MEXICO | Mexico recorded 34,523 assassinations in 2020, a slight decrease from 34,608 in 2019, according to official figures released Thursday.
The year 2019 marked a record of assassinations since 1997, due in particular to violence linked to organized crime.
“There is for the first time since 2014 a decrease in homicides in the country,” Under-Secretary for Security Ricardo MejÃa said Thursday at a press conference.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions it brings have not really calmed the violence in Mexico. The country had thus known on April 20 its most violent day since the beginning of the year with 105 assassinations, despite the confinement of the population decreed to fight against the coronavirus.
Violence has grown steadily in Mexico since the end of 2006, when the fight against drug trafficking became the business of the military.
Since that date, some 300,000 people have been murdered in the country, according to official figures which do not however specify whether all these violent deaths are attributable to organized crime.
Left-wing President Andres Manuel López Obrador, in power since December 2018, believes that this endemic violence will decrease by reducing poverty and exclusion instead of focusing mainly on the use of force against criminals.