Mexico’s drug war Storm clouds with silver linings A series of choreographed horrors belies an overall drop in killings--The Economist

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molly

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May 17, 2012, 7:17:25 PM5/17/12

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Here is another take on the numbers from The Economist... Note that they give a figure of 5,037 murders for the first 4 months of 2012... very close to the estimate made by Walter McKay at: https://sites.google.com/site/policereform/narco-killings (5,278)

Basically, we can see about an average of 1,260 homicides per month... somewhat lower than peak periods in the past few years, but still high. At this rate, the number of murders for the year will be about 15,111---instead of the 20,000+ over the past few years. Keep in mind that US homicides run about 15,000 per year and have been declining steadily over the past 5 years... And the US has about 3x the population of Mexico. A comparable murder rate in the US would produce 45,000-50,000 murders a year. molly

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The horror diverted attention from a rare drop in Mexico’s overall murder rate. The opening quarter of 2012 saw the first year-on-year fall in killings since the government’s assault on the gangs got going in 2007. The 5,037 murders (which include ordinary killings as well as mafia hits) represented a 7% drop compared with the same period last year, and a 17% decline compared with the worst three months of last summer. The government no longer breaks out mafia-linked murders, but Reforma, a newspaper, reckons that so far this year these are 10% down on last year.

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http://www.economist.com/node/21555593

Mexico’s drug war

Storm clouds with silver linings

A series of choreographed horrors belies an overall drop in killings

May 19th 2012 | MEXICO CITY | from the print edition

MURDER has become so common in parts of Mexico that gangsters craving attention must go to ever more appalling lengths. The 49 or so mutilated bodies dumped on May 13th on a roadside close to Monterrey, a wealthy city near the Texan border, were enough to make the front pages. The massacre was the worst since last August, when 52 people were killed in an arson attack on a casino in the same city. The latest outrage may be even deadlier: investigators are still not sure how many victims the body parts add up to.

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Most of the drop is in Ciudad Juárez, formerly the most violent place in Mexico, where the Sinaloa “cartel” is thought finally to have beaten its local rivals into near-submission. Chihuahua, the state in which Juárez lies, recorded a third fewer murders between January and March than in the same period in 2011. As the Monterrey massacre made headlines around the country, Juárez registered its third murder-free day in less than a week, a rarity.

Elsewhere the news is bad. The Monterrey massacre was the latest atrocity in a war between the Sinaloa mob and the Zetas, which between them dominate Mexico’s criminal map. On May 4th nine bodies were found hanging from a bridge, and 14 decapitated, in Nuevo Laredo, a Zeta stronghold in Tamaulipas. A few days later 15 bodies were dumped near Guadalajara, part of the turf of Sinaloa allies. Attacks such as these serve to calentar la plaza, or heat up the territory of a rival, to provoke a crackdown. Often the tactic works; the government should wise up and retaliate against those who commission such attacks instead, argues Alejandro Hope of IMCO, a Mexico City think-tank.

Attacks on journalists are causing a growing news blackout. On May 11th the offices ofEl Mañana, a Nuevo Laredo newspaper, were sprayed with bullets, prompting it to announce two days later that it would no longer cover the drug war. On May 3rd—“UN world press-freedom day”—three journalists were found dead in plastic bags in the state of Veracruz, a Zeta stronghold that Sinaloa is trying to crack. A few days earlier a journalist from Proceso, a national investigative magazine, was strangled in the same state.

Nerves are frayed because on July 1st Mexico will elect a new president. Recent state elections have seen threats from the narcos against candidates and voters, and many mayors have been murdered. A message signed by Joaquín Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa mafia, warned the mayor of Nuevo Laredo this month to stop telling “sweetened” stories about how the city was free of his lieutenants. Fourteen severed heads were arranged underneath the banner, which depicted the mayor as Willy Wonka.

Yet the latest attacks have apparently contained no messages for the presidential candidates. “It suits the cartels if security is not an issue [in the election],” says Alejandro Orozco of FTI Consulting, a risk analysis firm. “The violence in Mexico does not have political objectives. A cartel is safer while it is unseen,” he says.

All the presidential hopefuls propose to continue or intensify the war against the gangsters. Even the most doveish of them, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, says the army should stay in the streets until further notice. The unpopular war against the cartels may well cost President Felipe Calderón’s party the election, but it looks unlikely to end.