Although the government discourse maintains that intentional homicides were reduced by 32% in Mexico, an analysis by the organization México Evalúa indicates that the official data on this crime is not reliable due to the institutional weakness of the prosecutor’s offices and the disappearance tactics used by organized crime.
In an interview with EFE, the coordinator of Mexico’s Evalúa security program, Armando Vargas, affirms that talking about a “generalized pacification process” is impossible when more than 18,400 murders were recorded in the first nine months, especially in the western and northwest areas of the country.
According to reports, the national reduction in all types of violence since the beginning of the year is 5.4% and not the 32% enacted by the Government, which only focuses on murders.
“Politically it is very profitable and these data on intentional homicide do not discuss disappearances, femicides, culpable homicides (accidental) or other victims of other crimes against life,” explains Vargas.
For the expert, this “extraordinary statistical level” reduction can be explained through several hypotheses, including data manipulation and the establishment of criminal governance.
“Intentional homicides are reduced, but other forms of violence are increasing, increasing these suspicions,” states the coordinator.
Vargas points out that a tactic to not count a homicide as intentional could be to report it as an accident, taking advantage of the fact that the common element between both is the deprivation of life.
The expert highlights that some entities register more deaths due to accidents (wrongful homicide) than due to intentional homicide, without there being public reports of mass accidents that justify this anomaly.
Exemplifying this thesis, he states that in Querétaro, there are more culpable homicides (273), other crimes against life (601) and disappearances (130) than the 118 intentional homicides.
Also Tamaulipas, where accidental homicides (548), other crimes against life (296) and disappearances (290) exceed murders (168).
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Disappearances are not of interest to the Government
From January to September, disappearances increased in Mexico by 14.9% compared to the same period in 2024. In those nine months, 11,347 disappearances were registered, an increase of 276.2% compared to 2015.
“The issue of disappearances is not of interest to the federal government because it means removing a lot of interests (…) The disappeared are once again disappeared from the official discourse,” explains Vargas.
The expert points out that disappearances allow organized crime to “generate terror” and “hide lethal violence” because “without a corpse there is no crime.”
“It is an operation where everyone wins. With the bodies missing, a reduction in violence can be sustained,” he says.
In Jalisco, the epicenter of disappearances, the number of unaccounted for people increased by 250% in just nine months; Querétaro, “an oasis of security”, increased by 116%; In the capital, the increase was practically 90%, as in Sinaloa.
Pacification in Mexico is for international politics
Armando Vargas points out that the promotion of the reduction of homicides is the main message that the Government sends to the country and beyond its borders.
“President Claudia Sheinbaum can boast of reducing lethal violence by more than 30% and she boasts that to the opposition, to her political rivals within Morena and also to Donald Trump. This allows her to circumvent the interventionist agenda of the president of the United States,” he asserts.
“It is a very perverse scenario, but politically profitable,” he says.
Mexico Evalúa’s analysis concludes that one cannot speak of pacification when there is a country “divided into two realities.”
While the Pacific Corridor is “basically set on fire by violence between criminal groups,” the Gulf Corridor presents “a mostly positive balance, with states with rates of lethal violence on the decline, with moderate levels, and where it seems that a pacification process does occur.”
The government strategy based on intelligence and zero impunity against violence “is not reducing it at the moment.”
With information from EFE
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