Zetas vs Gulf Cartel

According to rumor, the violence in northeastern Mexico started after "El Condor 3," an associate of the leader of the Zetas, was assassinated by a member of the Gulf Cartel going by the nickname of "El Metro 3". This reputedly happened on February 23 and broke up the relationship between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Looking at the weekly number of homicides in Nuevo León (excluding the Monterrey metro area) and Tamaulipas there was a sharp rise in the number of homicides precisely during that week.

Map of divorce in Mexico

Keeping with this week's divorce theme, here's a map of the Mexican states where marriages are most likely to end in divorce. Perhaps not surprisingly, there seems to be an inverse correlation with the state percentage of the population that is catholic and the proportion of marriages which end in divorce. You can download the code to generate the map from my GitHub account.

Proportion of marriages ending in divorce

Over the last two decades families in Mexico have undergone rapid social changes. The proportion of marriages ending in divorce has risen for each cohort since data became available, this is independant of the recently approved express divorce law in the Federal District.

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Express Divorce in Mexico

On October 2008 Mexico's capital, the Federal District, approved a version of no-fault divorce locally known as "express divorce". With the new law the requesting spouse no longer had to provide a cause to dissolve the marriage and the couple no longer had to live apart before filing for divorce. Furthermore, the process of determining child custody and alimony were now separate from the divorce trial. The Federal District has so far been the only federative entity in Mexico to adopt a less adversarial divorce system.

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