# Trends in Crime and Violence in Mexico

According to statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the annual number of homicides in Mexico almost doubled between 2000 and 2010, from 12,295 to 24,374. A comparison among Latin American countries shows that Mexico moved from third place in 2000 — behind Brazil (51,804 homicides) and Colombia (26,540 homicides)—, to second place in 2010 just behind Brazil (57,271 homicides).

After a significant decline of 32 percent annually since late-1990s, the number of homicides in Mexico started to increase dramatically in 2007, soon after Calderon’s administration took office in December 2006 and launched a military offensive against drug trafficking organizations thorough an operation that deployed 6,500 federal troops and continued to expand to approximately 45,000 troops by 2011. The striking change in the number of homicides was highly biased by the sharp increase in drug-related homicides<sup>2</sup> including those caused by battles between criminal organizations, or by confrontations between authorities and criminal groups. The number of drug-linked killings reached a cumulative figure of roughly 60,000 in 2011(OAS, 2013). While drug-related homicides have increased 120 percent annually from 2007 to 2011, non-drug-related homicides have actually decreased by 4.6 percent annually over the same period. As a result, drug-related homicides, which represented 27.6 percent of total homicides in 2007, reached 73 percent in 2011 (Figure 3).

Though the drug-related violence wave was not widespread, many municipalities experienced some degree of violent unrest. According to official figures 1,032 of Mexico’s 2,456 municipalities (42 percent) have had presence of a drug cartel operating within their limits in 2011. Almost half of these were concentrated in only seven out of 32 states—Michoacán, Estado de México, Guerrero, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, and Zacatecas. The presence of cartels and conflict also resulted in a concentration of homicides in well-identified areas of the country. In absolute terms, approximately two-thirds of all drug-related homicides in 2011 occurred in just five states:<sup>3</sup> Chihuahua and Sinaloa account for 29 and 12 percent, respectively, while Tamaulipas, Guerrero, and Durango accounted, all three together, for almost 21 percent.<sup>4</sup>

> 2 According to the National Security Council (Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Publica, SNPS), a homicide must meet two out of six criteria in order to be considered a drug-related crime: i) the victim was killed by high caliber firearms; ii) the victim presented signs of torture or severe lesions; iii) the victim was killed where the body was found, or the body was located in a vehicle; iv) the body was wrapped with blankets, taped, or gagged; v) the homicide occurred within a penitentiary and involved criminal organizations; and vi) the homicide occurred under special circumstances —e.g. victim was abducted prior to assassination ( _levantón_ ), ambushed or chased, an alleged member of a criminal organization, or found with a narco-message ( _narcomensaje_ ) on or near the body.

> 3 According to data from the SNSP, 2011 constitutes the peak in the drug-related homicides escalation with nearly 17,000 cases. April 2011 is identified as the month with the higher number of cases (1,630) registered between December 2006 and June 2012.

> 4 Out of the 1,032 municipalities that have a presence of a drug cartel, 392 experienced violent conflict, with the higher figures taking place in municipalities of the north and the Pacific coast affecting both municipalities that had historically observed high levels of violence —such as Ciudad Juárez—as well as places which had not experienced high levels of violence before —such as Monterrey. It highlights that while only 18 municipalities had more than 100 cases of drugrelated homicides, a vast majority of 1,644 reported no cases at all (SNSP, 2011).

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