We all know that Mexico’s drug war has taken a horrific toll – an estimated 50,000 deaths since President Felipe Calderón launched the effort in late 2006. But how much did Calderón’s declaration change the crime rate? And now that president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto is set to take over in December, how much is likely to change?
Travelers might want to dip into “Drug Violence in Mexico,” a recent report by The Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. Though good statistics are often hard to come by in Mexico, authors Cory Molzahn, Viridiana Ríos and David A. Shirk have gathered a boatload of numbers, and they raise the idea that drug-related killings accelerated before Calderón declared war.
As the report notes, the Mexican government counted 12,903 drug-war killings (a.k.a. organized-crime homicides) in the first nine months of 2011, which brought the official total to 47,515 since Dec. 1, 2006. Read more.
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