Homicides in Mexico, a country shaken for years by acts of violence linked to organized crime, halved between September 2024 and June 2026, President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Tuesday.
“Between September 2024 and June 2026, the reduction in intentional homicides is 48%,” Ms. Sheinbaum said during her daily press conference.
Which “represents lives saved, lives that were not lost”, welcomed the Mexican leader.
Mexico ended 2024 with a rate of 25.6 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the official statistics body Inegi, which reported a rate of 11.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in the first half of 2025.
The head of state affirmed that this drop was the result of her security strategy, which, she explained, is based on an increased use of intelligence and coordination with the prosecutors of regional states, on social programs aimed at reducing poverty indices, as well as on the national guard, a security force made up of military personnel.
Experts, however, have expressed skepticism about these reports.
They argue that this decline is also explained by the creation of categories such as “death of undetermined origin”, in which many deaths are classified.
The government also reported a rise in drug seizures and arrests, amid pressure from Donald Trump’s administration to curb narcotics trafficking into the United States, particularly the deadly drug fentanyl.
The American president threatened to intervene militarily on Mexican territory to curb drug cartels, a strategy that Ms. Sheinbaum repeatedly rejected, arguing that his government was banking instead on collaboration with the United States.
