First Half of 2019 = Staggering Violence Statistics

Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Animal Politico

First half of 2019 leaves new homicide record; the violence increase in 4 years already exceeds 70%; with almost 20,600 people killed; the daily average rose for the second consecutive year. June and February 2019, were the most violent months in 22 years.

Mexico reaches the middle of 2019 at unprecedented levels of violence. In June, 3,080 new cases of murdered persons were counted , which added to those of the previous months yields a total of 17,  608 victims of homicide and feminicide in the first half of the year. This is a rate of almost 14 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, a new record in at least 22 years.

In fact, the number of victims of homicide and feminicide recorded in June 2019 represented a daily average of 102.6 murders per day, almost tying to that of February, which was 102.7 murders per day. They are the two months with the highest level of homicidal violence in history, both registered this year, and in the current sexennium.

Updated data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP) show that the rate of homicide / feminicide victims in the first six months of 2019 is 4.4 percent higher than that registered in the same period of 2018, the year with the highest annual crime figure to date.

The foregoing evidence that the upward trend in homicidal violence that began since 2015 and was inherited in the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has  not yet been contained , although the annual increase has slowed.

With the 3,080 murders recorded in June (3,001 corresponding to victims of homicide and 79 of feminicide), the number of people killed between December 2018 to June 2019 - amounts to 21,599. 

Compared to June last year, June 2019 also shows a growth of just over 6 %. It should be noted that this is the second consecutive month in which the daily average of homicides rises, after a decline had been achieved from March to April.

These differences are recorded even when the violence data for 2018 were updated upwards as a result of Mexico City significantly modifying its incidence record last year, on the grounds that a significant significant underreporting of investigation folders was detected.  

Previously, the annual total of homicide / feminicide victims in 2018 had been set at 3,441 at the country level, but with the CDMX update, said annual total grew to 34, 654.

In four years, more than 70% increase in homicides:

SESNSP data show that from January to June 2019, 17,138 victims of manslaughter were registered for which 14, 603 investigation folders were initiated. The data of the initiated folders is important because it is the only one with which a comparison can be made with the entire historical series of the SESNSP dating from 1997 to date.

This warns that the country registers a cumulative and sustained increase in four years of 73.5 % in the homicide rate.

We went from accounting for 6.68 cases per o100,000 inhabitants in the first half of 2015, to 7.47 cases for manslaughter in the same period of 2016, to grow back at a rate of 9.69 cases in 2017, reaching 11.21 in the same period of 2018, and finally parking at 11.59 wrongful killings from January to June of this year, 2019.

This level of homicidal violence clearly exceeds the worst years of the so-called "War on Drug Trafficking" recorded in the six-year term of former president Felipe Calderón . In that six-year period, the highest homicide rates for the first semester were 9.75 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011 and 9.31 cases for 2012.

It should be noted, however, that unlike the previous two six-year terms, that of President López Obrador received an annual upward trend in murder levels.

If the comparison is made with a decade ago when in 2009 a rate of 6.68 wrongful killings per 100,000  inhabitants was registered, what is noticed is that the level of murders has practically doubled .

Colima, leading in violence in 2019:

Colima is, as in the last two years, the state with the highest level of malicious homicides in the country. From January to June of this year, it registered a rate of 40.71 cases per 100,000  inhabitants, almost four times above the national average. 

Colima is followed by Baja California with a rate of 34.14 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, Chihuahua with 27.63, Guanajuato with 23.07 and Morelos with 22.74 cases.

Mexico City recorded a rate of 8.97 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the first half, below the national average but above that of the state of Mexico, which reports 7.37 murders in the first half of this year.

Mexico has the largest increase in violence in the entire hemisphere in the last decade:
The country has high homicide rates, and there are fewer and fewer municipalities that do not register murders, according to a study conducted by the University of San Diego and Mexican universities.

In the last decade, no country in the hemisphere has experienced an increase as large as Mexico in the absolute number or in its homicide rate.

This is one of the conclusions of the “Organized Crime and Justice in Mexico” report of the Justice in Mexico program developed by the University of San Diego, United States, in collaboration with UNAM, the University of Guadalajara , the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, and the Autonomous University of Puebla.

s clear that the increase in violence in Mexico during the last decade represents an urgent problem that does not need to be exaggerated in order to deserve serious consideration by academics and policy makers. This tragic loss of Mexican lives should cause serious concern, not hyperbolic claims or part of the political game, ”he says.

The increase in violence is related to the so-called "war on drugs" and marks an upward trend during the presidencies of Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), a six-year period in which violence has skyrocketed. In total, more than 332,000 people were murdered in Mexico since the beginning of the 20th century, not counting missing persons and crimes that were not reported.