More than 47,500 killed in Mexico’s war on cartels

TIJUANA – How many people have been killed in the last five years during Mexico’s war against drug cartels?

It’s a number that seemingly changes depending on the source, whether it’s the news media, international human rights organizations, or citizen associations demanding justice.

On Wednesday, the federal Attorney General’s Office released an official figure: 47,515 people killed from December 2006 to September 2011.

However, that number does not include the 4,000 or so murders registered by authorities and the news media in states like Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Jalisco, Michoacán and Baja California, among others, in the last three months of the year.

And it does not include the thousands of people who have disappeared in the last five years, whose family members believe they were murdered and dumped in secret graveyards.

According to Javier Sicilia, the leader of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, the largest organization of victims of violence in Mexico, the number of disappeared could be as high as 10,000.

The number of people killed, published Wednesday in the web site of the Attorney General’s Office, www.pgr.gob.mx, reflects the period President Felipe Calderon’s administration has fought against the drug cartels.

According to the PGR, the number is good news. The agency noted that 2011 is the first year that the homicide rate is significantly lower compared to previous years.

Mexico’s murder rate grew approximately 11 per cent from September 2010 to September 2011, while the rate grew 70 per cent from 2009 to 2010, 63 per cent from 2008 to 2009, and 110 per cent from 2007 to 2008, the PGR said.

The staggering number of murders has laid bare the chronic problems of Mexico’s judicial system, which rarely solves these cases.

Still, authorities from the local to federal level, including the military, have said that progress can be counted in the number of high-profile arrests and the confiscation of record number of drugs.

International organizations, like Human Rights Watch, however, have labeled Calderon’s security policies a failure that have only generated a spike in human rights abuses by security forces, including torture.

The number released this week will surely figure in political debate, as Mexicans consider the security policy of Calderon’s PAN party and whether it should be returned to power in July’s presidential election or tossed out in favor of different course.

omar.millan@sandiegored.com