Drug trafficking in Mexico: these are the 10 states on red alert for crimes

In Mexico, there are 10 states with red or double red indicators for crimes committed by organized crime, according to the civil association Delictive Signal Light. At the end of the third quarter of 2020, the worst states evaluated are Colima, Baja California, Zacatecas, Quintana Roo, and Guanajuato. The entities that remain in red are Michoacan, Chihuahua, Sonora, Morelos, and the State of Mexico. In contrast, among the best evaluated in terms of organized crime are Chiapas, Coahuila, Nayarit, and Tamaulipas, reported Santiago Roel, head of Semáforo Delictivo.

Through videoconference, Roel pointed out that during this year 26,231 homicide victims have been registered in the country. "Eight out of ten are executions by drug trafficking gangs and it is caused by only one cause: the black market of drugs", he said, according to La Jornada. The director of the civil association said that 2020 is an "atypical" year because different crimes have been artificially reduced by the COVID-19 pandemic and confinement: extortion, kidnapping, malicious injury, vehicle theft, burglary, and business robbery. However, he specified that as population mobility increases these crimes will return to the yellow and red colors.

The homicide was slightly reduced. At the end of the ninth month, there were already 26,231 victims. Sixty-three percent of the homicides are concentrated in nine states: Guanajuato, Baja California, Chihuahua, State of Mexico, Michoacán, Jalisco, Sonora, Veracruz, and Guerrero (...). Eight out of ten homicides are executions by drug gangs and are caused by a single cause: the black market in drugs. As long as the federal government continues to evade the issue of drug regulation as a strategy to economically weaken the cartels, we will continue to see very high homicide rates in the country

The Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC), Alfonso Durazo Montaño, in his report on security matters this Wednesday, said from the National Palace that in terms of intentional homicides, he managed to break the upward trend of the last four years.

"From 2015 to 2016 the crime of intentional homicide increased 18%; from 2016-2017, 30%, imagine the force of the inertia of crime to drive a growth of 30%; from 2017 to 2018 14%; from 2018 to 2019, there is a slight decrease (0.57%), but the important thing is that there is a break and we managed to break this inertia of four years," said the secretary and stressed that these are figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).

In what he said is the last report he presents, Durazo Montaño explained that "we have been down for two months. From September to August there is an exact drop of 250 intentional homicides, it is a relevant figure because it is 8.4% less than August". Homicide decreased in 22 states, while in 10 entities it increased, so Durazo highlighted the progress that is being made in this area of public safety. The official celebrated that he left the Secretariat with a decrease in the number of intentional homicides and the figure for September is 8.4% lower than that for August.