Misleading

Excélsior's front page yesterday blared that Chihuahua had witnessed a 512 percent increase in murders. Given how bad 2008 was, that would indeed be unsettling. However, the calculus was screwy; this January's total of 210 killed far exceeds last January's 40, but the crime wave that has made the state, and especially Ciudad Juárez, so dangerous didn't start last January, so that's apples and oranges. Another way of figuring it leads to a much more hopeful conclusion. Juárez accounted for 102 of the January killings. If it maintains such a pace for all of 2009, it will wind up with a total of 1224, which would be a 25 percent decline from 2008. 

Sinaloa offers some more concrete glimmers of hope. In November, 127 people were killed in drug violence. In December, that number jumped to 144. In January, during which the state's kingpins supposedly negotiated a truce, only 59 were killed.