For the first time in 15 years, intentional homicides will be around 20,000. It will be the third time that the figure is less than 21,000. In 2010, under Felipe Calderón’s government, the country recorded 20,143 murders and in 2016, under Enrique Peña Nieto, there were 20,605.
In a Zócalo with around 600,000 Mexicans where on December 6 she celebrated seven years since the beginning of the calls for the Fourth Transformation, the president highlighted the reduction of violence as an achievement.
“In the Calderón and Peña period, intentional homicides in Mexico rose 250%. From 2018 to date, homicides have been reduced by 34%,” he said.
(Photo: Facebook Government of Mexico.)
However, experts warn that behind the accelerated reduction in homicide figures, there may be a reclassification of other crimes such as intentional homicides and disappearances.
“There is a very important circumstance that is the issue of the reclassification of homicides, because many of these are going to be classified as missing or, failing that, they are going to other crimes,” says Alberto Guerrero, public security expert.
“This reduction that the Federal Government boasts so much about continues to be a make-up of figures for a system that needs both statistical and functional re-engineering”
Alberto Guerrero, security expert.
While homicides decrease, other crimes increase
One of the areas in which intentional homicides can be classified is in the category of negligent homicides, those deaths that occur without intention. Starting in 2021, this crime is on the rise and without ending 2025, this crime is at the levels of all of 2018.
Another of the classifications that has had the most increase in the last year is the so-called “Other crimes that violate personal freedom”, which for the first time, even before the end of the year, surpassed the 20,000 barrier.
The disappearances of persons have also increased in recent years. While in the first full year of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 25,032 disappearances were recorded, 2025, still unfinished, registers 34,005 disappearances.
Miguel Garza, executive director of the Institute for Security and Democracy (INSYDE), considers that it is necessary to review that the Prosecutor’s Offices classify intentional homicides accordingly and not reclassify them to report good figures.
“The figures of what is going down must be analyzed, the explanation of the prosecutor’s offices in the classification of intentional homicide so that a perverse incentive is not incurred that ‘we are going to hide a complaint and move the figures so that the crime goes down, right?’. That should not happen. And one way is to contrast it with the victimization survey where the scenario is not so flattering, so positive, because the victims continue to increase,” he says.
