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Mexico homicides down, but other drug-related crimes persist

FILE - This Dec. 3, 2008 file photo shows Mexican Army soldiers holding two suspects, arrested during an operation against drug smuggling and kidnapping gangs, after being presented to the press in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias, File)
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Mexico’s crackdown on powerful drug cartels has succeeded in driving homicides down for the second year in a row, but it has opened the door for an increase in crimes, such as kidnapping and extortion, that affect greater numbers of ordinary citizens, according to report released Tuesday.

The crimes are being carried out by smaller and weaker groups “that focus on making money where they can,” said David Shirk, one of the authors of the University of San Diego study. “Unfortunately, improvements in the homicide rate did not entail universal improvements in citizen security.”

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The study comes as President Enrique Peña Nieto is well into the second year of his six-year term. Unlike his predecessor, Felipe Calderón, Peña Nieto has played down public rhetoric against drug trafficking organizations, focusing instead on the need for political and economic reforms. But analysts say that Peña Nieto’s administration has continued to deploy federal forces to combat organized crime, and continued to arrest major drug traffickers.

“I think the government repression of the bigger groups pulverizes them,” said John Bailey, a professor emeritus at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and author of the book, “The Politics of Crime in Mexico.” “The criminals look at other ways to make money.”

The USD study, entitled “Drug Violence in Mexico,” was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the fifth annual report prepared under the auspices of the university’s Justice in Mexico Project.

In documenting drug violence, the researchers looked at different tallies, including those of Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information and data from the National Security System, as well as independent counts by Mexican media organizations.

The report comes amid public discussion in Mexico about the federal government’s crime statistics under Peña Nieto. The Tijuana newsweekly, Zeta, has challenged statements by high-ranking officials that homicides fell by 16.1 percent in Mexico in 2013, reporting last month that 23,640 murders related to organized crime have taken place since Peña Nieto took office in December 2012.

The USD study reported 15 percent drop in homicides in 2013, but says “these findings should be viewed with caution, due to questions raised by analysts over “possible withholding or manipulation of data.” It also reported significant increases in extortion and kidnapping cases.

The states that registered the highest number of homicides in 2013 were Guerrero, Mexico, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Jalisco, according to government figures cited in the study. The largest decreases from the previous year were registered in Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Morelos.

Of those states showing the largest increases in 2013, Baja California presented the highest rate, 31 percent, the study reported.

Among other findings:

• Mexico’s homicide rate is about average for the Americas, well below Honduras and Venezuela but higher than the United States, Cuba and Canada.

• Many homicides in Mexico continue to be attributable to drug trafficking and organized crime groups.

• Community self-defense groups have expanded in Guerrero, Michoacan and other states.

• Compared with previous years, recent organized crime arrests have not appeared to produce large spikes in violence.

Tijuana has been held up as an example of how civic participation and improved law enforcement can lead to reduced crime rates. But the report listed 492 homicides in Tijuana in 2013, up from 320 the previous year and second only to Acapulco, with 883. It called the spike “the most significant surge in intentional homicides among major municipalities in 2013.”

The numbers are still far below the city’s homicide peak in 2008, and Tijuana’s homicide rate in 2013 remained lower than those of the cities of Acapulco, Culiacán, Juarez, Chihuahua and Torreon, according to the report.

“Tijuana stands out in part because things had gotten so much better,” Shirk said. The study does not delve into the causes of Tijuana’s rise in homicides. But the rise has drawn calls for greater crime-fighting efforts by state and municipal law enforcement officials.

“Local authorities are not recognizing these figures, they are saying, ‘no everything is fine,’” said Roberto Quijano, a Tijuana attorney who studies the city’s crime trends for the umbrella group, Tijuana Coordinating Council. “We have mixed results. We have to recognize that.”

Baja California government figures show that overall crime in Tijuana, Baja California’s largest city, has gone down since 2008, most notably car thefts, commercial robberies and armed robberies. But house break-ins have remained high. Kidnappings have been relatively low, though there has been an increase in abductions in which there are no ransom demands — frequently a form a retribution among members of criminal organizations.

With most of the illicit drugs in Mexico destined for users in the United States, U.S. users “are a major driving force behind this (drug) violence,” Shirk said. And criminal groups in Mexico who perpetrate the violence typically used weapons smuggled across the border from the United States, Shirk said.

But save for certain high-crime areas, U.S. citizens should not fear traveling to Mexico, Shirk said: “When you consider the volume of travelers and the volume of crimes against U.S. citizens, there is very little cause for concern.”

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