Annual Report on Mexican Murders Released

By Adrian Florido, Fronteras San Diego

SAN DIEGO – The University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute has released its annual report on drug violence in Mexico. The report shows the number of murders in Mexico appears to be on the decline.

By the end of 2011, violence in Mexico was still on the rise, but was slowing compared to previous years.

In their latest report, University of San Diego researchers found homicides actually appeared to fall, from roughly 27,000 in 2011 to somewhere between 20 and 25 thousand last year.

Between 45 and 60 percent of those murders bore the signs of drug violence, like the use high caliber weapons, torture and dismemberments. But researchers had a hard time pinning that precise number down because unlike in previous years, the government wouldn’t release data.

David Shirk directs the Transborder Institute.

DAVID SHIRK: “The Peña-Nieto administration has actually come out and said that they believe that the dissemination of information about violence in Mexico creates greater overall public fear about the problem, and so they want to diminish public fears by keeping people in the dark.”

Researchers relied on general homicide statistics and drug murder tallies by the nation’s largest newspapers to reach their estimates.

Violence has surged in some places like Acapulco, but Shirk attributes the overall decline to both the arrests of major cartel leaders and the settling of turf wars between cartels themselves.  Baja California has seen some of the most dramatic improvements.