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Mexico denies it’s world’s second-deadliest country

Image: Business Insider

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) says that “conflicts in Mexico and Central America” are deadlier than the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Drudge tweeted about it,

Predictably, the Mexican government on Wednesday rejected the study as “unfounded and irresponsible,” and a senior government official who preferred to remain anonymous said that the study’s

conclusions handed “false arguments” to Mr. Trump to criticize Mexico at a time of tense relations between the two countries.

The irony-poor Interior Ministry also put out a statement claiming

that the homicide rate remains low compared to other countries in the region such as Venezuela and Brazil.

As if.

But facts are a hard thing (emphasis added),

security remains a serious problem in Mexico. An estimated 10,000 people have died each year on average in crimes related to drug gangs since the government began deploying the armed forces to cartel hot spots in late 2006, given the ineffectiveness of local police forces that are often incompetent or corrupt, according to security expert Alejandro Hope. Another 30,000 people are missing, most of them presumed to be victims of the cartels.

Mexico’s homicide rate increased in 2015 and 2016 after three years of declines. Around 21,000 people were murdered last year, a 22% increase from 2015, according to preliminary figures from the Interior Ministry. Experts expect homicides could rise to more than 22,000 in 2017, which would be the highest since 2011 if the trend from the first three months of the year continues.

Then there is the issue of corruption, where Mexico ranks as one of the more corrupt (123 out of 176 countries) nations in the world .

Meanwhile, over in Tamaulipas, cartel factions fight it out while the governors are on the lam.

InSight Crime has news on organized crime in Mexico.

UPDATE
Linked to by Silvio Canto. Thank you!

We talked about this in today’s podcast,

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