The Mexican government is reporting that 80% of the 28,000 drug killings from 2006 through July 31 have been concentrated in just 6% of the country’s 2,456 municipalities. These revelations constitute the first official mapping of Mexico’s drug warn regarding the distribution of drug violence in Mexico. Revealing previously classified official statistics on the violence, Alejandro Poire, the technical secretary of the National Public Security Council, indicated that there currently are seven violent regional conflicts among Mexican drug cartels, with 22,701 officially documented killings concentrated in just 162 municipalities located in major drug-trafficking areas.
Authorities noted that the largest share of this violence is attributable to conflicts associated with the so-called Sinaloa cartel. Currently, 8,236 homicides —more than a third of killings in the 162 municipalities— are attributable to that organization’s conflict with the so-called Juárez cartel, as the two groups fight for control of the lucrative trafficking corridor centered in Ciudad Juarez, located across the border from the U.S. city of El Paso, Texas.
They also noted that nearly a third of the killings (8,344) were concentrated in the state of Chihuahua especially its largest city, Ciudad Juarez followed by Sinaloa that had 3,790 killings. Authorities indicated that they were unable to determine the cause of a very small proportion —just 476, or two percent— of the 22,701 drug related killings analyzed in their report.
