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When drug gangs are vying for control in an area with booming growth and rampant corruption, what can be done?  And how many travelers are aware of this danger?

A note from the writer: The goal of this article is not to inflame prejudice or promote fear. Rather, it’s the idea that the people of Mexico deserve to thrive and that the violence, rampant corruption and inaction by local and international agencies to curb these continuing dangers needs accountability. Colombian Keisy Suarez went on holiday with her American boyfriend to Tulum. Romance and relaxing were the items on their agenda for the week, so when she accidentally left her cellphone in their taxi the holiday got off to an unfortunate start. What happened after turned it into a nightmare. Being scared of your personal safety is never on a holiday plan. Even though she got her cellphone back she told me emphatically, “I will never go back to Tulum.” So what made it so bad? Encounters with something travelers are calling ‘taxi cartels’. Suarez’s innocent mistake unearthed a side of Tulum that until recently was only talked about amongst friends recounting their terrible holiday stories: the local taxi transportation industry has safety concerns. In fact it can be a dangerous thing. So much so that on January 23, the U.S. Department of State put out a security alert specifically for Quintana Roo about taxi and Uber services there. It’s not just that Suarez left her phone in the taxi. You see, the transaction was just ending when she realized it was still inside, yet as she called out to the driver and to get back in, he took off fast. It was more of a theft. After Suarez’s phone took off she and her boyfriend got to the business trying to get it back, an experience over the next four days they called “cartel” like. Having paid in cash for the taxi - which was its own extortion, as the driver demanded $50 for a drive of a couple minutes, for which they paid nearly half in the end - and the cellphone being turned off, they were relieved their next taxi driver seemed sincere in wanting to help them. What they discovered was actually finding the cell phone not that hard because the taxi drivers know each other. There’s a network. A cartel.