Murders in Mexico up by 6.43 percent in January

Mexico City, Feb 21 (EFE).- Intentional murders in Mexico rose by 6.43 percent in January, compared with the same month last year, to 2,582, an average of more than 83 per day, the Security and Civilian Protection Secretariat (SSPC) reported on Tuesday.

The figure for January 2022 was 2,426 homicides, and the monthly increase was 2.1 percent with 2,529 murders being reported last December.

Despite the rise, SSPC Secretary Rosa Icela Rodriguez said that the figure is 16 percent lower than the historical maximum of 3,074 murders in July 2018.

“The trend remains downward. For victims of intentional murder there’s been a significant reduction compared with previous years,” she said at the government’s morning press conference.

With the January figures, a total of 31,127 homicides were committed over the past 12 months, an average of 85 per day and a reduction of 5.5 percent compared with the previous 12-month period, when 32,936 murders, or an average of 90 per day, were recorded.

Rodriguez said that murders have declined by 10.8 percent so far over the term of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office in 2018 and will serve until 2024, compared with the figure at the end of the 2012-2018 mandate of former President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Rodriguez said that almost half of the murders (1,189) were registered in six states – Mexico, Guanajuato, Baja California, Chihuahua, Jalisco and Guerrero.

The figures provided by the SSPC secretary also showed an interannual increase of 13.72 percent in federal offenses in January, when 6,042 such crimes were registered.

Although so far this year appears to be the biggest crime year in the past three years, Rodriguez said that “in terms of federal offenses, there’s a reduction of 33.3 percent … Regarding the majority of crimes, there’s been a significant reduction.”

She also noted that there have been year-on-year drops of 37.5 percent in crimes committed by organized criminal groups, more than 21 percent for financial crimes and 11.2 percent in crimes committed by public servants.

But there were increases of 1.3 percent in crimes against health (i.e. related to drugs) and 2.2 percent in fiscal crimes.

Meanwhile, in January 51,591 robberies of all kinds were reported, 4.59 percent more than the 49,327 such crimes reported during the same month a year earlier.

In contrast, there were 72 femicides, or gender-related murders of women, a reduction of 11.11 percent.

“As for femicide, we also see this crime falling by 28.7 percent (since the start of Lopez Obrador’s six-year term), recalling that it was starting in 2020 that …. this crime began to be recorded,” Rodriguez said.

The figures come after an annualized drop of 7.1 percent in murders in 2022, when Mexico registered 30,968 homicides after 34,690 people were murdered in 2019, 34,554 in 2020 and 33,308 in 2021.

EFE –/bp