The Pacific beach city of Puerto Vallarta has emerged as one of the safest cities in Mexico, alongside some of the country’s most affluent urban areas, according to an annual survey measuring the perception of public safety. 

The latest National Survey of Urban Public Safety, released by the national statistics agency INEGI on Thursday, revealed that the residents of Puerto Vallarta, in the state of Jalisco, view their city as very safe, with just 21.4% of the population raising security concerns. 

Survey respondents viewed Mexico as a whole to be less safe than last year, with 63.2% of over-18-year-olds surveyed saying they considered it unsafe to live in their area, compared to 59.4% in June 2024. 

While the overall security perception has worsened, the average daily number of murders decreased by 21, to 65.6 in June, compared to 86.9 in September 2024, the last month of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term in office, according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System. 

The safest city according to perception was San Pedro Garza García, which is the wealthiest municipality in Mexico. 

The cities or municipalities with the lowest perception of insecurity according to the survey were:

• San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León – 11% (of surveyed residents viewed as unsafe)
• Piedras Negras, Coahuila – 16.9%
• Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco – 21.4%
• Benito Juárez borough, Mexico City – 22%
• Saltillo, Coahuila – 23.5%

There was a significant gender gap in the perception of safety in urban areas, with 68.5% of women reporting insecurity across Mexico compared to 56.7% of men.

A year after El Mayo’s capture, Sinaloa’s capital is seen as Mexico’s most dangerous city 

Meanwhile, 32.5% of participants expect crime and insecurity in their city to remain equally bad over the next year, 25.4% expect it will worsen, and 25.1% think it will improve. 

Survey participants viewed Culiacán, the capital of the northern state of Sinaloa, as the most insecure, with 90.8% of residents feeling unsafe, compared to 44.7% last year. 

The public perception of Culiacán’s security has deteriorated amid an ongoing war between the “Los Chapitos” and “Los Mayos” factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, which was triggered after Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was allegedly kidnapped and taken to the U.S., where he was arrested in July 2024. 

With reports from Informador and El Financiero