When I told Mexicans that my next destination was Michoacán, I was often met with wide eyes.
“Why would you go to Michoacán?” they’d inquire. “It’s dangerous.”
Just the word Michoacán evokes emotions of fear and turmoil among Mexicans. And I knew they weren’t wrong, statistically speaking. The southwestern state of Michoacán — particularly certain areas in the interior — is one of many hot spots for cartel activity in Mexico. For years criminal groups have been fighting for territory and control of the region’s drug trade as well as lawful commerce, such as avocado and lime farming. Cartel turf battles mixed with clashes against the Mexican army and community militia groups have produced violence, insecurity, and, as I observed, a fear that percolates all around the country (and beyond). Take the U.S. State Department’s advice with a grain of salt, but they list Michoacán as one of the six Mexican states that should not be visited due to “crime and kidnapping.”
But not all Mexicans agree on the matter. Many love to spend their weekend vacations on Michoacán’s wild coast. And especially if you talk to Mexican surfers, they’ll sing an entirely different tune. “Do go to Michoacán,” they’ll whisper. “But don’t tell anyone, ok? We like to keep this our little secret.”
After spending six weeks in the largely surf-deprived town of Melaque and another two weeks 200 kilometers from the ocean in Guadalajara, I was ready for some surfing. I had had a particular town on the Michoacán coast on my radar for some years since a Mexican friend told me of his many surf trips to the area. He urged me to go, but asked me to promise that I don’t publish the name of the town on the internet. (Thus, this town will continue to be referred to as ‘the town.’) During this particular trip in Mexico, the stars had finally aligned to pay the coast of Michoacán a visit.
Traveling — or life for that matter — is a series of calculated risks. Yes, these are areas controlled/influenced by cartels, but this is a reality that you have to deal with in much of Mexico, including your favorite ‘safe’ beach resort tourist destinations. The coast of Michoacán is mountainous and rural, with the port of Lázaro Cardenas being the only major population center across its 120+ miles of shoreline. It’s mostly comprised of tiny little beach/surf villages. Relatively speaking, things are safe, particularly for tourists. There are stories from a not-too-distant ‘back in the day’ about armed robberies of tourists, but those stories seem to have mostly dried up in recent years. Random crime on traveling gringos is pretty unheard now. So I didn’t feel there was much risk in giving Michoacán a shot. At least not any more risk than what I had been doing the previous two months in the adjacent states of Colima (also on the ‘do not visit’ list) and Jalisco.
But even after arriving and settling into my new beachfront home in Michoacán, I was curious how organized crime affects life down here. As a traveling gringo, I felt pretty insulated from it. Life seemed too sublime: swaying palm trees, perfect surf, kids playing in the streets, the amazing smell of homemade tortillas drifting from the cinder block homes. I wanted to ask the locals about the narco world beneath the surface, but I couldn’t really find an opportunity that I felt was appropriate to bring up the subject. Of course, the traveling foreigners all loved to share their own cartel stories based on rumors they had heard, which ranged from car jackings to bus hold ups, probably containing morsels of both truth and fiction. However, after five serene days in the town I didn’t have to imagine anymore. The cartel underworld reared its head — a scene that usually evades the view of a gringo, like myself, but a world that the locals know all too well.
I rose early in my no-frills, windowless room in the town of Tecomán. A hard mattress covered with cobwebs on its underbelly was far from luxurious, but the hotel room served its purpose for a quick night’s sleep. I resisted the urge to drink water as I typically do in the morning. The buses that connect Tecomán to Michoacán don’t have toilets, so you have to get good at holding it in. Avoiding liquids is the best way to make for a more comfortable ride.
I packed my bags and awkwardly hauled my surfboard down the dusty streets as the sun began to poke over the mountains to the east. The bus station was conveniently located around the corner. Getting around with a burdensome surfboard bag has proven to be such a hassle in my travels around the world, that I valued proximity to the bus station in a hotel far more than luxury. That’s why I found myself crashing in the spider den for USD $15 per night.
The bus schedules were nowhere to be found online, so I asked around at the station and found a bus leaving for the town of Lázaro Cardenas at 8 a.m. Perfect. I tossed my surfboard and bag in the storage compartment and hopped aboard. The bus was nearly full, clearly a popular route for the people who live along the Michoacán coast. As I would later learn, the coast is so rural that many people, including my hosts, make the trip into Tecomán every week to stock up on food and supplies.
The first seat available for me was next to a heavy-set, young woman who was occupied playing games on her phone. She was slouched, leaning towards the open seat to her right, possibly in hopes that I would sit somewhere else. I chose to sit and greeted her with a “bueno días.” Engrossed in her phone, she hardly acknowledged me and didn’t make one effort to move most of her body back onto her side of the armrest. I contorted my shoulders and back, leaning into the aisle, in a position that I knew I would regret when I woke up the following morning. I could tell it was going to be a long ride.
As the bus rumbled through the coastal plain of Colima across the border to the steep mountainside roads of Michoacán, an old blind man boarded. Not only was he blind, but he was loud, talking the ear off of the sombrero-toting mustached gentleman to his side. I took a moment to appreciate how far my Spanish had come since my first classes in high school given I could understand most everything this man was saying in his heavily accented, slurred, loud Mexican country Spanish. He was yelling into the eardrum of the poor gentleman, asking practical questions, like what town we were in, but also just shooting the breeze, telling him why he was headed to the town of Maruata and what business he had there.
While driving through Michoacán, I was observing the route, curious to see if I could spot the infamous cartel activity. There was nothing obvious, but there were plenty of hints. Some of the small villages that you pass through are policed by the communities themselves. Sick of the cartel controlling their lives and the useless aid of corrupt police officers, many of the towns in Michoacán have formed their own community defense forces. While entering a few towns on the way, we passed through cement barricades, spike strips, and cones that filter and direct the sparse traffic. Graffiti on the wall at one of these checkpoints read “la lucha por la seguridad es permanente,” or “the fight for safety is permanent.” Men of the villages with motorcycles lounged on beach chairs under roadside palapa huts at these checkpoints, not doing much but watching the cars pass by. They didn’t appear to be armed, but given their role to protect their village, and the opposition that they go up against, I couldn’t help but imagine that the rifles were not far out of reach in the off chance something went haywire.
After about two hours or so, we arrived at my destination. I grabbed my backpack and walked to the front of the bus while battling the gravity of the curvy mountain road, and requested the driver let me off. We pulled over at the entrance to town, still well over a mile from the coast, where I was met by Diego. Diego was the husband of Maria, the owner of the restaurant/hotel that I would be staying at for the next three weeks. He greeted me with a big smile and a firm handshake, and I showed him how to easily fit a surfboard inside his small sedan by putting the passenger seat all the way down.
Diego pulled off the cobblestone roads onto a dirt road that curved around the property and descended to the level of the beach. The lodging consisted of a house that doubles as a restaurant situated on a small, crumbly hillside overlooking the ocean. Below, at the edge of the beach, is a camping area and a lone cement building with four rooms surrounded by lush, green grass whose maintenance requires sprinklers running around the clock. Painted bright yellow on one side, and crimson on the other, a rusty, narrow spiral staircase on the side of the building led me to the second floor where I found my room. It was simple. Two beds, one with sheets and one without, a wooden drawer, and a bathroom with one knob for water whose temperature depended on how long the water tanks had been sitting in the sun. I was lucky and got the room with the best view. From my bed I could pull back the curtains and see the waves breaking alongside the coastline’s breathtaking scenery.
The town sits at the mouth of a palm tree-lined river, which has carved a dramatic valley into the mountainside. When surfing you get a view that extends for dozens of miles up and into the interior mountain range. Each morning crisp mountain air rushes through this long canyon and, like clockwork, creates stiff offshore winds until the rising sun heats up the land. The river’s cobblestone deposits make a bulge in the coast and a unique bathymetry. It harnesses the ocean swells in a way that makes the town a paradise for surfers. The waves on the south side of the river form rights, while the north side forms lefts. Directly in front of the river there are hundreds of yards of peaky waves. It’s like a luxury platter of hors d’oeuvres served for surfers and you can take your pick of which wave you prefer.
The town itself isn’t much but a pitstop for surfers traveling down the coast. I’d say there can’t be more than a couple hundred inhabitants, and maybe 50 or so visiting surfers at any time — travelers from all around the world; Mexico, Canada, the U.S., France, England, Italy, Germany, and Australia, to name a few of the people I met. The town has a plaza with a covered, cement event area, several stores for basic groceries, a soccer field full of grazing chickens, and mostly just one-story houses built around dirt roads. The church is one of the biggest buildings in town with large, cross-shaped windows and tall, wooden doors.
I got into a nice groove in town. The place I was staying had Starlink satellite wifi (the only high speed wifi in the area, which was a deal-maker in coming here in the first place), so I’d go for an early morning surf, do my work in my room, eat delicious food cooked by Maria and her staff, and lounge around on my hammock with a book. Life was serene, calm, and worry-free. I’d go for a walk on the outskirts of town in the banana and papaya plantations, or head to the local store to buy avocados and peanut butter. But, back to my original question, I couldn’t help but wonder how disconnected I was from the life that the locals live. After seeing the community protection checkpoints and hearing all the warnings about Michoacán from Mexicans, surely there was some type of cartel influence that I wasn’t seeing as a tourist. Finally, one unsuspecting day, an abandoned boat and a young surfer helped me start to understand the truth.
As I was going through my daily routine, heading to the surf the right for an early afternoon session, I noticed the Marines were in town. It was strange because the town doesn’t have any formal police or military presence. Two trucks full of both male and female Marines were parked on the beach and hauling heavy bags from a long panga boat that was beached on the rocks, getting pummeled by the crashing waves. It appeared to be some sort of a drug bust. I had so many burning questions, and no one to pose them to.
Regardless, I paddled out to the surf spot. I was alone until one of the local kids paddled out next to me. I had seen this kid out several times. He was a goofy footer and surfed quite well. He was young, maybe not a year removed from high school, still yet to grow any facial hair. We had crossed paths enough times in the water that an unspoken rapport had formed, and I started chatting with him. I was happy to see that his stoic surfing face erupted into a grin when I approached him.
There are actually so many foreign surfers coming through the area that I didn’t want to assume he was Mexican, so I asked him, “¿Hablas español o inglés?”
“Both, man,” he responded in an oddly Americanized English.
Marco, as it turns out was his name, is from the village, but he has dual citizenship between the U.S. and Mexico due to his mom also having a U.S. passport. Even at just 18 years old, he had already spent a few summers working in New Mexico where he picked up his American English. But, having been surfing since he was 12, he told me it’s hard to spend so much time away from the ocean in New Mexico. He looked all around at the waves, the mountains, and acknowledged that here he lives in paradise.
We got to chatting and I felt like I had finally broken down the tourist transaction barrier with a local. His family owns horses in town and every now and then he lets them loose in the river’s estuary to drink water and graze. His mom makes handmade hats, but there is no market to sell them here in rural Michoacán. Marco explained that sometimes he would take his mom’s hats all the way to the touristy town of Sayulita, a ten-ish-hour drive north, to sell them.
Once we had a good conversation going, I turned his attention to the beached boat, the large bags, and the Marines. Between catching waves, Marco chuckled in Spanish, “The army was chasing these narcos in their boat, and to get away, they ran ashore here and escaped to the highway.”
I see. The narco world was, in fact, present around me, as I suspected, as everyone, including the U.S. State Department, had told me. Marco kept on explaining. He said he had never seen something like this happen in this town in his life, but that the narcos do use other beaches in the area to load and offload drugs. The guys on the boat escaped, but they left behind tons of drugs that were so heavy the Marines had to lug them back to their trucks over their shoulders. While we were having this conversation, a military reconnaissance plane was circling above us while another army boat patrolled the coast, probably looking for more drug boats out at sea.
According to Marco, everywhere in these parts is under the control of some cartel. He told me to look at a particular house the next time on my way out of town where they had fancy trucks. That is where some of them lived, he said. He also added that the new cartel in town left the people alone, and didn’t request money from any residents. They don’t bother anyone or force recruitments. In fact, Marco said the townspeople relied on the local cartel for protection. Apparently, the cartel previously in charge hadn’t been so ‘generous’ and would ‘cobrar piso,’ or tax the local businesses.
The other thing I found interesting was that the presence of the Marines attracted the attention of all the men in town. Dozens of men stood together on the beach watching the Marines do their job. “The Marines aren’t allowed in this town,” explained Marco. “We don’t trust them either. Some are part of the mafia too.”
Thus, this is how the next hour or two played out. The Marines hauled bags of drugs back to their truck while local men loitered about the beach. Finally things came to a crescendo when it took a group effort — locals and Marines — to tow the drug boat off the rocks. The owner of the local surf shop paddled out on a surfboard, tied the ropes from the tow boat and the drug boat together, and the panga was successfully extricated.
Marco said that this was definitely a weird day, not typical. But nonetheless, it happened during my stay in the village and gave me just a taste of the answers that I was looking for.
Michoacán has been incredible. The energy that emanates from this small town is revitalizing. I sometimes wonder if anyone has ever had a bad day, because the radiant smiles, especially from the people at the place I’m staying, have been near-permanent. And the amazing surfing is the icing on the cake.
Michoacán doesn’t get a ton of tourists compared to other parts of Mexico, especially around the area I’m in where the closest airports are hours away. Many gringos avoid the area, perhaps based on bad experiences in the past, or just the cartel reputation as a whole. Still, the core, traveling surfer-type tourists thrive here. I’m just passing by for a few weeks, but there are some surfers who post up here for months at a time. And I noticed that the same Mexicans from the neighboring state of Colima come here every weekend to surf. They can’t get enough of it.
The truth is that there is more nuance to the blanket travel bans and palpable fear of Michoacán. For example, the capital of Morelia, some of its surrounding indigenous villages, and the famous Monarch butterfly reserve (see my 2017 trip report here), are generally considered safe among Michoacanos and frequently visited by Mexicans. And many places on the coast, like the town I’ve been in, are quite tranquil. Marco told me through a smile, “Nunca pasa nada malo aquí” — (nothing bad ever happens here).
Nonetheless, the cartel situation in Mexico is disheartening. Sadly, the Mexican people have to navigate life with an omnipresent fear of their own country. I definitely didn’t need a reminder, but just seeing the fear that many Mexicans feel made me thankful to be from a place where you don’t fear for your life when you leave the house at night. From my personal experience in this little town, it would really be hard to know that anything was ever even amiss in Michoacán. But, again, it’s easy for me to say as a gringo with a surfboard. Plenty of Mexicans fear the place, and they surely know a thing or two that I don’t. But the surfers will still jokingly mutter with a wink, “Indeed. Don’t go to Michoacán. Nothing to see there.”
Editor’s note: Out of an abundance of caution, I’ve changed the names of people in this story.
Evan Quarnstrom 
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