“We are a formal company and we are surprised that this atrocity has been committed against our driver,” says Idilio Astocondor, general manager of the transport company. Estunsac. on Wednesday Abraham Jesus Quintanilla Chuquillanquia responsible driver and exemplary father, was murdered while refueling the bus, at a tap in Carabayllo.
“Since July of last year we did not receive threats. Each unit contributed around S/10, which represented almost S/300 daily, a sum that was given to avoid reprisals,” he says. “We have complied and now they are being cruel to our driver in this way, it is not fair,” he adds with a tone of concern.
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POLITICAL RETALIATION AND ELECTIONS | WITHOUT SCRIPT WITH ROSA MARÍA PALACIOS
Before, on the night of January 24, Metropolitan Lima had been left under a scene known and feared. While the PNP commander general, Oscar Arriolamaintained that 2026 was not the beginning of the bloodiest year and that there was a significant decrease in homicidesthe city experienced a night of terror that day: two Venezuelans and a Peruvian were murdered during a soccer match, in Saint Louis.
The contradiction between the story that the government is trying to establish and the reality that is experienced in the neighborhoods once again puts tension in the public debate. The authorities send a political message about the distance between official promises and citizen perception.
Now, the events on the streets seem to reinforce that warning: the violence does not disappear; It mutates, regroups and explodes again where the State fails to stabilize an effective presence.
Another serious episode occurred in the early hours of January 5 when the violence once again pierced the margins of crime and reached two minors aged 15 and 17 who were murdered in San Juan de Lurigancho. “I work as a stevedore and my nephew helped me,” recalls the minor’s uncle, a Venezuelan who has lived in Lima for 3 years.
According to official data from Sinadef, in 2025, 88 teenagers murdered of which 67 (76%) were caused by a firearm projectile. In January of this year already 9 minors have been victimized.
The escalation of violence is not limited to these episodes. The sequence not only adds statistics, but confirms persistence.
Figures are alarming
The data analyst, Juan Carbajalmaintains that the homicides in the month of January exceeded the record of November 2025 and were even on the way to surpassing that of December and that if the trend continues it would end up exceeding the 200 crimes recorded in September and October respectively, according to the Police Complaint System (Sidpol).
The specialist affirms that from January 1 to 29, 190 homicides with a daily average of 6.8. In December 2025 there were 196 crimes and in November 179, while in September there were 208 and in October 212 homicides.
According to Sinadef, so far in the president’s government José Jerí have been accounted for 607 homicides (until last Thursday).
For his part, PNP General Óscar Arriola stated that unlike public perception, the indicators do not show that 2026 will be the beginning of a more violent period. “We realize that from January 1 to January 29 there have been 190 homicides,” he said.
This figure – he added – represents a variation compared to the 214 cases reported in the same period of 2025. In previous years, the statistics marked 212 deaths in the year 2024 and a total of 232 cases during 2023. The high command explained that “this is a dynamic that fluctuates every day and may vary tomorrow.”
Recent events, however, force us to ask if this diagnosis expresses real progress in terms of security or if it responds, above all, to a political need to sustain a positive narrative in the face of an exhausted society and a government that is going through internal tensions.
While the government tries to establish that a different stage is beginning, the city continues writing a chronicle that does not allow hasty celebrations. Violence does not recede with institutional declarations, and citizens do not find relief in speeches that clash with what is seen, heard and survived in the neighborhoods.
The immediate challenge is not to build an epic of accelerated pacification, but to recognize the complexity of the scenario, avoid official triumphalism and sustain security policies that do not depend solely on operations or fragmented responses to each crisis. The population has already learned that every time politics declares victory ahead of time, reality responds with a shootout.
Observatory figures
According to the Crime and Violence Observatory, in 2025 in eight of the 26 regions of the country (includes Callao) there were 1,532 homicides of the 1,826 documented. In other words, 84% of all victims died in those regions. Likewise, in 30 of the 196 provinces (the provinces of Lima and Callao are excluded) there have been 920 homicides of the 1,003 documented. That is, in those provinces the 91% of all victims, says the former Minister of the Interior, Carlos Basombrio.
Meanwhile, according to the study, in 20 of the 50 districts of Lima and Callao There have been 643 homicides of the 705 documented. In other words, 91% of all victims died in those districts.
In 50 of the 1,840 districts of the country (the 50 in Lima and Callao are excluded) there have been 630 homicides of the 1,106 documented. That is, 59% of all victims died in those districts.
The primacy of the firearm is overwhelmingwith 1,357 victims. The vast majority of these cases are linked to the actions of hitmen associated with extortion networks who, with very rare exceptions recorded in the chronology published on the Observatory’s website, use almost exclusively firearms.
Murders on the rise
The recent report of the Interinstitutional Statistical Committee on Crime (CEIC) admits that there is a dizzying rise in the homicide rate, which reaches 10.7 murders per hundred thousand inhabitants and could close at 11.2, that is, more than 4,000 murders during 2025, the highest rate of this century, according to the former vice minister of the Interior and president of CHS Alternativo, Ricardo Valdes.
According to the Crime and Violence Observatory (4th Report), the average profile of the victims is mainly a young man, between 18 and 30 years old, who worked as a transporter or worker of different specialties. They have been regulated and murdered in daily activities and belonged mostly to socioeconomic levels C and D. The 5th Report of the Observatory indicates that, in Lima and Callao, 20 districts concentrate 91% of crimes, while in the rest of the country only 50 districts concentrate 59% of murders. Some of these districts are associated with illicit economies. Profiling and georeferencing is essential to confront crime.
DATA
-8.7% It was the daily average of homicides recorded in August 2025, according to Sidpol. In that month there were 269 crimes.
-In 2025, 88 adolescents were murdered, of which 67 (76%) were caused by firearms.
