Mexico's End-of-Year Major Crime Statistics Paint a Mixed Picture Paul Imison - Latin Correspondent
go to original December 30, 2015

A woman wears a black veil and carries a cross reading in Spanish "Assassin State," as thousands march down one of the capital's main boulevards to demand that the government find the 43 students who disappeared in Iguala. (AP/Rebecca Blackwell)

Following a decline in the past three years, Mexico’s murder rate is again on the rise, according to statistics released by the country’s National Public Security System this month.

Over the first eleven months of the year, homicides were up by 7 percent from 2014 with this year likely to finish with the highest murder rate since 2011. In Guerrero, the country’s deadliest state, they rose by a troubling 30 percent.

Elsewhere, the northern border state of Tamaulipas led the country in kidnappings and the western state of Jalisco in cases of extortion. All three states are currently in the grip of brutal turf wars between organized crime groups.

Relatively peaceful Mexico City posted its highest murder rate since the 1990s. Two key events – the murder of photojournalist Rubén Espinosa and the grisly hanging of a body from a public footbridge – drew national attention to the spike.

Conversely, there have been gains in public security in a number of states once ravaged by violence such as Coahuila, Chihuahua and Nuevo León which have seen murder rates tumble.

In November, Interior Minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong insisted that institutional reforms at the local level – such as the centralization of police powers under a single state-level command – were key to further progress.

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