Mexico confirmed that 2019 was its most murderous year in recent history as homicides rose 2.7 percent during President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s first full year in office, the Washington Post reports. The National System of Public Security said 35,588 people were victims of homicides last year. That includes 1,006 women targeted in “femicides,” killings committed because of the victims’ gender. In addition, nearly 5,000 people disappeared in Mexico in 2019 and were not found. Authorities opened the highest number of murder investigations last year since they started keeping data in 1997. López Obrador has acknowledged his government’s failure to bring down homicides but said Tuesday that other problems were more important. “I think that the bigger damage has been done by white-collar criminals, whether politicians or businessmen who call themselves entrepreneurs,” the leftist leader said.
Violence has surged in recent years as some organized-crime groups have fragmented into warring cells and criminal organizations have diversified. They once focused on shipping drugs to the U.S., but many now also engage in predatory crimes in Mexico, including extortion, kidnapping and retail drug sales. Eduardo Guerrero Gutiérrez of the consulting firm Lantia said the homicide rate was at least growing at a slower pace than in the past. Homicides surged 17 percent in 2018 but rose less than 3 percent last year. “That’s very important,” he said. López Obrador’s plan to use social programs to wean young people off crime appeared to be having some effect in lowering street crime, he said. It isn’t hurting organized-crime groups, which are responsible for most killings. Ricardo Márquez, a former senior security official, noted that the number of homicides appeared to have leveled off, but at a very high number. “We are stalled in a situation that is tragic, of brutality and carnage,” he said.