Latin American Countries Picked Over Mexico By Students For Study Abroad Due To Fear Of Violence

The U.S. government has taken a lot of efforts to encourage more Americans to consider studying abroad in Latin America, but despite these efforts, one country is seeing an unprecedented decline: Mexico.

Mexico was previously the most popular Latin American destination for students, but its recent political turmoil and war on drug trafficking has left students wary of studying in the country. Now, the North American nation ranks behind Costa Rica, Argentina and Brazil for the most popular location.

The Institute of International Education (IIE) reports that in the 2000-2001 academic year, 8,360 Americans studied in Mexico. But that value dropped by over 50 percent a decade later in the 2011-2012 academic year, where a mere 3,815 students went to the nation.

The fear of student travelers is understandable: earlier this year, the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara issued a statement on its Facebook page warning U.S. citizens in the area against traveling in the region after a number of vehicles, including trucks and buses, were hijacked and set fire to in the suburb of Zapopan.

"Once (the exchanges) are delayed or stopped, institutions set up affiliations and programs elsewhere, having longer term consequences for the numbers," said Shannon O'Neill, senior fellow at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, to the Associated Press. "So even if violence wanes, it can be hard for the numbers to rebound."

That said, a website launched last year -- titled "How Safe Is Mexico?" -- insists otherwise. Gathering data from independent sources, the website offers potential tourists some surprising statistics about Mexico to emphasize the fact that one or two news reports about crime does not apply to the entire country, as Mexico is a large country. According to the website, D.C. is four times more deadly than Mexico City and visiting Yucatan is as safe as rural states in the United States, as it boasts a homicide rate that is lower than rural Wyoming, Montana, Oregon and Maine.

"Like most countries, Mexico has violent crime. Our concern is that the portrayal of this violence is sensationalized and inconsistent with the portrayals of other countries and travel destinations," reveal the makers of the website. "We do not suggest that Mexico is completely safe, nor is it as dangerous as it is represented. We offer specific factual comparisons so that travelers can make enlightened choices without the haze of politics and media hype."

The U.S. government has plants to launch a bilateral forum for higher education that will promote Latin American study abroad programs so that 100,000 U.S. students will be studying in Latin America and 100,000 from the region in the U.S. by 2020.

"To have Americans growing up and know nothing about our Spanish-speaking citizens ... means that our education is incomplete," said IIE president Allan Goodman. "Knowing Mexico to me is as important as taking another course in economics."