Although outgoing president Felipe Calderon claimed a week ago that cartel-related violence is down "15 to 20 percent" in the first half of 2012, data from a nonpartisan report suggests that violence is on the rise this year. While Ciudad Juarez and Monterrey have seen violence decrease, other cities in the north have seen a significant uptick.
InSight Crime: Patrick Corcoran. Some of the most dangerous parts of Mexico have grown far safer in the last six months, though the gangland rivalries driving much of the violence have intensified and spread to regions that had been relatively untouched by organized crime.
According to a report from Lantia Consultores, a Mexico City firm founded by analyst Eduardo Guerrero Gutierrez, Mexico witnessed 7,022 murders linked to organized crime (often labeled “executions”) from January through June 2012. (See graph, below, from the report.) According to the report, which is based on the monitoring of dozens of media outlets, this represents an increase of roughly 10 percent from the final six months of 2011, and a high proportion of the 10,500 or so total murders in the country during that period. (Mexico’s National Public Security System, or SNSP, for its initials in Spanish, tallied 8,662 murders nationwide through May, though the June figures have not yet been released.) Read more.
Posted by Ryan Gentzler.
The MexicoBlog of the Americas Program, a fiscally sponsored program of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), is written by Laura Carlsen. I monitor and analyze international press on Mexico, with a focus on security, immigration, human rights and social movements for peace and justice, from a feminist perspective. And sometimes I simply muse.
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