Murder is down, disappearances are up. Some smell a rat

Do these contrasting stats tell us if Mexico is getting more or less safe?

The phrase “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic” is often attributed to Stalin, and in that sense, Mexico is well into Soviet-territory when it comes to the amount of death and suffering triggered by the so-called War on Drugs.

Mexico went from the lowest recorded number of homicides in the mid-2000’s to become one of the bloodiest countries not officially at war—from 8.09 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2007 to 29.12 at its height in 2020.

Nowadays, though the violence is still eye-watering, something striking is happening. Since Claudia Sheinbaum came to power a year ago, her administration has reduced murder rates significantly—down by 25% from last year. However, critics have spotted a simultaneous trend: Disappearances have shot up by 16% in the same period.

“It is completely lacking in ethics to celebrate the decline in murders without talking about disappearances,” Santiago Corcuera, who most recently served as Chairman of the Committee for Enforced Disappearances of the United Nations from 2016 to 2017, told The Mexico Political Economist.

“Dissappearences” refer to someone whose whereabouts are unknown and whose absence is presumed to be due to criminal activity. (This is different from a “forced disappearance” where the suspected perpetrator is the State itself). It is an unhelpfully broad categorisation, leading critics like Corcuera to worry that behind the government’s celebrations hides a sinister obfuscation of the facts.

Could it be that the government is hiding the real murder rate behind the rising number of disappearances?