila de Zaragoza and Tamaulipas. The yellow state south of Sonora is Sinaloa, which probably has been upgraded to reddish now.

One of the other diplomats pointed out that this city has become very isolated and hard to get in and out of. Welcome to Hermosillo, Africa.

Hermosillo itself is not that dangerous in terms of drug-trade-related crime. The city has your typical big city petty crime such as pick-pockets, burglary, etc. Some one told us it used to be the case that the drug lords had an understanding of sorts to keep the drug fighting out of this city because many of the lords have families in Hermosillo. Sure, let the thugs off each other in other parts of Mexico (Juarez), but let's not let it effect our families. But even that understanding is starting to wear off as there has been some drug-related violence here.

In my last post I lavished praise on our house. And I do love this house. But what I saved for today is that these homes are designed to keep intruders out, which has the flip effect of being difficult for us to get out.

I don't want to go into too much details about the security measures here for fear that could upset some of the government types, but we have bars in our windows and doorways. We have spikes and nasty barbed wire on walls. We have security systems. We have secret handshakes. We don't mess around when it comes to security.