Homicides in Mexico are down almost 25% so far in February compared to the month before President Claudia Sheinbaum took office, preliminary data shows.
At Sheinbaum’s Tuesday morning press conference, the head of the National Public Security System, Marcela Figueroa Franco, presented data that showed there was an average of 65.29 homicides per day between Feb. 1 and Feb. 24.
She highlighted that the daily average so far this month is 24.9% lower than the 86.93 murders per day in September, the last month of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s presidency.
Figueroa also noted that the average daily murder rate so far this year — 71.6 — is 28.7% lower than the 2018 rate of 100.5.
She explained that the preliminary data she presented is derived from information provided to the federal government by Mexico’s 32 state Attorney General’s Offices. Final data invariably shows that the number of homicides committed in any given period of time was in fact higher than the number shown by preliminary statistics.
Over 50% of homicides this month occurred in just 7 states
Figueroa presented data that showed there were 1,567 homicides in Mexico between Feb. 1 and 24.
Just over 54% of those murders occurred in seven states: Guanajuato, México state, Baja California, Sinaloa, Michoacán, Tabasco and Sonora.
The majority of murders in Mexico are linked to organized crime. In Guanajuato, for example, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel have been fighting a turf war for years. In Sinaloa, fighting between rival factions of the Sinaloa Cartel has claimed hundreds of lives in recent months.
The preliminary data presented by Figueroa shows that Guanajuato — Mexico’s most violent state in recent years in terms of total murders — recorded 241 homicides between Feb. 1 and Feb 24, accounting for 15.4% of all homicides in Mexico in the period.
On average, each of Mexico’s 32 states recorded 49 homicides in the first 24 days of this month. The murder count in Guanajuato so far in February is almost five times the national average.
At the other end of the spectrum are eight states that have recorded fewer than 10 homicides so far this month.
Querétaro, which borders Guanajuato among other states, hasn’t recorded a single homicide in February, according to preliminary data. The other states with fewer than 10 murders so far this month are:
- Yucatán (1 murder)
- Durango (3)
- Coahuila (5)
- Baja California Sur (5)
- Nayarit (6)
- Aguascalientes (7)
- Campeche (8)
Mexico City ranks as the 11th most violent federal entity this month, with 64 homicides between Feb. 1 and 24.
More than 13,000 arrests for high-impact crimes since Oct. 1
Continuing the federal government’s fortnightly security update, Security Minister Omar García reported that 13,139 people have been arrested for high-impact crimes such as murder, kidnapping and extortion since Sheinbaum took office on Oct. 1.
He said that authorities have confiscated 6,582 firearms and seized 112.8 tonnes of drugs in the same period.
In addition, 329 clandestine methamphetamine labs located across 13 states have been dismantled, García said.
The losses for criminal groups related to drug seizures and illegal lab shutdowns over the past five months exceed 300 billion pesos (US $14.7 billion), the security minister said.
The latest security update comes as the Mexican government seeks to reach a deal with the Trump administration to stave off 25% tariffs on Mexican exports to the United States that are scheduled to take effect next Tuesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said he plans to implement tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada for three reasons, including that large quantities of drugs, including fentanyl, have entered the U.S. from its southern and northern neighbors.
Mexico News Daily
