Measuring the problem
The Mexican government has rolled out a new way of reporting on the death toll in the war on and between drug cartels. Does it better display the extent of the problem faced by the government? Does it indicate whether or not the government can deal with the problem?Crunching numbers in Mexico's drug conflict
The launch this week of a comprehensive official database of drug-related killings around Mexico provides a new insight into the complexity of the conflict with criminal groups that traffic drugs into the United States.
Until now, the public relied mostly on tallies elaborated by national media outlets or on sporadic - and sometimes confusing - figures released by different government institutions.
Many in Mexico have therefore welcomed the publication of a unified set of data that for the first time includes not only fallen gang members, but also police, soldiers and innocent civilians killed in the fight against the cartels.
However, that positive development has been overshadowed by the grim scenario that the figures depict - and some complain that they only show one, even if the most tragic, aspect of the conflict…
Mexican officials have repeatedly said that the overall per capita murder rate in Mexico (including those not related to the drugs conflict) is lower than rates in other Latin American countries like Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.
But the newly-released statistics paint a complex security scenario in some parts of Mexico…
But as the country gears up for a presidential election next year, the drugs conflict seems set to dominate the political agenda…
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Labels: corruption, Mexico
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:15 AM
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