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Five reasons why David Hartley's disappearance on Falcon Lake is not a big story in Mexico

The story of David Hartley, who was allegedly shot by Mexican drug traffickers Sept. 30 while jet-skiing on a lake that straddles Texas and Mexico, has received continuous coverage in American news.

Lack of sympathy

Eric Gay/AP
US Coast Guard patrols on Falcon Lake, where where Coloradan David Hartley is still missing. Mr. Hartley's wife says her husband was shot to death by Mexican pirates chasing them on speedboats across the lake on Sept. 30 as they returned on Jet Skis from a trip to photograph a historic Mexican church.

  • By Sara Miller Llana Staff writer

With thousands of people victimized daily by violence in Mexico, the incident on Falcon Lake fails to draw sympathy here, says Mr. Lund, the political analyst in Mexico City and the president of The MUND Group.

In the same vein, the story does not resonate with Mexicans because many feel the Hartley's assumed a certain amount of risk when they rode Jet Skis into Mexican waters on Sept. 30. The middle class American couple knowingly crossed the border to take a photo of a church – as Tiffany Hartley recounts it – and may have found themselves in the middle of a drug trafficker's territory. Such is reality for many Mexicans on a daily basis.

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