Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum. Photo: Google

By KELIN DILLON

While the national figures of Mexico’s enduring homicide problem have made headlines across the week of May 23, the spotlight has now been transfixed at the local level as new data reveals that the Mexico City government has broken homicide records underneath the administration of Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.

Though Sheinbaum has made a recent show of Mexico City’s ramped-up force, information from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP) reveals that homicides have reached historic levels in the capital city since Sheinbaum entered office in 2018 when compared to the three administrations before her.

According to the SESNSP, the Sheinbaum administration has been in office for 4,036 intentional homicides and femicides. Under predecessors Miguel Ángel Mancera and fellow National Regeneration Movement (Morena) members Marcelo Ebrard and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), there were 2,717, 2,509 and 2,580 respective intentional homicides.

The most prevalent time for homicides in Mexico City under Sheinbaum was at the start of 2019, where there were 5.1 homicides per day; since then, the number has reduced to 1.9 murders per day in 2022.

In a press conference on Tuesday, May 17, Sheinbaum said that there were 5.4 murders per 100,000 citizens in Mexico City; however, according to math done by Mexican daily newspaper Reforma, a more accurate statistic taking annual projection into account says that the true rate of intentional homicides in Mexico City is 7.5 intentional homicides per 100,000 residents.