The Mexican government reported this Monday an annual reduction of 14.4% in intentional homicides, going from 2,835 in January 2021 to 2,427 in the first month of 2022, with 408 fewer cases.
The Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC), Rosa Icela Rodríguez, stated that in the last 9 months there has been a sustained downward trend in intentional homicide.
“This January is the slowest month of January in the incidence of this crime in the last 5 years. In 2022 we started with a (year-on-year) reduction of 14.4%,” he specified.
In addition, there is a reduction “of 19% compared to January 2020, that is why we say that the national security strategy is working”, assured the minister.
He explained that of the daily average of 93 intentional homicides in January 2019, 79 were averaged during the first month of 2022, which represents a substantial drop in murders.
Rodríguez explained that six states concentrated almost half of the homicides that were committed in the country.
However, he highlighted that in the 50 priority municipalities that concentrate 50% of homicides, there was a 3.1% decrease in this crime between August 2021 and January 2022, compared to the same period of the previous year.
FEMINICIDES
The official specified that in January 2022 femicide – the murder of a woman for reasons of gender – fell 32% this January with respect to the historical maximum of August 2021 and referred that they have been falling for 5 months in this crime.
This means that in January 2021 there were 76 women victims of femicide, a figure that compares with 79 in December and 112 in August 2021.
In January, 17,389 complaints of family violence were registered, a figure lower than the 19,762 cases in December.
In this way, it fell 27% compared to the historical maximum of May 2021 in this type of complaint.
On the other hand, the SSPC recorded 62 kidnappings in January, a decrease of 42.6% compared to 2020.
However, the 62 kidnappings in January are higher than the 50 in the same month a year ago, according to figures released.
Although she did not make the year-on-year comparison, the secretary pointed out that in December 2018, when the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador began, there were 9,062 federal crimes, a figure 41.3% higher than the 5,313 cases in January 2022.
The secretary assured that these figures demonstrate the results of the “coordinated work” between security and justice agencies in Mexico “fulfilling the presidential commitment of zero impunity and zero corruption.”
Luis Rodríguez Bucio, commander of the National Guard, reported that this security body currently has 113,839 members, deployed in 266 national coordinations.
Of these, there are more than 92,000 deployed throughout the territory and the rest in support units.
Mexico registered 33,308 homicides in 2021 after the two most violent years in its history, under the mandate of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with 34,690 murder victims in 2019 and 34,554 in 2020.