Homicides declined 3.4% in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period of 2020, Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez reported Wednesday.
There were 25,392 homicides between January and September, 887 fewer than in the first nine months of last year, while in September murders declined almost 2% to 2,770 compared to 2,819 in August.
Just over 50% of all homicides in the first nine months occurred in just six states. As always, Guanajuato was the most violent with 2,655 followed by Baja California, with 2,368; Michoacán, 1,982; México state, 1,946; Chihuahua, 1,884; and Jalisco, 1,884.
In contrast, the five least violent states all recorded fewer than 100 homicides during the period. They were Yucatán, Baja California Sur, Aguascalientes, Campeche and Tlaxcala. Mexico City was the 13th most violent entity with 779 recorded homicides.
Just under 40% of all homicides in September occurred in Mexico’s 50 most violent municipalities, where the federal government bolstered security efforts in July. Rodríguez said homicides in those locations declined 8.4% in September to 1,098 from 1,199 the month before.
The security minister asserted that femicides – murders of women and girls on account of their gender – declined 63% in September compared to August, but data she presented didn’t back up that claim. There were 68 femicides in September, a 37% drop compared to the 108 in August.
The September homicide and femicide numbers lifted the total number of murders since President López Obrador took office to above 100,000. Official data shows there were 97,532 homicides and 2,812 femicides between December 2018 and September 2021 for a total of 100,344 murders.
The figure is 16% higher than the total for the last three years of the Enrique Peña Nieto administratin.
Rodríguez also presented data for a range of other crimes at López Obrador’s regular news conference.
Among those that decreased in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period of 2020 were tax crimes, organized crime offenses, firearms offenses, kidnappings, carjackings, cattle theft, business robberies, vehicle theft and home burglaries.
Among those that increased were human trafficking, electoral offenses, robberies on public transit, muggings, extortion and rape.
The security minister also presented data that showed that fuel theft declined 94% from 74,000 barrels per day in December 2018 to just 4,300 barrels per day in the first 10 days of October 2021.
The reduction in the incidence of the crime known colloquially as huachicoleo has generated savings of almost 172.3 billion pesos (US $8.5 billion) pesos over the past 34 months, the government claims.
Mexico News Daily
