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InSight Crime's 2021 Homicide Round-Up

InSight Crime

1 February 2022

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Mexico: 26 per 100,000
While homicides in Mexico dipped in 2021, there was little cause for relief, as the country surpassed 30,000 murders for the fourth year in a row.

Last year, authorities in Mexico recorded 33,308 killings, giving the country a homicide rate of 26 per 100,000 people, according to data from the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (Secretaría de Seguridad y Protección Ciudadana - SSPC). The total drop was about three percent from the 34,514 murders in 2020, following the trend of homicides in the country remaining relatively stable since a record high in 2018. Mexico has nonetheless shown little ability to keep the organized crime groups in check that drive violence in the country.

Just six states - Guanajuato, Baja California, Michoacán, the State of Mexico, Chihuahua and Jalisco - accounted for half of all murders.

(…) Mexico's criminal landscape has grown increasingly fragmented and predatory, creating a climate of hyperviolence. Firearms are used in the majority of murders, and criminal groups can rely on a steady flow of high-powered weapons from the United States. While the drug trade is still a major factor contributing to outbreaks of violence - especially synthetic drugs - kidnapping and extortion have also become increasingly profitable.

Government security forces were also culpable of committing heinous acts of violence. In early 2021, several members of an elite special operations unit in northern Tamaulipas state - some of whom received US training - were implicated in the massacre of 19 people, mostly migrants, along the US-Mexico border.

The killing of women continued to occur at an alarming rate last year. Since 2015, femicides have increased a staggering 135 percent, from 427 to 1,004 last year. The country has seen more than 900 femicides every year since 2018, or around 75 every month. Some experts suggest this might be the result of state prosecutors investigating more femicides, but there's little doubt gender-based violence remains a serious problem in Mexico.

ID: N864

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