MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Mexican government boasted Thursday of a sharp decline in the homicide rate, presenting the figures as evidence that its security strategy is working, while analysts cautioned that the figures may not fully reflect the level of violence in the country.
During President Claudia Sheinbaum's daily news conference, officials said Mexico recorded 17.5 murders per 100,000 residents in 2025, the lowest rate since 2016.
By comparison, in 2018, the homicide rate reached its highest level in two decades: 29 murders per 100,000 people.
Sheinbaum, of the left-wing Morena party, said murder rates fell by 40% between September 2024 (a month before she took office) and December 2025.
“That means 34 fewer murders each day, which is the lowest number since 2016,” Sheinbaum said.
She attributed the decline to a strategy based on coordination between security forces, justice agencies, prosecutors and state governors.
However, Mexico's Secretariat of Public Security has not yet released data on all homicides for 2025, nor has the Institute of Statistics, which publishes data annually that is considered more reliable because it is based on death certificates but is released with a month-long delay.
Mexico's homicide rate began to rise sharply in 2006 following the launch of a military campaign against drug cartels led by then-president Felipe Calderon of the conservative PAN party.
Since then, the killings have continued to rise and peaked under the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who ruled the country from 2018 to 2024 and supported Sheinbaum's candidacy.
Since taking office on October 1, 2024, Sheinbaum has tightened the government's security approach amid pressure from the United States, abandoning López Obrador's “hugs, not bullets” policy and prioritizing intelligence work and interagency coordination.
Lisa Sánchez, director of the non-governmental organization Mexico United Against Crime, said homicide rates had fallen but cautioned that not all the necessary data was available to make meaningful comparisons. “We don’t know how they are collected and processed,” she said.
Official numbers of missing people continue to rise, reaching more than 133,000. New secret graves are constantly being found in different parts of the country.
Sanchez said some homicides may be undercounted because some missing people may be dead or because some violent deaths are reported under other categories, such as accidents rather than homicides.
Security analyst David Saucedo said researchers are widely discussing other alternative explanations. Violence may be decreasing in some areas as criminal gangs have tightened their control, reducing the number of open conflicts after eliminating rivals, he said.
Despite reports of a decline in organized crime-related violence, it remains a reality in several states, including Sinaloa, Michoacan, Jalisco and Guanajuato, where numerous drug cartels operate.
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AP journalist Martin Silva Rey contributed to this report.
