Alejandro Hope: Is Mexico Seeing Less Homicides Under Pena Nieto? Alejandro Hope - InSight Crime
December 19, 2013

Mexico's national government claims homicides have dropped significantly during President Enrique Peña Nieto's first year. However, security analyst Alejandro Hope's closer examination of the 2013 numbers and their relationship to 2012 show this is not the case.

The year 2013 has been less violent than 2012, but the situation on the ground is not notably less violent than when the current president and his team took office.

For several months, the federal government has boasted of a reduction in the number of homicides. In the first briefing put out by his administration, Peña Nieto claimed the “number of intentional homicides that occurred between December 2012 and July 2013 was 13.7 percent less than in the same period of the previous year.”

In this same vein, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong declared during an appearance in the Senate two months ago, declared: “Between December 2012 and August this year, there have been positive trends in comparison with the same period the year before. We have [seen] a 16 percent decrease in intentional homicides.”

According to government officials, these results are the product of their security policy. The president said as much in August: “Thanks to the effective coordination and intelligence that distinguishes the new Public Policy of Security and Justice, in the period from December 2012 to July 2013, the number of homicides linked to federal crimes decreased by 20 percent.”

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