I lived in Mexico for a few years but decided to leave last year after getting married and having a child. It's an awful place if you value things like safety, health, education, infrastructure, and most importantly, the rule of law.

For me all the news reports of kidnappings and violence were just background noise until it hit close to home. My wife's sister-in-laws family was kidnapped and badly beaten to the point where her brother developed a permanent mental handicap. They were released and are now scrambling to immigrate to the US.

In a separate incident, the person who organized our wedding was also kidnapped but never found.

These types of cases are so common here that they don't even make the news, whether local or national.