Monday, January 23, 2012

Is Mexico's 2011 Organized Crime Violence to be Handed On?

By Allan Wall

Calendar year 2011 has ended and 2012, an election year in both the USA and Mexico, has begun. 

On January 11th, 2012, the Mexican government released an official death toll of the ongoing drug cartel war.  These statistics cover the period from January 1st, 2011 to September 30th, 2011.  That is, the first three quarters of 2011.

Before this release, there had already been calculations released by several Mexican periodicals.  La Jornada had tallied 11,890; Milenio had reported 12,284; while Reforma had reported 12,539.

The death toll released by the government on January 11th, however, was larger than any of these previous tallies.

According to the Mexican government, from January 1st to September 30th, 2011, there were 12,903 people killed in violence linked to "rivalry among criminal organizations."    Not only that, but there was an increase of these killings over the previous year.

Is there any positive news in these statistics?  

Yes, the government was able to point out a silver lining.  After all, a sitting administration is always able to put some sort of positive spin on any bad news.

So here's the spin.  According to the Mexican government's official statistics, the rate of killings is still increasing, but the pace of the increase has slowed.  That is, in 2010 the killings increased 70% over the rate of increase in 2009.  But in 2011, they only increased 11%.  In other words, the killings are still increasing - just not as fast.

That's a rather morbid way of looking at it.  And, if one has to choose, it is better for the rate of increase to slow down than to go even faster.

It would be even better, though, to see the quantity of killings actually decrease.  Hopefully that will occur in the future.

The drug cartel death rate can also be examined in relation to cities, states and regions of Mexico.  After all, cartel violence is not evenly distributed throughout Mexico, a country the size of Western Europe.  Some regions are hit hard, others aren't.

Another bad news trend in 2011 was the spread of the drug gang violence to new areas of Mexico.  The Gulf coast state of Veracruz is a prime example of this phenomenon. 

Mexico's most violent city was still Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, which is located across the border from El Paso, Texas.  Its drug war murder rate, though actually dropping from the previous year, was still #1 in Mexico, at 1,206 in the nine-month period under review.

In second place was the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, with 795 slayings. 

Three cities of northern Mexico fill out the top five cities in cartel war related homicides.    The city of Torreon was #3 with 476 killings; Chihuahua City was #4 with 402 murders; and Monterrey was at #5 with 399 killings.

Mexico's deadliest state is the northern state of Chihuahua, Mexico's biggest, which borders Texas and New Mexico.

In the nine-month period under review here, January through September of 2011, Chihuahua state had 2,276 deaths related to organized crime reported. 

As a point of comparison, in Afghanistan, from January through October 2011, there were 2,177 civilians killed.

That means, per capita, that a resident of Mexico's Chihuahua state is nine times more likely to be killed in drug cartel related violence than a resident of Afghanistan by anti-government forces.  (The rates are 67 per 100,000 in Chihuahua versus 7 per 100,000 inhabitants in Afghanistan.)

Of the Chihuahua total, 402 of these killings took place in Chihuahua City, the state capital.  But Ciudad Juarez, at 1,206 killings, accounted for about 53 percent.

So things did not look good in 2011.  The violence continues as the drug gangs continue to battle each other and the government security forces. 

Furthermore, it's been estimated that, since Felipe Calderon took office in December of 2006, over 50,000 have been slain in the cartel-related violence.

But this is Calderon's last year to deal with this enormous challenge as president. 

The 2012 Mexican presidential election is scheduled for July 1st, with the winner taking office on December 1st of this year.  And Mexico doesn't allow presidential reelection.

So, before 2012 is over a new Mexican president, whoever he or she may be, is scheduled to take office.  What will the situation be like on December 1st, and what strategy will Calderon's successor utilize to deal with it?  

And what will the death statistics look like a year from now?

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Allan Wall, an educator, resided in Mexico for many years.  His website is located at http://www.allanwall.info/.