Mexico homicides up 16% this year

MEXICO CITY — Homicides in Mexico rose by 16 percent in the first half of 2018, as the country again broke its own records for violence.

The Interior Department said over the weekend that there were 15,973 homicides in the first six months of the year, compared with 13,751 killings in the same period of 2017.

The number is the highest since comparable records began being kept in 1997, including the peak year of Mexico’s drug war in 2011.

At current levels, the department’s measure would put national homicides at 22 per 100,000 population by the end of the year — near the levels of Brazil and Colombia at 27 per 100,000.

Security analyst Alejandro Hope noted “the figures are horrible, but there are some signs that are halfway encouraging.”

For example, murders were up only about 4 percent compared with the second half of 2017. “The curve may be flattening out,” Hope noted, though he cautioned it is too early to tell.

Some areas, such as the northern border state of Baja California, showed big jumps in homicide rates, while others saw sharp drops.

Baja California, home to the border city of Tijuana, saw 1,463 homicides in the first half of the year, a 44 percent increase over the same period of 2017.

But in Baja California Sur, home to the resorts like La Paz and Los Cabos, a stepped-up police presence apparently helped reduce killings. The 125 homicides in the state were less than half the number registered in the first six months of 2017 and a quarter of the number in the last half of 2017. Extra police and troops were sent in after warring drug gangs increased killings in the state in 2017.

Hope noted that in about half of Mexico’s 32 states and the capital, murder rates didn’t rise much or at all. “Now the growth is becoming concentrated” in some areas, Hope said.