More than 47,500 people have been killed in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon started his military-led offensive against the drug cartels in 2006, according to new data released Wednesday by the country’s attorney general.
The latest figures show that 12,903 people have been killed as a result of the country’s drug war between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2011 — a 10 per cent increase from the same period in the previous year.
The report showed Mexico’s northern border region to be the most violent, with Ciudad Juárez again the most violent city. But municipalities further south, such as Acapulco and Veracruz, also rank in the top 10, while states such as Quintana Roo — home of Cancun — remain on par with Canadian crime rates.
Rumours had been circulating recently that the government would no longer publish this kind of data, due to the widespread unpopularity of the ongoing military strategy. But the death toll actually exceeded the projections of newspapers such as Reforma, whose ominous “execution meter” counted 12,359 deaths in 2011.
If government estimates stay at similar rates in the final three months of 2011, the official count would exceed 17,000 — the deadliest year yet for Mexico.
The numbers didn’t surprise Mexico City-based security specialist Walter McKay, a former Canadian police officer who now maps drug war deaths across Mexico. But he cautions that the murky nature of Mexico’s drug war makes it difficult to track numbers with real accuracy.
