# Puebla



## elsonador (Feb 16, 2011)

So I have never been but I continue to read conflicting reports on Puebla.
I would like to know what any expats or people who have visited think about the city of Puebla.

Is it extremely conservative like so many people say?

How has el volcan popo effected the air?

In general how is the crime?

Also any side thoughts or experiences would be great.

P.S. anybody watching the México y Jamaica game??

Thanks guys.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

It is not a city I am in love with but an interesting city to visit and probably to live in.
The architecture in the centro is austere, imposing, not charming. 
People have the reputation of being conservative and reserved, difficult to know but some of the craziest and some of the nicest people I know live there. Some friends who are not religious tell me that the city is conservative and religious but they enjoy living there,
Many gays I know in Oaxaca love to go to Puebla to spend week-ends and vacations. When I asked some of my straight friends if there is a large gay community in Puebla they have no idea.
The city has good food. Lots of nice restaurants from little places to fancier places.
It has lots of nice cultural events--
The areas outside of centro are not particularly attractive and the traffic is a mess.

Would I move there? Probably not, I would rather live in Mexico City but I enjoy visiting .

Sorrry I have lots of conflicted feelings towards Puebla. Usually I love or hate a city but my feelings for Puebla are much more nuanced and complicated.


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## elsonador (Feb 16, 2011)

citlai,

When you say the areas outside of el centro aren't attractive do you mean poor and dirty/industrial? We can be honest. 
Are there modern and new housing developments and neighborhoods?

Horrible traffic = massive headaches.

Thanks for sharing!


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

No it does not strike me as a city with dirty industrial sections and the city as a whole is pretty clean. The city is very spread out , they are redoing a lot of the roads so right now it seems very disorganised and confusing kind of topsy turvy place
Once all the public projects are done it will greatly improve going around and it will not be such a mess.
.. Yes they are gated communities that have nice houses with good security with good shopping centers.
I feel like you have to drive and drive through a lot of nondescript areas to get anywhere.
It strikes me as all thrown together but I am just visiting so it is my impression It is a place where I can get lost very quickly.
The center is almost the oposite. Well laid out with some georgeous old building and pleasant pedestrian areas.


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## elsonador (Feb 16, 2011)

Thanks for the insight!


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## Joycee (Jul 22, 2009)

I live in Puebla and would not consider living in Mexico City. The state of Puebla is considered one of the safest in the country. My husband drives all over with little problem, although the traffic can get congested in el centro. The volcano has not affected the city too much except for a brief time last month when the ash was raining down and the airport had to close until the runway was cleaned up. For the next few days after that many of the residents were wearing surgical masks when they went out, but now the air is fairly clear as EL Popo is not spitting out as much ash and we have had some good thunderstorms.


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## elsonador (Feb 16, 2011)

Joycee,

Thanks for the response! My wife and I continue are search (and travel) of the country and are considering Puebla as a final destination. My wife is a Mexican national and fears that Puebla would not be a good place to start a small business due to extortionists (which many Mexicans believe to have originated in the south and DF as opposed to being part of the drug war). 

Do you have any experience or know anyone who does with small business and security in the city of Puebla?

Good to hear that the volcano isn't causing too many issues!

Thanks again!


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

One my friends has 4 stores in Puebla in the center and are not being extorted. It
does not mean they never will but they have not had that problem.


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## elsonador (Feb 16, 2011)

citlali said:


> One my friends has 4 stores in Puebla in the center and are not being extorted. It
> does not mean they never will but they have not had that problem.


Thanks for sharing! We are excited to get to know the area.
Any advice on what neighborhoods you would suggest living in?

Also do you think it will be a big deal driving a newer model SUV in Puebla? (Fear seems to be a common theme with my wifes family)

Thanks for any and all helpful advice!


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

elsonador said:


> Also do you think it will be a big deal driving a newer model SUV in Puebla? (Fear seems to be a common theme with my wifes family)


I wonder why that is. Do they live in Puebla or are they basing their fears on rumor and innuendo?


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## elsonador (Feb 16, 2011)

Isla Verde said:


> I wonder why that is. Do they live in Puebla or are they basing their fears on rumor and innuendo?


They live in Cd Juarez and have not done much if any traveling. We on the other hand have lived in Buenos Aires, Cabo San Lucas and Chicago. Visited Cancun, Copper Canyon, parts of Sonora and Sinaloa mainly all driving apart from Argentina 

Anyways I am trying to convince the in laws that Puebla is as safe as any other option.......


It'll all work out :fingerscrossed:


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

elsonador said:


> They live in Cd Juarez and have not done much if any traveling. We on the other hand have lived in Buenos Aires, Cabo San Lucas and Chicago. Visited Cancun, Copper Canyon, parts of Sonora and Sinaloa mainly all driving apart from Argentina
> 
> Anyways I am trying to convince the in laws that Puebla is as safe as any other option.......
> 
> ...


How ironic. Your in-laws live in a very dangerous city along the border and think that Puebla is not a safe place for you to move to. What does your wife think?


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

elsonador said:


> My wife is a Mexican national and fears that Puebla would not be a good place to start a small business due to extortionists (which many Mexicans believe to have originated in the south and DF as opposed to being part of the drug war).


Who are these many Mexicans?


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

There are plenty of new and good looking SUV and all kinds of other cars in Puebla. I would not advise to drive a cartel mobile in any area but give us a breal, Puebla is a safe city and if you feel safe anough to drive in Chihuahua or any of the northern cities I cannot imagine why yo would fear Puebla.


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## elsonador (Feb 16, 2011)

Isla Verde said:


> Who are these many Mexicans?


My wifes family and family friends haha. 
Who all insist that while the north has rampant drug war and cartel issues the south of the country is full of extortionists and kidnappers...again this is not my opinion I am just trying to find something to use so I can get the family off my back as we search for a new home in Mexico. I am repeatedly told about how no one can trust chilangos.....(I'm not here to anger anyone I am just repeating what someone said, not my opinion!) and that Puebla is too close to DF. 

I often shoot back with something like "do you really think every business in DF and Puebla are being extorted and every family with a 2013 model vehicle is being carjacked or held for ransom?" 

I'm not sure why its such a tough sell to her family and friends. I guess its more just fear of the unknown where as they know what Chihuahua is. 

Anyways thanks for the input guys.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Actually I found out a long time ago that there is a major distrust between north and south in Mexico. When I ran a vineyard in California, I very quickly learned that you could not have northerners and southerners working together . The northerners looked down at people from the south and the southerners didn´t accept the racism and prejudices coming out of the north.
Jalisco and Michoacan workers could work with either group although you got a better team if we had people coming from the same area..
I do not consider Puebla southern really but it may be the same old,"the guys in the south cannot be trusted kind of thing".

You should take a vacations and drive around or take one of these flights to DF and visit Puebla or Tlaxcala,, have a good time and then you can see for yourselves if you could live there or not. Nobody else can tell you.


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## elsonador (Feb 16, 2011)

citlali said:


> Actually I found out a long time ago that there is a major distrust between north and south in Mexico. When I ran a vineyard in California, I very quickly learned that you could not have northerners and southerners working together . The northerners looked down at people from the south and the southerners didn´t accept the racism and prejudices coming out of the north.
> Jalisco and Michoacan workers could work with either group although you got a better team if we had people coming from the same area..
> I do not consider Puebla southern really but it may be the same old,"the guys in the south cannot be trusted kind of thing".


I'm glad you understand this north/south concept. I think its really a shame but I am working on convincing my immediate family that everyone can't just be grouped together as liars, crooks, extortionists and what not just because they come from DF and the south of the country.

Again thanks for the help guys!


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

[_QUOTE=elsonador;1195128]My wifes family and family friends haha. 
Who all insist that while the north has rampant drug war and cartel issues the south of the country is full of extortionists and kidnappers...again this is not my opinion I am just trying to find something to use so I can get the family off my back as we search for a new home in Mexico. I am repeatedly told about how no one can trust chilangos.....(I'm not here to anger anyone I am just repeating what someone said, not my opinion!) and that Puebla is too close to DF. 

I often shoot back with something like "do you really think every business in DF and Puebla are being extorted and every family with a 2013 model vehicle is being carjacked or held for ransom?" 

I'm not sure why its such a tough sell to her family and friends. I guess its more just fear of the unknown where as they know what Chihuahua is. 

Anyways thanks for the input guys.[/QUOTE]_

Mexicans in the north and south of Mexico are notoriously ignorant about their respective regions. They often despise each other so viscerally that, in U.S. prisons with large populations of Mexican inmates they must separate northerners and southerners to prevent a bloodbath. 

Puebla is one of the safest cities in Mexico along with places such as Mérida, Yucatan; Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas; Oaxaca, Oaxaca,;our town of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Comitan and Tapachula, Chiapas within spitting distance of the lawless Guatemala border; Cozumel Island near Cancun and Chetumal, Quintana Roo which is on the border with Belize; the Orizaba-Cordoba urban corrider in Veracruz State and on and on.

Puebla is not in Southern Mexico either geographically or in terms of demographics but is more identifiable with Central Mexico. It is a prosperous if stodgy town choc-a-bloc with large SUVs, large pickups and other high-end vehicles cruising its modern thoroughfares. Extortion exists everywhere in Mexico but we have friends in Puebla and neither they nor the Mexican news media we read have ever ponited to Puebla as suffering from excessive extortion demands from criminal gangs or any other commonplace criminal activity.

In all due respect elsonador, my friend, I would a hell of a lot rather cruise or park in the the streets of Puebla than Chihuahua City and won´t even mention today´s Juarez. However, since we live in Southern Mexico as well as Lake Chapala, far from the north, maybe I feel that way about Chihuahua City out of ignorance since I have never been anywhere near there and the last time I was in the north of Mexico was in 2001 when I drove from Nogales to Lake Chapala lickity split.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

[Deleted double post


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

Deleted by poster


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

_


elsonador said:



I'm glad you understand this north/south concept. I think its really a shame but I am working on convincing my immediate family that everyone can't just be grouped together as liars, crooks, extortionists and what not just because they come from DF and the south of the country.

Again thanks for the help guys!

Click to expand...

_You're a good sport, elsoador but good luck on overcoming these ingrained feelings between northerners and southerners. They have the same problem in France, my wife´s native country and in the U.S. where we even fought a civil war over these animosities where millions were slaughtered. 

The ignorance of much of the rest of Mexico is astounding in the deep south of the country. In Chiapas, we stopped telling people we also live at Lake Chapala as that often drew puzzled expressions as in; where the hell is that? So, now we say Guadalajara and, while the person with whom we are speaking may not know where that is, they have still heard of the place. One comment I heard the last time I was in San Cristóbal was; "Oh yeah, Guadalajara, everybody speaks English there."


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

I know, el sonador, that it's almost impossible to change deeply-ingrained prejudices in anyone (not just your wife's family), but I also believe in the idea that travel can broaden your outlook on the world. Once you've figured out where you're going to live in Mexico, I hope you can convince your in-laws to come for a visit and see for themselves what Mexico is like in the center of the country.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Hound Dog said:


> The ignorance of much of the rest of Mexico is astounding in the deep south of the country. In Chiapas, we stopped telling people we also live at Lake Chapala as that often drew puzzled expressions as in; where the hell is that? So, now we say Guadalajara and, while the person with whom we are speaking may not know where that is, they have still heard of the place. One comment I heard the last time I was in San Cristóbal was; "Oh yeah, Guadalajara, everybody speaks English there."


Are these Mexicans with at least a modicum of formal education? I would hope that even in elementary school Mexicans are taught a bit of the geography of their own country.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

There is a huge difference between what they are taught and what they retain, That happened at a car dealership who knows what education this guy had , but it has happpened to me several time as well: Chapala is unknown and Guadalajara is somewhere up north ..


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

citlali said:


> There is a huge difference between what they are taught and what they retain, That happened at a car dealership who knows what education this guy had , but it has happpened to me several time as well: Chapala is unknown and Guadalajara is somewhere up north ..


What a shame . . .


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## elsonador (Feb 16, 2011)

I believe a lot of it is an actual lack of good public education as well as maybe (not in general) a lack of interest of knowing "what else is out there". 

I had to explain where the city of Leon is to some family friends in the north.

It's been an uphill battle for me :/

But I do agree it is a shame!


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

_


elsonador said:



I believe a lot of it is an actual lack of good public education as well as maybe (not in general) a lack of interest of knowing "what else is out there". 
I had to explain where the city of Leon is to some family friends in the north.
It's been an uphill battle for me :/
But I do agree it is a shame!

Click to expand...

_This sort of ignorance is universal and I, being an old guy, have many tales I could tell but here are two of my favorites one of which I have told before on some forum so forgive me if I seem to be repeating myself:

When my French wife and I first moved to San Francisco from Mobile in the 1970s after I had accepted a banking position in that city, we were invited to a cocktail party held for bank officers at an exclusive club on that city´s Nob Hill and, during that evening, some overconfident bank executive snot met my wife in passing and, in idle conversation, asked her how she had come to be in San Franciso from her home in Paris. She replied that she had first come to the United States on a temporary visa as a French teacher in Mobile, gotten married there and followed her husband to San Francisco where he had received a job opportunity. The banker snot exclaimed, "Mobile! How could you ´possibly have lived in that craphole. It´s full of ********!" To which she replied, "Tell me, I married one."

Many years later, in the year 2000, I sat with an old friend who was not only well educated but a very successful businessman sipping scotch on his deck overlooking Bon Secour Bay on the Alabama Coast when the subject of retirement came up. He told me he had decided to buy a home in New Orleans´ exclusive Garden District where he could retire in luxury and spend his days porking out on New Orleans cuisine including shucked oysters and sazerac cocktails and then inquired as to where I had decided to retire. I told him Mexico (bear in mind that this was 2000, years before Calderon´s drug war) and he looked at me in astonishment and exclaimed, "Are you out of your mind? You don´t speak Spanish and they´ll cut your head off!" I replied that those seemed like self-cancelling problems because without a cranium, my language skills would become a moot point. 

My retort was that New Orleans was, statistically speaking, one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. and, in addition, as he was approaching elderly status, there was a time soon coming down the road when he might have difficulty ingesting all that rich New Orleans cookery and those sazerac cocktails. He responded that there was no problem concerning crime as he and his affluent neighbors on his new street in the Garden District had hired armed guards to patrol the street constantly with orders to open fire if any miscreants were spotted prowling about.

Well, years later, he´s back on Bon Secour Bay these days, having given up the New Orleans house and the rich food that nearly killed him and I´m still in Mexico for whatever that is worth. 

The San Francisco banker and my successful business friend were very well educated but nearly as bigoted based on erroneous(or no) information as my campesino acquaintances in the Chiapas backwoods. 

Humans are humans.


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## vantexan (Sep 4, 2011)

elsonador said:


> I'm glad you understand this north/south concept. I think its really a shame but I am working on convincing my immediate family that everyone can't just be grouped together as liars, crooks, extortionists and what not just because they come from DF and the south of the country.
> 
> Again thanks for the help guys!


Those damn Yankees!


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