Even coronavirus couldn’t lower Mexico murder rate, with 29 killings per 100,000 people, study says
- Preliminary numbers released on Tuesday are likely to be revised upwards by 1 per cent to 3 per cent when definitive figures are published in October
- Much of the violence is fuelled by a series of turf battles being fought across the nation between the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels
Mexico’s murder rate remained essentially unchanged at 36,579 killings in 2020 due to rising gangland violence, according to the country’s National Statistics Institute.
Even though the coronavirus pandemic reduced many activities in Mexico in 2020, the number of killings was essentially equal to the 36,661 that occurred in 2019.
That means that Mexico’s nationwide murder rate in 2020 remained unchanged at 29 per 100,000 inhabitants. By comparison, the US murder rate in 2019 was 5.8 per 100,000.
Security expert Alejandro Hope said the preliminary numbers released on Tuesday are likely to be revised upwards by 1 per cent to 3 per cent when definitive figures are published in October.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration has managed to stem the increase in killings, but it has yet to reduce them significantly. In fact killings were already levelling off when he took office in December 2018.
Experts say much of the violence is fuelled by a series of turf battles being fought across the nation between the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels, often allied with or acting through local gangs.