Tracking drug-related executions in Mexico (they’re spiking)

We are used to fatality counts from Iraq and Afghanistan stoking our worries here in the United States. In Mexico, they have their own war, inside the country’s borders, with a body count that has reached 800 deaths a month. Alejandro Schtulmann at the Latin America EconoMonitor published an interesting graph on the incidences of drug related executions (abbreviated as DREs– it’s sad to think these murders happen often enough to earn a statistics-friendly abbreviation) in Mexico.

The graph shows 2009 as by far the deadliest year in Mexican drug violence, per this indicator, and also tells us that the last couple of months have brought an uptick in the number of killings. Schtulmann worries the Mexican government isn’t really attacking the drug cartels where it really hurts– their money piles, i.e. financial operations. Schtulmann is head of Mexico City-based EMPRA (Emering Markets Political Risk Analysis). His overall conclusions, reproduced below, are chilling:

Considering the trends observed in recent months, we foresee DREs staying at very high levels, potentially surpassing the 800 mark before the year ends, and certainly surpassing this mark in the first quarter of 2010. Overall, we don’t see violence descending throughout 2010. The latter will be a topic of an upcoming report.

For the Mexican government, the sustained escalation of violence observed during the second half of 2009, along with the increased cruelty of cartels, poses a very serious challenge regarding the effectiveness of its strategy. As we have suggested before, as long as the current strategy of confrontation is not accompanied by the necessary financial intelligence that allows authorities to strip cartels of their financial assets, the ongoing trends of violence are poised to continue.

Finally, just as it happened during the first months of 2009, the persistence of high levels of violence might catapult the Calderon Administration in the coming months into a field of massive criticism—sending waves of alarm around the world about the security situation in the country. Yet, this time around, such criticism would be more justified.