Everyday Killings in Mexico Decline 37% Under the Sheinbaum Administration, According to Official Figures

The typical figure of everyday killings per month in Mexico has decreased by 37% since President Claudia Sheinbaum assumed power, per new administrative data. Nevertheless, public safety analysts have advised that homicide numbers could fail to indicate improved national safety.

Significant Decline in Per-Day Numbers

There was an mean of almost 55 killings a day in last November versus almost 87 when Claudia Sheinbaum assumed the leadership in the previous September. This announcement was provided by the chief of the country’s national safety agency, Marcela Figueroa Franco, during the president’s daily press briefing on Tuesday.

“The figures in murders that we have seen over these months is remarkably notable,” Sheinbaum stated, adding that last month the lowest figure of murders were documented for any single November in the last decade.

Recent Context and Government Strategy

Violent cartel internal conflicts, coupled with the government’s heavily military campaigns to take on the cartels, have led to Mexico’s murder numbers rise sharply in recent years. The figure reached a peak of 36,773 killings in 2020, as reported by the nation's official data office.

That gave Mexico a murder figure more than four times greater than the US. However, murders have been on the downward trend, dropping to 33,550 in the last calendar year. Claudia Sheinbaum has attributed her national security plan for an ostensibly steeper decline in homicides this year.

At a media briefing in August, the President said: “We have a plan, there is tracking of the strategy, and we have detailed monitoring municipality by municipality in some cases. The approach works. And we have to persist at it daily.”

The central elements of the President's safety plan encompass:

• Bolstering Mexico’s federal guard.
• Improving information gathering and investigation work.
• Greater collaboration between various agencies.

Expert Warnings and Data Limitations

However, security experts cautioned that using homicide data to draw a conclusion of pacification was flawed. This is particularly true in light of the uptick in other criminal activities such as forced disappearances.

“That would be positive news if this were a decrease, but I think we must not just concentrate on the murder numbers and conclude: ‘Alright, good,’” stated Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, an specialist on Mexican cartels. “I would be guardedly optimistic.”

Per the policy analysis organization Mexico Evalúa, homicides in total dropped by more than 20% in the first 10 months of this year relative to the same period the previous year. However, missing persons cases have risen by 15% and in certain states have risen by as much as 200%.

“Numbers on homicides is no longer reliable for estimating the situation of public insecurity,” argued Armando Vargas, a safety analyst at Mexico Evalúa. “First, we have law enforcement and investigators who lack the capacity or the will to correctly recognize and categorize bodies. Second, organized [criminals] … have the ability to hide violent acts through abductions.”

Vargas added that using month-to-month means of daily homicides was similarly an issue because it may hide days when there were particularly high numbers of killings.

“Using the per-day average makes high peaks of violence unseen,” he concluded.

Detentions and Seizures as Measures of Success

An area where the government can point to the success of its security plan is on arrests and confiscations. Close to 40,000 people were apprehended between last October and this past November for serious offenses, according to official figures. Over 20,000 guns were seized and 311 tons of drugs seized.

“The former US president cannot accuse President Sheinbaum of doing nothing, because the reality is she is doing a lot with these thousands of detentions, thousands of seizures, and all the operational degrading of criminal groups. It’s very politically profitable,” stated Vargas.

Persistent Unrest and Public Anger

However notwithstanding these actions, Mexico remains grappling with extreme violence, with multiple states in the midst of cartel-related violence. In the previous month there was a high-profile assassination of a well-liked local official in the state of Michoacan, among 10 local leaders murdered in the past 12 months.

Weeks later, thousands of youth demonstrated in Mexico City and throughout the country to voice their frustration at corruption and narco-violence.

“The federal government frames [data] in a manner to create a narrative of improvement. Politically it’s extremely potent, socially it’s very debatable,” Vargas said.