I used to visit Mexico quite frequently and I have some friends who are mexican, it's sad what is happening there. Mexico has a lot of beauty, however I can say the last visit was in February 2011 and it was not safe, I went to an area around the yucatan which was supposed to be more touristy and while I expect areas of the yucatan to be more run down than Mexico City, I didn't expect it to be Sinaloa, there were a lot of armed soldiers when I went, roads were in poor conditions, lot of prostitutes, houses looked bombed out, it was quite depressing. My friends and I had a few close calls of getting involved in a bad situation there, Cozumel however is not like that, seems to be pretty safe but yeah Mexico right now has a lot of violence,