Mexico is deadlier than ever.
That’s according to the number of homicide investigations opened by prosecutors in July, when 2,599 such cases were tallied — an average of 84 per day and more than any other month on record, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday, citing Mexico’s national public security agency.
Some of those cases had multiple victims, although Mexican authorities did not provide an exact total. That puts the country on track to surpass 2017 as its most violent year on record since officials started releasing crime statistics more than two decades ago, according to the newspaper.
In 2017, Mexico had 25,316 homicide investigations into 31,174 deaths. During the first seven months of 2018, a total of 16,399 homicide cases have been opened, marking a 14 percent increase over the same period last year.
Last month’s total, meanwhile, eclipses the previous monthly record of 2,535 homicide investigations that was set in May.
Mexico’s national statistics institute announced in July that the number of homicides in 2017 throughout the country was higher than initially thought and even surpassed levels recorded in 2011, the peak year of its ongoing drug war.
The country’s homicide rate was 25 per 100,000 inhabitants, lower than that of Brazil and Colombia at 27 per 100,000. In 2016, Mexico’s rate was 20 per 100,000 people. By contrast, Honduras and El Salvador had homicide rates around 60 per 100,000.
The figures have steadily risen since 2015 as ruthless cartels fight over drug trafficking routes and the subsequent response by Mexican authorities trying to stop the rampant killings, according to the Los Angeles Times. One security analyst told the newspaper that authorities needed to tackle the problem directly, but that may have added to the overall body count.
“You can’t let them get to the point where they can actually challenge the state,” Scott Stewart, an expert on Mexico at the Texas-based intelligence firm Stratfor, told the newspaper. “Years ago you had large cartels that were fairly dominant in many areas and it was fairly tranquil. Now there’s so much friction, and it leads to violence across the board.”
