Updated government data revealed that Mexico set a new record for homicides in the first half of the year with 17,608 killings, fueled partly by cartel and gang violence in several states.
The startling new figures released Monday showed that the first six month of 2019 were the most violent since 1997, when the country started keeping official numbers, including the peak year of Mexico’s drug war in 2011.
The number of murders grew by 5.3% compared to the same period of 2018, when 16,714 people were killed.
Mexico saw 3,080 killings in June, an increase of over 8% from the same month a year ago, according to official figures. The nation of almost 125 million now sees as many as 100 killings per day nationwide.
The northeastern state of Nuevo León reported 486 murders from January until June in contrast with 282 during the same period in 2018.
In particular, drug cartel turf wars have become increasingly bloody in the northern state of Sonora, where the number of homicides was up by 69% in the first half of 2019. Officials registered 564 killings after 337 were murdered last year.
But in Sinaloa, where the cartel of convicted drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán is based, homicides declined by 23% so far this year compared to last.
Given cutbacks and a widespread reorganization of security forces under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it is not clear who, if anyone, is doing the analysis and intelligence work to find out exactly which conflicts are causing the rise in homicides.
There have been 20,599 murdered since the leftist leader entered office in December 2018.
As part López Obrador’s plan to combat insecurity, a 70,000-man National Guard was created although it’s been also deployed to control mass migration at its southern border.
‘I could give you 10 potential, plausible reasons, but the truth is we don’t know, and that is perhaps the biggest problem,’ said security analyst Alejandro Hope.
‘There is very little systematic research that would allow us to conclude what is really happening.’
And other types of crime, like extortion, have become increasingly frequent and violent.
As if to underscore that, officials said Monday the five men killed Sunday at a bar in the resort of Acapulco were allegedly part of a gang of extortionists who shook down business owners for protection payments.
Guerrero state prosecutor Jorge Zuriel ‘we now know that the members of this gang met daily at this bar to coordinate charging extortion payments and to collect the daily take.’
One suspect has been arrested in the shootings, which left six people wounded. Zuriel said the killers were members of a rival gang.
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Ese México al que pretende volver a gobernar el INEpto gobernante Felipe Del Sagrado Corazón De Jesús Calderón Hinojosa, quién inicio el baño de sangre que hoy envuelve al país
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