18 Month AMLO Admin: Murders include 5,800 women and 1,800 minors, breaking all homicide records, not even close

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat  La Silla Rota

AMLO's failed strategy of "Hugs not Bullets" has had a devastating effect throughout Mexico.  Violence, murder, mayhem has broken all records, and not in a good way.....In the first year and a half of his government, the homicide rate doubles that of Calderón and is 55% higher than with EPN. And there could be underreporting.

This month 4 young entrepreneurs gunned down at their custom car shop-Celaya

In the first 18 months of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 53,628 people were murdered in Mexico, including more than 5,800 women and 1,800 children and adolescents. On average, almost 100 people are murdered every day in the current administration. It is the first year and a half of the most violent government so far this century.

The murder rate is double, for example, that registered in the same period of Felipe Calderón, and is 55% higher than with former President Enrique Peña Nieto.

But more recent comparisons also test the advance of violence in Mexico.

Homicides of men, women, and children are higher than in the year and a half prior to AMLO's arrival. And in this same administration, from 2019 to 2020, homicidal violence continues to rise even though it has been at record levels for a long time.

In which it was promised that it would be the period of "hugs not bullets"  where according to the president, "the war was over", 7 out of 10 murders have been committed with firearms. At least 60% of crimes are linked to organized crime activities and, above all, to their territorial disputes.

There are six states that concentrate half of the murders, but the epicenter of violence is Guanajuato, an entity where homicides have increased fivefold, and where police, students, pregnant women and children are also killed in attacks with weapons and even with grenades.

Neither the deployment of the National Guard, nor the legalization of the armed forces on the street and the new security strategy have prevented the violence from growing. This year alone, police, military, judges and also legislators have been assassinated.

The government has failed to capture criminal leaders and one, "El Chapo" Guzmán's son, was released by the president.

Messing with the stats

The violence could be worse than the official records indicate. Proof of this is the last update of the figures of intentional homicides carried out on June 20, where 172 homicides "appeared" in January 2020 that were not reported at the time, a modification that far exceeds the normal adjustments that month by month are made.

The victims include 5,811 women, representing an average of 11 women murdered per day (including homicide and femicide cases). There are also 1,807 children under 17 years of age among the victims, equivalent to three children or adolescents killed every 24 hours. Official records show 10,430 cases where the victim's age is not precisely known, and 1,308 where the sex of the victim is not clear (some cases correspond to remains in clandestine graves). 

Homicidal violence has increased. In the same period of a year and a half prior to that carried out by AMLO, that is, from December 2016 to May 2018, 45 thousand 581 murders were registered. It is about 8 thousand homicides below those that go in the 18 months of this sexennium (presidential terms in Mexico are 6 years). The murder rate between the two periods grew from 36.9 to 42.5 cases per one hundred thousand inhabitants.

During this period, the murders of men grew, but also those of women, which went from 5 thousand 17 to 5 thousand 811, and those of minors, which rose from 1 788 to 1 807. Compared to the start of the other three six-year terms, that of López Obrador is also the most violent.

Statistics show the following: in the first 18 months of this six-year term, 44,882 files have been initiated for intentional homicide, a rate of 35 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. This is equivalent to an increase of 55% with respect to the rate of 22.4 cases registered in the first year and a half of the Peña Nieto government; a rise of 137.6% over the rate of 14.7 homicides with Felipe Calderón; and 72.5% on the rate of 20.3 homicides at the start of Vicente Fox.

The war zones

There are six states where practically half of the more than 53 thousand murders registered with López Obrador are concentrated. Guanajuato leads the list with 5 thousand 745 victims in the period. This means that in this entity alone, at least 1 in 10 of the murders reported throughout Mexico have occurred.

They are followed by the state of Mexico, which has 4,337 homicide victims; Baja California with 4,285; Jalisco with 3 thousand 998; Chihuahua with 3,856 intentional homicides; and Michoacán with 3 thousand 271.

Colima is an especially serious case since it registers 312 homicides in the first year and a half of this six-year term, below other states. However, as it is an entity with a small population, its intentional homicide rate shoots up to 144.5 cases in the period, the highest in the country.

At the regional and municipal level, the security cabinet has identified 20 points where the highest rates of violence are registered. That is where the deployments of the National Guard and other security forces have been focused.

However, despite this, violence does not subside. Of those 20 points, in 12 the murder rate has grown in 2020 compared to 2019. There are dramatic cases such as that of Celaya, Guanajuato, where the rate doubled from 15 to 35.4 homicides, or that of Zamora, Michoacán that shot up from 12.4 to 42.3, or that of Cajeme, Sonora, which grew from 18.9 to 34.3.

60 to 80 Percent are attributed to organized crime

The security cabinet estimates that 60% of homicides in Mexico are linked to organized crime, but in the most violent areas such as Guanajuato or Jalisco, the calculation is up to 80%. Territorial warfare between criminal groups is one of the main engines of this violence the government has implemented actions to try to capture leaders of these groups, but they have failed.

An example was the failed operation of October 17, 2019 in which Ovidio Guzmán, one of the sons of Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, was detained for a few minutes. However, the forces of this criminal group outnumbered the officers and even took the military hostage. President López Obrador ended up ordering the release of the criminal and even so, 13 deaths were recorded.

Another example is the various unsuccessful attempts to arrest "El Marro", leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel in Guanajuato. Specialists indicate that this led to the strengthening of rival groups in the state such as the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación which has intensified fighting in the state.

Balances of Terror

In the year and a half that goes by the current government, there have been episodes of extreme violence, similar to those of past six-year periods. Multihomicides have been frequent.

These include, for example:

The murder of 29 people at the “Caballo Blanco” bar in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, who was attacked with bullets and then burned on August 28, 2019;

The massacre at a party in Minatitlán, Veracruz on April 13 of that year that left 13 dead, including a child

Or the recent murder of seven people at another party in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, on May 30, 2020.

In Guanajuato, homicides are counted by dozens almost every day. Just to cite the most recent cases: the shooting of eight youths in Apaseo el Alto on May 19; the crime of 4 students assaulted by bullets in a workshop in Celaya and the massacre of ten young people in a rehabilitation center in Irapuato, both on June 6; or the recent murder of 6 members of a family, including a girl and a pregnant young woman, also in Celaya, on June 18.

Guanajuato is the entity with the most police officers killed

The last case was the murder of three municipal police officers on June 11 in Silao. But there are also high-impact cases in other states, such as the recent murder of the Zamora Police Chief, Michoacán, and a police commander on June 17.

One of the worst crimes against the security forces was the ambush of a convoy of the Aguililla, Michoacán police on October 4, 2019. In the end, 13 policemen lost their lives.

The violence has also reached other authorities. Among the recent cases are the murder of a federal judge and his wife on June 16 in Manzanillo, Colima; or the femicide of a local deputy in that same state whose body was found in a grave in early June, weeks after being kidnapped.

The murders of women due to gender issues, that is, the femicides, have been numerous. Among them is that of Ingrid Escamilla, a young woman murdered on February 9 in Mexico City. The violence of her murder and the display of the images generated commotion and sparked several protests.

But violence against women has continued. In the middle of March 8, International Women's Day, the student of the Iberoamerican University Nadia Verónica was assassinated in Salamanca, Guanajuato.

“Official” under-registration?

In previous years, citizen organizations have questioned the accuracy of the official figures reported by the states to the SESNSP. Cases such as that of Veracruz were documented in the government of Javier Duarte, which reported no more than 200 homicides in a year, adding them to the registry in subsequent months.

The current SESNSP administration last year audited the records of various states and the way they report crimes. The results have not been made public, but authorities with knowledge of the process indicated to Animal Político that important anomalies have been found.

In each monthly update, revisions are made to the figures of previous periods and in the case of homicides, there are often adjustments that range from two or three homicides to 20 or 30 of them. However, in the last update published this Saturday, June 20, a significant modification can be seen.

According to this update, in January 2020, 2,999 victims of intentional homicide were registered. However, prior to this new publication, the figure for that month was 2,819 murders. That is, these are 172 new murders that had not been reported so far.

This change also reverses the alleged decrease in homicides originally reported by federal authorities at the start of the year.