Politics: Spiraling Murder Rate Largely Ignored
The latest official data showed the death toll from intentional homicides (2,564) made September the second deadliest month on record, surpassed only by June’s tally. In relative terms – murders per 100,000 inhabitants – we probably have already surpassed the previous peak year of 2011, when there were 24 per 100K. In cumulative terms, so far this year there have been 61% more homicides than in the same nine-month period of 2016.
Regardless of the precise factors contributing to the increase in violence, the authorities convey no sense of urgency and have failed to offer any new initiatives as crime has practically disappeared from the public discourse. And there is little pressure to get them to act as the problem draws scant coverage or sense of outrage, even in the news media.
A number of factors help explain the general indifference. The violence has become much more diffuse. The murder rate increased in 28 of Mexico’s 32 states in September, with at least 12 states likely to report more than 1,000 intentional murder victims this year, up from only three states in 2014, but ironically this dispersal has helped deflect attention away from the problem.
The vast majority of murder investigations involve a single victim as opposed to the instances of multiple and mass murders that dominated public attention in past years; these continue to occur but they are the exception.
And perhaps more importantly, the violence occurs in places and among population groups that are rarely covered by the media. The victims primarily belong to socially marginal groups and are overwhelmingly poor and poorly educated, their deaths, often like their lives, going largely unnoticed outside their immediate families and communities. In many cases, the murders are not even met with any expression of moral condemnation. News reports and officials often treat each new murder victim as someone who deserved to be killed because he or she allegedly had some association with organized crime or other type of criminal behavior.
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