The number of homicides fell by 7.1% in 2022 compared to 2021 in Mexico, for a total of 30,968 against 33,350, the government said on Tuesday January 17.
The Latin American country recorded an average of 85 homicides per day last year, compared to 91 in 2021, according to statistics presented by the Secretary (Minister) of Security, Rosa Icela Rodriguez.
Six of Mexico's 32 federated states account for 48.6% of the total number of homicides, she added.
The state of Guanajuato (center north) is the most violent with 3,260 homicides last year, detailed Rosa Icela Rodriguez during the daily press conference of the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Guanajuato also recorded a drop in the number of homicides from one year to the next (-7.1%), from the same source.
Guanajuato is the scene of clashes between rival organized crime gangs, like other states with high crime rates (Michoacan, Jalisco and its capital Guadalajara).
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The State of Mexico, on the outskirts of the capital, is also one of the six most violent, but not the city itself.
This is the third consecutive annual drop in the number of homicides, after a peak in 2019 (34,718), underlined the left-wing government of President Lopez Obrador, who came to power in December 2018. The number of homicides has fallen was gone under the mandate of President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), recalled Rosa Icela Rodriguez.
Felipe Calderon, of the conservative PAN party, launched a military offensive against drug traffickers in 2006.
Since that date, nearly 340,000 murders and dozens of kidnappings and disappearances have been recorded, most of them attributed to organized crime.