Homicides of foreigners in Mexico have increased in the last ten years

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2019 was the most violent year in the recent history of Mexico 1:48

(CNN Spanish) - The recent murder of two Colombians in the Mexican state of Puebla accounts for a growing trend of murders of foreigners in Mexico, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, INEGI.

Colombians Ximena Quijano Hernández, 25, and José Antonio Parada Cerpa, 22, were found dead at dawn on Monday in an area near Huejotzingo airport. Both were exchange students in the medical faculty of the Autonomous Popular University of the State of Puebla (UPAEP). Together with them, Uber driver Jose Manuel N, 28, and a third student identified as Francisco Javier Tirado Márquez, 22, from Veracruz, were also found dead. The Mexican authorities said they arrested three suspects related to the murder, and that investigations of the case are being carried out.

• Three students, including two Colombians, and an Uber driver are found dead in Puebla

These deaths are part of a bleak scenario in Mexico, which in 2019 had its most violent year in its history since records are kept. For that year, the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SNSP) accounted for 34,582 victims of malicious homicides in Mexico.

In the country, which has almost 125 million inhabitants, it is estimated that just over one million foreigners live, according to the 2018 National Survey of Demographic Dynamics of INEGI. And according to figures from that entity, homicides against foreigners have increased in recent decades.

In total, between 1990 and 2018, 4,094 homicides of foreigners have been registered among a little more than 497,000 homicides during those years. And in the last decade, crime figures against foreigners went from 149 cases in 2008 to 415 in 2018, according to the most recent figures reported by INEGI, which does not have detailed records of the nationalities of the victims.

According to official figures published in January 2020, it is estimated that 97.4 million visitors arrived in Mexico in 2019, most of them from the United States, Canada and Colombia.

But despite being a major tourist attraction, violence in Mexico has raised alarm in some countries, such as the United States, whose State Department issued a travel alert for its citizens at the end of last year urging them to exercise greater caution in trips to Mexican territory for widespread violent crimes such as homicides, kidnappings, assaults and vehicle theft.

The alert instructed government employees to avoid traveling during the night, not using taxi service in the streets including applications such as Uber or registered taxi companies.

And it is not for less, because in the country there has been an increase in violence since 2017. In the last year the commission of alleged crimes increased by 4.7%; 2.5% of malicious homicides and 10.3% of femicides, according to figures published in early 2020.

Given the figures of violence in general, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has said that his government inherited a country with “historical” levels of violence and promised to reduce the daily average of malicious homicides since the beginning of his government .

• Guanajuato "is getting out of the ordinary," says AMLO; these are the figures of violence in this state

Armed violence has been the protagonist of cases in recent years such as that of the American Paul Nielsen and his partner Janet Vásquez, who lost their lives while on vacation in Guerrero in July 2019, in the middle of an assault and robbery, in the that the assailants opened fire on the vehicle in which they were moving.

Also in November 2019, the murder of the Mexican-American family LeBarón was recorded, in which nine members of the Mormon family were “burned alive,” according to Alex LeBarón, a family member, in northern Mexico.

The family, who were headed for a wedding, were allegedly attacked "separately but simultaneously by two different groups of the same cartel," LaBaron told CNN. "Probably by accident, confused with their rivals."

By the end of 2019, the Office of the Attorney General of Mexico reported that seven people were arrested for their probable connection with the massacre.

For AMLO, the explanation of the exacerbated violence is that in Mexico “the problem of insecurity, violence” was greatly increased and “the causes were not addressed”, besides there was no authority or a “line that divided a frontier that divided authority with crime. ” According to him, this "abandonment" of the State that has been coming for many years led to the origination of the situation of violence that is experienced today in Mexico, "because these bands that operate did not arise last year."

ForeignersDeathsViolence in Mexico