I Got Killed. But I Got Better

Well, the latest crime statistics for Mexico are in. They incite a certain “compare and contrast” urge in me. You see, I came to Yucatan, which is a state in the southern jungles of Mexico, from Maine, which is the unheated basement of Canada. It’s yin and yang. Scylla and Charybdis. I dunno, maybe Abbot and Costello.

Yucatan, the state, is one of three states in the Yucatan Peninsula, if memory serves. To the west is Campeche, and to the east is Quintana Roo. Quintana Roo is where Cancun lurks and cruise ships disgorge their frightful freight of potential sunburn victims.

I’m going to compare crime statistics between Maine and Yucatan for two reasons. One, I’ve recently lived in both places. Two, my wife and I were assured by everyone in Maine that if we moved to Mexico, we would be murdered, or kidnapped, or kidnapped and murdered in no particular order, likely immediately upon landing. I think they set up a betting pool. They wagered on whether we’d get it in the neck at the baggage claim, or maybe be spirited away to a torture dungeon directly from the immigration desk. Perhaps held for ransom by the cab driver waiting at the curb, to me murdered at leisure. One enterprising brother-in-law took a big flutter on us being massacred on the plane itself by a rogue cartel stewardess. We don’t fly Spirit airlines, so he lost his shirt.

There are other reasons to compare the two. Maine is pretty big, but it’s pretty empty, too. Yucatan is slightly less than half as big as Maine, but it has 2.3 million people in it, while Maine has 1.3 or 1.4 million, depending on how many of its hardy souls tried to go ice-fishing one last time in May. So the two places are somewhat comparable.

The comparison even holds additional water, because in both places, the population is all in one place. We’re in Merida, the capital of Yucatan, where between 900,000 and 1.1 million people live, depending on how you define the city limits. Similarly, pretty much everyone in Maine lives in what we used to call Northern Massachusetts. It’s the strip of land that stretches along the coast from the New Hampshire border to Portland. Most people think Portland is the capital of Maine, but it’s just the biggest city. Augusta is the capital. We used to live there. The population of Augusta is 19,000, to give you some idea of how Maine operates. Most of Maine outside of a few cities is nothing but trees, fleas, and disease.

So let’s begin with the crime statistics released today for Yucatan:

MÉRIDA, YUCATAN — Yucatán accumulated 2,346 alleged common law crimes between January and April 2026, keeping it among the safest states in Mexico, according to the latest report from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP). (link)

By “common law crimes,” they’re not describing domestic donnybrooks in trailer parks by couples that can’t afford destination weddings, although that classification would work just fine in Maine. Down here, they are referring to every sort of crime that would be reported to the police, not just the kinds of crime that happens when your meth-smoking common-law wife objects to your preference for spending her SNAP check on fentanyl in your single-wide outside of Lewiston.

The only two states in Mexico rated (barely) safer than Yucatan are next door neighbor Campeche, and Tlaxcala, a tiny little state further up the eastern edge of  Mexico along the gulf, although it’s landlocked. I think they’re fibbing a bit about Tlaxcala. While it’s probably true there’s not much crime there, it might only be because Tlaxcalasians commit all their crimes in the US. Federal Hill in Providence used to be pretty peaceful too, for much the same reason. Many gangsters don’t shit where they eat. Merida ain’t like that. It’s truly peaceful here.

So I asked Chad (chat GPT) to compare crime rates in Merida to Maine. This is especially interesting, because Maine is one of the safest states in the US. Our relatives don’t think they’re courting death by living in Maine, unless they head out to the mailbox in January without a rope tied to their waist and the house. They think we’re crazy, though.

Maine is generally considered one of the safest U.S. states. However, Maine’s reported crime rates are much higher than Yucatán’s reported figures.

Recent FBI-based statistics typically show:

Violent crime: roughly 100–120 per 100,000 people annually
Property crime: roughly 1,000–1,200 per 100,000 people annually
Total index crime: around 1,100–1,300+ per 100,000 people annually

So if we compare reported crime rates directly:

Jurisdiction Approx. annual crime rate
Yucatán (annualized from Jan–Apr data) ~294 per 100,000
Maine ~1,100–1,300 per 100,000

On paper, Yucatán’s reported crime rate appears roughly 4–5 times lower than Maine’s.

Chad cautioned me that there might be a problem with the statistics, because:

Official crime rates don’t necessarily capture:

• • Open drug use
  • Chronic public disorder
  • Reckless driving and traffic violations
  • Shoplifting that businesses no longer bother reporting
  • Trespassing, vagrancy, and nuisance offenses
  • Repeat low-level offending that communities simply tolerate.

A resident’s lived experience can therefore diverge significantly from the official numbers.

I got the impression that Chad was warning me about Mexico, but I can assure you that open drug use, public disorder, reckless driving and traffic violations, shoplifting that businesses no longer bother reporting, trespassing, vagrancy, and nuisance offenses are unheard of in Merida, but they might as well be printed at the bottom of the ENTERING AUGUSTA signs at the edge of town.

So we’re between four and five times safer here in Merida than we were back in Maine, which is about tied for the safest place in the United States. I’d like to assure our relatives that we’re trying as hard as we can to get ourselves killed, or kidnapped, or kidnapped and killed in any order, but it’s going to take a while to settle their bets. Sorry.