Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Drop in Murders?

Being outside of Mexico, I've not had a chance to follow the running tally of murders connected to organized crime that the papers helpfully post in an appealing graphic on a daily basis. But this blog post* tells us that Mexico reached 1,000 murders on the year on February 14. Irony aside, that would put Mexico on pace for just a bit over 8,000 murders this year, which is to say, far less than in 2010, and a fair slice down from 2009, too. There's a lot of 2011 left, of course, but that would be fantastic news.

*So Burro Hall may not be quite official, but I'll be damned if he's not trustworthy. Unless he's lying, in which case I'll never believe the media again.

Update: Burro points out that we are basically on the same path that we were in 2010, and that upward revisions by the government at the end of the year have turned the media tallies into underestimates. Both good points.

4 comments:

Burro Hall said...

Oh, Gancho! You know better than to consider me an actual source of information!

But see this post from a year ago, reprinting El Universal's "1,000 Deaths" chart.

pc said...

Damn they really picked up the pace later on in 2010.

Burro Hall said...

Yeah, but remember, that 15,000 number was an official (more or less) figure that came out after the year was over. The number I'm quoting is El Universal's unofficial running tally. I think they ended the year around 12000 or so (I don't remember) so if they're that for off on their running tally, they're off on their "1000 days" milestone by the same percentage.

pc said...

right I knew they revised it upward, although I didn't know it was that much higher. So more likely, basically where we were last year.