Is Mexico City Safe? Here’s My Answer
What years of living here have taught me — and what I’d tell a friend before they book the flight
People ask me this before every trip, and I understand why. The headlines are alarming, and nobody wants to plan a vacation around them. My answer is not a yes or no. It’s closer to: Mexico City isn’t more dangerous than New York, Paris, or Washington DC, as long as you’re not somewhere you have no reason to be, and you’re paying attention to what’s happening around you. That’s my answer. What comes below are the details of what that means for a visitor.
The Advice You’ll Read Isn’t Wrong, It’s Incomplete
Stay in Roma, Condesa, Polanco, or Cuauhtémoc. Take an Uber instead of hailing a cab off the street. Don’t wander aimlessly at night. This is fine advice. It’s just a floor, not a ceiling. There are far more neighborhoods where you can walk purposefully and aware well into the evening than that list implies. I’m not going to hand you a set of rules. My goal is to help you understand the actual situation well enough to make your own calls, not to be prescriptive about what you can and can’t do.
Attention Matters More Than Geography
The single biggest factor in whether something happens to you here isn’t necessarily which neighborhood you’re in. It’s whether you’re paying attention.
A few years ago, my wallet was stolen on a bus on Avenida de la Reforma. I’d been up late fighting with my boyfriend at the time, I was tired, and I wasn’t watching my bag. Someone opened it and took my wallet before I noticed. If I’d been paying attention, they probably wouldn’t have tried.
More recently, a friend had her phone stolen leaving a crowded concert at the Estadio GNP. It was in a purse hanging at her hip, and someone reached in and took it in the crush of the crowd before she felt a thing. I was wearing my phone in a cross-body bag under my jacket that same night. When someone tried the same move on me, they were met with my arm and my jacket, and gave up. Same crowd, same night, different bag placement, different outcome.
There’s a video that made the rounds a few years back of a couple robbed on a street in Polanco. Watch it and the reason is obvious: they’re walking at night with their heads down, looking at their phones, completely checked out. They made themselves an easy target. Don’t do that — here, or in any large city.
Reputation vs. Reality
Some neighborhoods have a reputation that outlasts the reality. Tacubaya is one I’ve always talked about as a little sketchy, mostly because it’s a big transit and market hub. My first months in the city, I went through there to take public transportation to work every morning. Nothing ever happened, but it doesn’t feel like a safe neighborhood. Thinking about it honestly, I’m not sure that reputation holds up. It’s busy and unglamorous, not necessarily dangerous. Worth remembering that “I’ve heard it’s bad” and “it’s actually bad” are two different things, and it’s worth checking which one you’re dealing with before you write somewhere off.
The opposite is also true — you should be paying attention to your surroundings even in the posh neighborhoods. Take my example above about Polanco, for example, which is a very well-off neighborhood. When we lived in Anzures, a nice, solidly middle-class neighborhood nearby, a man was following me as I walked our dog at night. A neighbor I knew stopped and talked to me until the man moved on, then called the police. He told me the next day that the guy had four cell phones on him, presumably stolen. Nothing happened to me, but that was due in part to our neighbor, and we were not in a sketchy neighborhood.
What “Aware” Actually Looks Like
Lucha libre happens at night, in Doctores, and you’ll read that you should only go by Uber and leave immediately afterward. We’ve gone at night more than once. It’s a busy, fun night out. The only real risk is the standard pickpocket risk of any packed crowd, which is a reason to keep your bag close, not a reason to skip it. Having said that, it doesn’t make sense to wander the neighborhood after the show, and you probably do want to head home via Uber when it lets out.
The Historic Center can shift from gentrified to fairly seedy within the space of a single block. As a tourist, you won’t be avoiding the Historic Center of the city, but make sure you stay switched on while you’re there, the same way you would in the busy center of most major cities. You might choose to wear less obvious jewelry and clothing the days you’re visiting that area, and be sure to keep your purse or bag where you have control of it. This includes markets like La Lagunilla or the flower market, Jamaica, though that’s not in the center of the city.
Where There’s Genuinely No Reason to Go
I lived in Iztapalapa for a year when I first moved here. My friends still tease me about it. I imagine my boyfriend at the time had put a three-block radius under what amounted to a personal threat of violence if anything happened to me. Nothing ever happened to me, but taxi drivers were regularly nervous about dropping me off on the dead-end street where he lived — and looking back, I understand why. A dead end is a bad place to get stuck if something goes wrong, and that was a real risk for them in that neighborhood. While Iztapalapa itself is an interesting cultural microcosm and the largest section of the city, as a tourist you’ll have absolutely no reason to go there and you should avoid it.
The same goes for Tepito, Doctores after dark, Ecatepec, and Ciudad Neza. None of these have anything a tourist needs to see, and all of them carry real, elevated risk.
Scams Worth Knowing About
People begging here is, a lot of the time, a scam — and a well-organized one. We run into the same people telling the same story, sometimes for years. It’s generally understood that a portion of what’s collected goes to someone else running the operation. We generally give food or buy food instead of giving cash. If someone accepts the food, you know they were actually hungry.
Proportion, Not Alarm
Waitstaff have told us, at least once, about robberies on restaurant terraces in Polanco. We still eat on those terraces regularly. For us, knowing something is possible isn’t the same as rearranging your life around it.
The same logic applies to how you dress. In Polanco, dress up. Nobody blinks at nice clothes there. Somewhere like La Merced, the opposite applies — you’re going to stand out as a foreigner no matter what you’re wearing, but there’s no reason to make it worse. I once planned a thrifting trip through a market to find vintage teacups for a friend’s party. The woman I went with looked at my outfit before we left and said, “Don’t wear that. You look too nice.” She had me take off small diamond earrings and swap out my jacket for something plainer. If you want my thoughts on how people actually dress here day to day, I’ve written a separate guide to that.
The Edge Cases
My husband was held up at gunpoint once, at a stoplight on a busy road during rush hour. This was almost 15 years ago. He handed over his cash and his phone, which he’d already blocked, and was unharmed aside from the fright. We occasionally hear similar stories — watches in particular seem to be stolen this way often. It isn’t common enough that our friends have stopped wearing their watches. It’s also not nothing. I’d put it at the realistic edge of what can happen here occasionally, and maybe suggest you don’t bring your Omega on this trip.
Earthquakes
I grew up in California and then lived in Japan for two years, so I’m probably more relaxed about this than I should be. The city has an alert system that can give you up to a minute of warning before a quake hits, depending on where it originates. If it’s minor, I don’t think twice and honestly I rarely evacuate. If it feels like a bigger one, the smart move is to evacuate as soon as the shaking stops, since buildings sometimes come down a few minutes after the quake. You’ll see locals standing around in the street for fifteen to thirty minutes after a larger earthquake, waiting until it feels safe to go back inside. Follow their lead. If you’re in one of the high-rise buildings because of a meeting or that’s where you’re staying, they all get checked before people are allowed back inside following a larger earthquake.
What I’d Tell a Nervous Friend
I’d tell them it’s like visiting Los Angeles or New York. Use common sense. Pay attention to what’s around you — avoid the areas where a tourist has no reason to be. Look like you know where you’re going and what you’re doing — it makes you a less-likely target. Go back to that couple in Polanco, heads down, phones out, oblivious. Don’t be them. Here, or anywhere else. Keep your eyes on your surroundings, and stay in control of your possessions.
