By The Associated Press
Homicides did not stop in Mexico despite the pandemic.
The most reliable tally released Tuesday reveals there was essentially no change in 2020, at
36,579.
COVID-19 reduced many activities in Mexico but the number of murders last year was practically the same as in 2019, of
36,661.
This means that the
homicide rate in 2020 was 29 per 100,000 inhabitants, the
same as the previous year.
By comparison, the United States' in 2019 was 5.8 per 100,000.
This woman fled the gangs in El Salvador but fell into the hands of organized crime in Mexico
July 27, 202101: 45
Security expert Alejandro Hope said preliminary figures released Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) will likely be revised upward by 1-3% when the final ones appear in October.
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President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assures that his government has managed to slow down the number of murders but has not been able to significantly reduce them.
In fact, the figure had leveled off by the time he took office on December 1, 2018.
Experts say much of the violence is due to battles across the country between the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels, in alliance with or through local gangs.
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The states most affected by drug trafficking violence are Guanajuato, Baja California, Michoacán, Zacatecas, Chihuahua and Sonora, but they are beginning to spread to the rest of the 32 entities.
With a rate of 239 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, Fresnillo is the town with the highest perception of insecurity in Mexico: more than 96% of its population is afraid, according to the most recent INEGI survey.