Rates for Panama and Nicaragua are from 2009, all other countries 2010. Municipalities which are part of a metro area in Mexico are shown with the metro area homicide rate.

Visit the interactive map of homicides

Having just posted on violence along Mexico’s northern border, I figured it’s time to analyze what is happing south of Mexico where some countries have experienced sharp increases in homicides.

The Mexican government through the INEGI just released preliminary homicide data for 2011. I feel bound to remind my readers that the government also released preliminary data in 2010, with the state of Chihuahua missing over a thousand murders, so the data should be interpreted as strictly preliminary.

Photo Credit: Jesús Villaseca Pérez

Ever since March 2008 Ciudad Juárez began to register an alarming number of homicides becoming Mexico’s most violent city. According to the Mexican vital statistics system Ciudad Juárez (coterminous with the Juárez municipality) went from having just 202 murders in 2007 to 1,616 in 2008, 2,397 in 2009, and 3,686 in 2010.

Mexican and US officials explain the dramatic increase in violence as due to a conflict between the Sinaloa and Juárez Cartels. After a new governor was elected in October 2010 Ciudad Juárez does seem to have started turning around, but it is still an extremely violent city.

On Sunday, July 1, 2012 Mexican voters will go to the polls and elect a new president. In Mexico whichever candidate wins a simple plurality of the national vote is elected. Before the election of Vicente Fox of the PAN in 2000 Mexico had been ruled by a single party (the PRI) for over 70 years.