Published at 10:00 p.m. ET -- The tourism world turned its eyes on Mexico after six Spanish women were raped by masked gunmen during a vacation in the long-troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

While there has been talk of reviving the golden era of the '40s and '50s, international tourists have long steered away from Acapulco, even before the drug violence of recent years, as the city fell into disrepair and glitzier Cancun and Los Cabos gained favor.

The question now is whether the attack will affect other resorts as Mexico prepares for its annual spring break onslaught and peak season.

The hours-long assault was carried out by a gang of masked gunmen who burst into the beachfront home before dawn on Monday and tied up the six men inside, then raped the women. A seventh Mexican woman was unharmed.

"We are really sorry about what happened with the Spanish tourists because ... it is something that affects Mexico's image," said Juan Carlos Gonzalez, tourism secretary of Quintana Roo, the Caribbean coast state where Cancun is located and which hosted about 17 million tourists last year.

But, he added, "we are definitely not as contaminated with the crime issue as other states in Mexico."

Acapulco barely registers on U.S. tourists' radar anymore, said Kathy Gerhardt, a spokeswoman for Travel Leaders, a network of independently owned and operated travel agencies in the U.S.

"Those individuals trying to lump Acapulco into the list of top Mexico destinations for U.S. travelers are simply misinformed," she said.

In a recent survey of over 1,000 travel agency owners, managers and agents, "not a single individual chose Acapulco as a top international destination they are booking for their clients," Gerhardt said.

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"We do not see any spillover effect," she added, for areas like Cancun, which Travel Leaders lists as the No. 2 foreign destination for U.S. travelers, after Caribbean island cruises.

 

From a 2009 shootout that killed 18 near Acapulco's fabled Flamingo Hotel to this week's attack, the resort once celebrated in Frank Sinatra songs and Elvis Presley movies has been the scene of body dumpings, beheadings and taxi-driver killings as gangs vie for drug transport routes once controlled by the now-decimated Beltran Leyva cartel.

Oceania and Regent Seven Seas Cruises — some of the last lines making port calls in Acapulco — canceled those in December, before the latest attack.

An estimated 50,000 Spaniards travel to Mexico each year, but mostly to the Caribbean coast, not Acapulco. Mexicans and Spaniards living in Mexico like the victims, however, flock to Acapulco during Easter week and other long holiday weekends, such as Monday, when the country celebrated its Constitution Day.

Local tourists believe they can distinguish unsafe areas of the city, and even foreign travel warnings say it's safe for those who don't wander far from the beach.

"For us, this is an incredibly safe zone," said Rafael Gallego Nadal, president of the Spanish Confederation of Travel Agencies. "This was a terrible attack, but it's not the first time that something bad has happened in that part of Mexico."

He said there has been no talk of travel agencies reducing package tour prices.

Some press reports Wednesday suggested a drug purchase could have played a role in Monday's rapes, but Marcos Juarez, the chief investigator for Guerrero state prosecutors, said there was no evidence of that.

Still, the attack exposed a dangerous security situation in areas that had been considered safe, such as the laid-back stretch of beach dotted with restaurants, small hotels and homes southeast of the city's center, where the Spaniards had rented a villa.

The five attackers held the group at gunpoint, tying up the six men with phone cords and bathing suit straps, then raping the six women over a three-hour period, authorities said.

The manager of a hotel near the house said he heard shouting just after midnight Monday, but did nothing because he felt it would be too dangerous. The man did not want to give his name for safety reasons.

It was unclear whether the victims had been targeted because of their nationality.

Guerrero state Attorney General Martha Garzon told local media that the attackers' motive was robbery and that they drank mescal they found at the house. The Mexican woman, who is married to one of the Spaniards, "was saved by the fact that she is Mexican," Garzon said.

"She says she identified herself to the (attackers) and asked not to be raped, and they told her that she had passed the test by being Mexican and they didn't touch her," Garzon told Radio Formula.

While some Mexicans harbor resentment against Spaniards dating to colonial times, the victims may have been targeted for other reasons, such as appearance or possessions.

Mayor Luis Walton rushed to apologize Wednesday for his comment the day before that "this happens everywhere in the world, not just in Acapulco or in Mexico."

"Of course, this worries us and we don't want anything like this to happen in Acapulco or anywhere else in the world," he said. "We know this is going to affect our tourism."

Billionaire business magnate Carlos Slim, ranked by Forbes magazine as the world's richest man, proposed a plan last year to rescue Acapulco by building parks and recreational centers there.

Still, it would be a long way from the city's heyday, when Elizabeth Taylor was married in Acapulco, John F. and Jackie Kennedy spent their honeymoon there and Howard Hughes hid out in a suite at the Princess Hotel, a pyramid-shaped icon in the exclusive Punta Diamante, or Diamond Point.

Gallego said it's important for authorities to make arrests soon to prove that those responsible will be punished. State prosecutor Garzon said authorities have strong evidence leading to the culprits.

Given the sheer volume of visitors to such popular destinations as the Caribbean Riviera Maya south of Cancun, Gonzalez said, "we certainly could have some cancellations. But given the number of Spanish tourists, it would not be significant."

As if to illustrate the continuous danger in Guerrero, state authorities announced Wednesday that armed men ambushed and killed nine police officers a day earlier. The attack was in the town of Tepoxtepect, near the border with Michoacan state, an area known for drug trafficking.

Related:

Masked men burst into vacation home, rape six Spanish tourists in Acapulco, Mexican officials say

A gang of masked men entered a vacation home near the resort city of Acapulco and raped six Spanish tourists, Mexican authorities said Tuesday.

The assailants, brandishing guns, first tied up the men with phone cords and the straps of bathing suits and then raped the women, The Associated Press reported.

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A police report, obtained by Prensa Latina, a Cuba-based Latin American news service, said that 15 subjects with ski masks sexually abused the Spanish women, and also stole the belongings of a Mexican national and six Spanish men. 

The assault took place Monday in the town of San Andres, Barra Vieja, in the Diamante area of Acapulco.

Acapulco Mayor Luis Walton and the state prosecutor for Guerroro said Mexican federal police were involved in the hunt for those responsible, CNN reported.

"It's a very delicate situation," Walton said at a news conference on Tuesday in which he condemned the attacks. "We are going to have the full weight of the law against those responsible."

Walton admitted the attacks would likely tarnish Acapulco’s image. The Pacific Coast resort city and its beaches are a popular destination for tourists, including American college students on spring break.

Though the number of rapes in the area is unclear, in one weekend in March 2010, at least 13 people were killed in and around Acapulco in apparent drug-gang violence, including four victims found beheaded. And, according to Reuters, some 70,000 people nationwide have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006.

Though millions of people travel to Mexico each year without incident, the U.S. State Department has issued a warning to travelers visiting the country. It says travelers to Mexico should be aware that “crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country and occur anywhere." Travelers to the Acapulco area are urged to exercise caution and stay within tourist areas. 

 

A strong, long 7.4 earthquake with an epicenter in Guerrero state shook central southern Mexico on Tuesday, swaying buildings in Mexico City and sending frightened workers and residents into the streets.

More than 800 homes were damaged and 60 collapsed near the epicenter in Ometepec in southern Guerrero state. There were no reports of death or serious injury. Fear and panic spread as a less powerful, magnitude-5.1 aftershock was also felt in the capital, where there were also no reports of deaths.

Other aftershocks were felt around the borders of Oaxaca and Guerrero states close to the epicenter.

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"It was very strong, very substantial," Campos Benitez, hospital director in Ometepec.

Police radio operator Marcos Marroquin said there were preliminary reports of damaged houses in the municipality but only a report of a broken arm.

Telephone service was down in the city and throughout the area where the quake was felt, and some neighborhoods were without power, according to Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who set up a hotline for people to report damage.

About 40 passengers were stranded for a short time on the Mexico City airport air train, but later released. The airport closed for a time but officials said there was no runway damage and they resumed operations. 

"I swear I never felt one so strong, I thought the building was going to collapse,'' said Sebastian Herrera, 42, a businessman from a neighborhood hit hard in Mexico's devastating 1985 earthquake, which killed thousands.

Groups of women hugged and cried at Mexico City's Angel of Independence monument, where hundreds of people evacuated from office buildings said they never had felt such a strong earthquake.

Others typed ferociously on their Blackberries. Samantha Rodriguez, a 37-year old environmental consultant, was evacuated from the 11th floor on the Angel Tower office building.

"I thought it was going to pass rapidly but the walls began to thunder and we decided to get out," she said.

Mexico City, built on a lakebed, was badly damaged in 1985 when an 8.0 earthquake killed at least 10,000 people. In past years, Guerrero has suffered several severe earthquakes, including a 7.9 in 1957 which killed an estimated 68 people, and a 7.4 in 1995 which left three dead.

Tuesday's quake was the strongest shaking felt in the capital since a magnitude-6.5 earthquake struck also in Guerrero in December. Officials said at least three people died in Guerrero, but there were no reports of widespread damage.

A magnitude-8.0 quake near Manzanillo on Mexico's central Pacific coast killed 51 people in 1995 and a magintude-7.5 quake killed at least 20 people in the southern state of Oaxaca in 1999.

Victor Flores, an official at the Guerrero emergency management agency, told msnbc.com that initial reports from teams near the epicenter were of damage only to homes built of adobe or other weak construction material.

Aerial teams will follow up,” he added, “but so far no deaths or injuries.”

A person at Acapulco City Hall told NBC News that they felt the quake had no immediate reports of injuries or damages.

No damage was reported in Oaxaca, about 100 miles west-southwest of the epicenter, according to local television. The front desk at the Hotel Real Oaxaca told NBC that the temblor scared residents but there was no damage.

A worker at Rica Pizza in Ometepec, one of the towns nearest to the epicenter, told NBC News that there was no damage to his business but he heard of damage to some other buildings in the area. He said electricity had gone out at his location -- and many of his business neighbors had lost theirs. His phone was working -- though he said there were some businesses without phone service. He also said he had heard lots of ambulance sirens but doesn't have any specifics on injuries.

The quake was followed by several aftershocks, he said.

"It was very strong, but we didn't see anything fall," said Irma Ortiz, who runs a guesthouse in Oaxaca. She said that their telephones are down and that the quake shook them side-to-side.

Celia Galicia, who works at the U.S. consular office in Oaxaca, had just flown in from Mexico City when it hit.

She said there was panic in the airport, and a dash for the doors. But she said that she saw no damage at the airport and no one was hurt. She says one building in downtown Oaxaca appears to be damaged and has been evacuated.

She added that they've had two strong aftershocks, and that in downtown Oaxaca most people are out on the street at this point.

"It started shaking badly," she said.

The White House said President Barack Obama's oldest daughter, Malia, is safe and never was in danger during  the quake. Malia, 13, is on vacation with a school group in southwestern Mexico, according to reports from the region.

Earlier the quake had been reported at 7.9 magnitude. No tsunami was expected.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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One person died in drug-related violence every half hour in Mexico last year, amounting to 48 executions per day on average, according to the Mexican Excelsior newspaper, a sign that the violence surrounding the country's powerful cartels continues unabated.

A total of 12,903 were murdered in the first nine months of 2011, Excelsior and other newspapers reported, sourcing data from the country's Attorney General's office (link in Spanish).

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Nationwide, 47,515 people have been killed since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of troops to drug hot spots, through to September 2011, the Attorney General's Office said on Wednesday. The deaths include those involved in the drugs trade, civilians and members of security forces fighting the cartels, according to Excelsior.

The most dangerous city in the country during the first nine months of 2011 was Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua, on the border with the United States, and the second-most dangerous was Acapulco, Guerrero, on the western coast of the country.

• US: Mexico kingpin Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman is 'world's most powerful drug trafficker'

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that two decapitated bodies had been found inside a burning SUV at the entrance of one of Mexico City's most expensive shopping centers, feeding fears that conflict was seeping into parts of society previously thought safe.

Police recovered the mutilated bodies before dawn off a toll highway at a shopping mall entrance in the heart of the Santa Fe district that's a haven for international corporations, diplomats and the wealthy. The heads and a threatening message were dumped a few yards away, Mexico City prosecutors said in a statement.

By F. Brinley Bruton, London-based senior writer and editor

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.