Mexico’s most violent cities in 2011

Note the log scale and that data are incomplete

The INEGI finally released homicide data at the municipality level, analyzing it by state turned out very similar results to the preliminary data released back in August, so I won’t repeat the state level charts I did back then, instead I will focus on the trends in violence at the metro area or big municipality level since both Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez had big declines in homicides —though they are still very violent— and Monterrey, Acapulco and Veracruz saw big increases.

As I previously wrote there have been a lot deaths of unknown intent with characteristics similar to homicides since the drug war started, and 2011 was no exception: Coahuila went from registering 2 deaths of unknown intent in 2009 to 216 in 2011, Veracruz went from 197 to 747, Chiapas went from 2 to 614, Tamaulipas had 195 in 2011, and Mexico as a whole went from registering 2,376 deaths of unknown intent in 2007 to 5,630 in 2011.

We can also compare the number of homicides to the number of deaths in the recently cancelled drug war-related homicide database (only including the first 9 moths of 2011) to find out which states had more drug war deaths than total homicides, which in theory should be impossible

State	Year	Drug War- Related Homicides	Homicides
Coahuila	2011	572	478
Sinaloa	2007	414	388
Sinaloa	2008	1084	871
Tamaulipas	2010	1209	1011
Tamaulipas	2011	1108	830

One can also look at the data disaggregated by metro area or municipality (only showing those cities where drug war-related homicides exceeded all homicides by at least 15)

City	Year	Drug War- Related Homicides	Homicides
Culiacán-Navolato	2008	654	460
Culiacán-Navolato	2007	271	131
San Fernando, Tamps	2011	292	159
La Laguna	2011	633	509
Veracruz	2011	261	164
Valle Hermoso, Tamps	2011	95	14
Reynosa	2010	154	92
Miguel Alemán, Tamps	2010	110	58
Mier, Tamps	2010	93	42
Guerrero, Tamps	2010	45	0
San Fernando, Tamps	2010	169	130
Taxco de Alarcón, Gro	2010	75	38
La Laguna	2010	704	673
Mier, Tamps	2011	50	19
Morelia	2011	104	78
Ahumada, Chih	2009	27	4
Guerrero, Tamps	2011	35	12
Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Tamps	2010	25	7
Jiménez, Chih	2011	47	30
Cosalá, Sin	2011	25	8
Salvador Alvarado, Sin	2008	47	31
~~Sáric, Son~~	~~2010~~	30	14
Camargo, Tamps	2010	30	15

*Saric, Sonora has been crossed out because the deaths were registered in Tubutama

With so many missing deaths I’ve opted to watermark the plots with a text that says ‘incomplete data’ since I could probably get better estimates by classifying the deaths of unknown intent, but I need access to the raw data which is not available yet. In the plot at the top of the blog Tuxtla is the safest city, but with 112 deaths of unknown intent and only 10 homicides this is extremely likely to be wrong.

By looking at the metro area homicide numbers you can miss diverging municipality level trends, so for La Laguna and Mexico City I’ve plotted the data grouped by state.

The model is loess

Since inside a metro area people travel all around the city it is more important to focus on the trend rather than the levels. In Mexico City the increase in homicides has been much more marked in the State of Mexico than in the Federal District, mostly due to trends in Ecatepec and Neza.

In La Laguna violence in the part of the city situated in Coahuila (mainly Torreón) increased while violence in the Durango part decreased (mainly Gomez Palacio)