Mexico is one of my favorite countries. I've visited over 15 times since 2011 for work and tourism, including a one-year stay with my family while teaching at CIDE, a public university in Mexico City. I find the history, architecture, and topography fascinating.
But the drug war in Mexico, which began in earnest in 2006, is horrific and astounding. To understand the human toll, check out this graphic I created by downloading data from Mexico's National Institute for Statistics and Geography (INEGI).
(Note: There is not a lot of data analysis in this post; I just wanted to share a few visuals I created after a recent visit to Mexico City).
Mexico's homicide rate was relatively constant or declining from 1990 to 2006, when the new president, Felipe Calderon, declared a no-holds-barred assault on organized crime. There were just under 15,000 murders in Mexico in 1990, dropping to roughly 10,000 in 2005.
By 2011, however, the annual body count had soared to over 27,000. By 2018, it had reached a whopping 36,685. The killings have since subsided slightly, but still topped 30,000 in 2023, the last year for which INEGI published homicide data.
Overall, almost 671,000 Mexicans have been murdered since 1990, including nearly 424,000 since Calderon's revamped war on crime began in 2006.
The average murder rate from 1990-2005 was 13,000 persons per year. If we were to extend that average over the 18 years from 2006-2023, the cumulative total of homicides in that period would have been 234,000. (Of course, the real numbers would be a bit different because the total Mexican population increases each year, and we should adjust for the annual per capita murder rate. But this is a blogpost, not an academic article).
Since the actual number of killings from 2006 through 2023 was 424,000, we can say that the drug war launched in 2006 was responsible, directly or indirectly, for roughly 190,000 "excess murders." (424,000 - 234,000=190,000).
The INEGI data don't tell us who the killers are, but other sources suggest many are likely members of organized crime, popularly known as the cartels. Still, the government shares responsibility for these deaths, because its post-2006 strategy of aggressively pursuing the cartels has destabilized the country's criminal and political system, leading to brutal struggles for turf and profits.
Some killers may also be security force members, of which there are many different kinds - local, state, and federal; police and military; and so forth. I don't know of an authoritative data source offering a breakdown of killings by perpetrator. Experts, however, say it is often hard to distinguish between criminals and police, especially at very local levels.
Murders in Mexico are also geographically concentrated. The next graph I created, also from INEGI data, shows where the killings have been most concentrated
The state of Mexico has been the most heavily hammered, with over 47,000 murders since 2006. The states of Guanajuato, Guerrero, and Baja California are next, with homicide tolls at or above 30,0000. The capital, Mexico City, is in the top third of deadly federal units with almost 20,000 murders. The state of Yucatan appears to be the most peaceful, with less than 1,000 homicides from 2006 to 2023. The next graph adjusts for each state's population size. It uses population figures from 2015 and expresses the murder count in "number of murders per 100,000 state inhabitants."
Despite all this violence, tourism continues to be one of the main income sources for the country, largely because foreigners from the US and Europe are off-limits for violence by members of organized criminal entities. Attacking visitors of this sort outright would be bad for business, and the crime syndicates have many other ways of benefiting from the country's huge flows of tourist revenue. Besides, attacking tourists from wealthy countries would embarrass state and federal governments, and would force the security forces to take more vigorous action.
Extorting, kidnapping, and killing migrants from Guatemala and points further south, however, remains a booming business.
The Mexico I love is composed of two worlds, intertwined and enmeshed. The first is a country of tourism, stunning colonial architecture, amazing precolonial pyramids, culinary sophistication, and incredible art. The second is a world of poverty, inequality, and awful violence.
And without Americans' insatiable craving for illegal narcotics, along with their ever-abundant supply of weapons smuggled south, none of this would be possible.
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James Ron is a private research consultant conducting evaluations for international and domestic agencies. He trained as a sociologist and political scientist, taught for 21 years in research universities, and has worked as a human rights investigator and journalist. To learn more about his scholarship please visit his Google Scholar page and Research Gate profile. Follow him on Twitter at @james_ron01.
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