Missing American

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/02/09/american-adventurer-harry-devert-missing-in-mexico-family-makes-international/

Another clueless gringo thinks he's going to link arms and sing Kumbaya with the Mexicans...in Tierra Caliente .
His family made a FB page "Help Find Harry" . Today they were signing a petition to get Obama to " do something" to find him. Sheesh.

I'm sorry he's dead. I hope his family can come to terms with that and find peace in knowing that he died while living life on his terms.

Well he might not be dead but odds are someone wanted that motorcycle.

To be fair stuff can happen anywhere. My wife was flying to asia and stopped in South
Korea to gas up and they just happened to have a military revolution and she spent
the next three days with a machine gun pointed at her. The last part of this story is
guess what the flight number was?   007 the same flight the Russians shot down for
spying a few weeks later. And they were spying because people asked the stewardess
why we were flying over land. 

My point is yes he probably was naïve but things like this happen sometimes with your
help and sometimes not. Lets hope he is kidnapped.

Z

Maybe he is being held captive and it will turn out to be an adventure he lives to tell. I do hope they find him or at least find out what happened to him. For those who love him never knowing what happened to him would be a special hell.

A young man is missing, his family are out of their minds with worry. Yes, he's a dreamer and adventurer, but so are many of the oldies who've moved here, does this make us "clueless gringo's"?
As the mother of adventurous sons who've done everything from sailing around the world solo, to skiing down mountains, I know what this mother must be going through, and no I'm not singing Kumbaya

Nosnow, it is possible to be a dreamer and adventurer and at the same time be realistic about where you are going and what you are facing. If we assume this young man did, then he knew he was taking chances and deemed the adventure worth the risk. Problem is, sometimes you come out on the other side with a tale to tell, sometimes it turns out not to have been worth what happened, and sometimes you do not come out on the other side at all. If it was easy and risk-free everyone would do it. Perhaps the way Ms. Thang expressed it seemed cold to you, but it is reality.

Let's hope the cartel throws him back. The cartel doesn't seem to like to mess with gringos as the State Dept. can throw all kinds of covert operations in their direction. However, appealing to Obama is worse than useless. Even if he mentions Harry to EPN, el Presidente can't seem to do anything against the cartels and law enforcement/military just might want Harry for themselves.

He took off on a Motorcycle that he didn't know how to ride and had a bad crash even before he got to Mexico.
People he met at the place he spent time in Morelia advised him that there were safe routes to take to Zihuatanejo but the route he was interested in taking was treacherous even for experienced cyclists and dangerous ...a war zone. As evidenced by his last text message he didn't take that advice and ended up " someplace it was too dangerous for him to be" and he didn't even say where that was.
Adventure is great but even the most daring of adventurers research, plan, prepare , take precautions and don't exceed their capabilities so that they might adventure again.

His family has been advised not to go to Michoacan to search for him because it's too dangerous in the area they believe he went missing. They might never know what happened to him and I can't imagine anything worse than that kind of living hell.

I don't see any point in trying to compare the Harry Devert situation to "oldies" who decide to make Mexico their home.

"I got robbed,beat up,left on the side of a deserted road miles from any town and almost killed-and I'd do it all over again a hundred times if I could"
That's a quote from his travel blog about his trip to Venezuela.

Anewyorkertravels.com

I guess he got his wish. It is one thing to go on an adventure it is another to go in the middle of a war zone. People do get killed in war zones.
What a hoor story for his family. Not knowing what happened to him and not being able to do anything has to be horrible.

Do tell Zed. And which of the multiple South Korean Revolutions was your wife involved in?

Here is one viewpoint about the Mexican situation.
https://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/21/disappeared-and-mexicos-new-dirty-war

Gamina wrote:The cartel doesn't seem to like to mess with gringos as the State Dept. can throw all kinds of covert operations in their direction.

I think the belief that "nobody dares to mess with Americans" is comforting and it makes a great movie theme, but in the real world it just ain't so. There were 81 Americans reported murdered in Mexico in 2013 and "almost 90" reported kidnapped from April to November. No doubt some were involved in illegal activities but it would be grossly unfair to say they all were, just as it's grossly unfair to label all disappeared and murdered Mexicans as criminals.

Armando Torres II, a Marine who had served in Iraq and Africa, was kidnapped in 2013. There was a lot of publicity at the time, but he is still missing. The link below contains his story and some less well known incidents from Mexico and elsewhere.
http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/article_8ca5cd98-d639-11e2-9a44-001a4bcf6878.html

Being an American offers no protection at all if somebody suspects you of working for the DEA. Four innocent Americans disappeared in Guadalajara in 1984 and two in 1985 because of cartel paranoia. http://articles.latimes.com/1989-10-20/news/mn-179_1_drug-agent

I know of two incidents in the Jalisco/Michoacan area since 2010 where Americans were sent back to their families or allowed to proceed after being stopped by masked cartel members with BIG guns. I was specifically referring to interactions with the cartel and not Americans that were killed because of robbery, mistaken identity as DEA, etc.

I understand that many (not all) of the "Americans" killed or kidnapped have been Mexican/Americans with dual citizenship.

CanuckBob wrote:I understand that many (not all) of the "Americans" killed or kidnapped have been Mexican/Americans with dual citizenship.  

your understanding is correct

A few thoughts and statistics....

http://www.mexicomike.com/safety/safety-UsStateDepartment.html

interesting read!

Thank you, Luna. Interesting that 80% of Americans killed in Mexico are killed in northern border towns--and 50% in just two cities, Juarez and Tijuana.

Deleted

The Borderland Beat blog is reporting that Harry Devert has been found; in pieces in black garbage bags. His motorcycle was also buried and recovered.

Thank you for sharing this. Horrific ending to his story.

Strange story, La Union where he was found is north of Troncones and not very far from the border with Michoacan. They obviously did not kill him fo rthe moto. It was reported he had cocaine and marijuana with him so why was he killed. Cash he had with him? More interesting is why would they bother cutting him up and burrying the bile, If they wanted to tob him they could do it, kill him and leave him where they kiled him..It seems like a lot of work to cover up a crime .

practice maybe?

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if he wuz a true adventurer... he'd be at a nudy beach bang'n out tunes on his guitar.. drink'n beers and smok'n a fatty

  

This young man was an adventurer that did not realize that the state department does not give details to the travel warnings. Many of us think we know the safe routes to travel but we might be wrong. The last few december holidays the mexican gov made a program for traveling in caravans with policia federal escort. On one trip they where lining up hours from border towns where the policia federal would stop on the highway side by side and wait for tje caravan to form before heading out.
On the youtube video reten ciudad mier, you can see the criminals getting high on drugs at 7am. How can anyone expect to drive in mexico when you might encounter these people that dont care if they take your money and kill you...they even left the motorcycle. Very ruthless criminals