Author: Staff

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and colleagues from Central America agreed on Wednesday in a San José summit to join forces in a united front against transnational drug trafficking and extreme violence caused by organized crime.Summit leaders also forged a new commitment to improve relations on political, economic and social issues.“We have common problems and we want to form a united front against them, against the violence and the presence of organized criminal elements who operate at a transnational level,” Peña Nieto said at a press conference at the conclusion of a Central America-Mexico summit held this week in Costa Rica.The Mexican president said leaders must “define and expand mechanisms for more efficient cooperation,” including intelligence-sharing and the use of new technologies to halt the spread of organized crime in the region.via Will Mexico export its drug war? / Top Story / Current Edition / Costa Rica Newspaper, The Tico...

A police chief in the border city of Nuevo Laredo goes missing after his brothers turn up dead. Early evening explosions in front of a government building in the capital of Tamaulipas state injure three people. In the state of Durango, the businesses of a mayor’s family are burned days after her home is attacked by gunmen.As Mexico’s new government continues to fine-tune its public safety plan, distressingly familiar acts of criminality continue unabated, as seen in headlines that have dominated newspapers this week.The continuing stream of bad and bloody news presents a challenge for President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office Dec. 1 and is hoping to shift the world’s attention away from Mexico’s scourge of violence to focus more on the country’s growing economy.In January, according to the federal government, the country witnessed 1,104 homicides linked to organized crime. The newspaper Reforma notes that 1,808 such slayings have taken place since Peña Nieto’s swearing-in. In some states, fed-up locals have donned ski masks and taken up arms; these “self protection” groups have taken it upon themselves to round up suspected criminals, set up roadblocks and enforce curfews.For the time being, many Mexicans appear willing to give the new administration time to solve what they consider the country’s No. 1 problem. In a poll of 1,000 adults conducted this month by the Mexico City newspaper El Universal, 56%...

Last week the Trans-Border Institute’s Justice in Mexico Project released their fourth special report on drug violence in Mexico. These reports (see the 2010, 2011, and 2012 ones too) provide some of the most in-depth analyses of homicide trends in Mexico by using a range of government and media sources, as well as their own data.The authors, Cory Molzahn, Octavio Rodriguez Ferreira, and David A. Shirk, conclude that Mexico’s homicide rate has peaked. Using the Mexican government’s National Public Security System (SNSP) data—which you can see in the graph below—the number of organized crime related homicides dropped some 28 percent over the last year. Other tallies from the newspapers Reforma and Milenio showed a 21 percent decrease and a 1 percent increase respectively (the substantial differences stemming from the ways they categorize organized crime related homicides). But by all counts, the violence has at least leveled out, if not fairly dramatically declined.via Mexico’s Murder Rate Plateaus |...