One possibility as to why it is so hard to get information and/or statistics from the Mexican government is that they are not flattering. A recent example of this concerns the rate of homicides in relation to Calderón's war on drugs. The news all around Mexico, aside from Michelle Obama's visit, is the confidential report that was leaked to Associated Press. The government's figures provide a far more harsher picture of the bloodletting that plagues Mexico than we had supposed. Most sources (including myself) rely on the daily counts of narco-killings that are tabulated by such newspapers as "Reforma" or "El Universal" and the number of narco-deaths since the start of this war is often quoted from 18,000 to 19,000. And, as you can see in my previous post, I had a count of 2,898 deaths by April 12th as a total for 2010.
These are not accurate, for, according to the leaked report, 22,743 people have been killed since Calderón's initiative in 2007 (2,837 in 2007, 6844 in 2008 and 9635 in 2009)
Further, according to the leaked government document 3,365 people have been killed in the months of January, February and March of this year (an average of close to 38 per day). Thus, my count for the first 3 months was around 600 bodies short, and going with an average of 38 killings a day, the present total for 2010 is 3,932.
Good to hear the truth, although one wonders how many people are not counted because they've gone missing.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting note is in my news reader that fetches headline, I saw that same article was published to Yahoo's AP feed 2010-04-13
Mexico: drug violence has killed 22,700 since 2006
Posted to Top Stories 2010-04-13 at 7:17 PM by
AP - More than 22,700 people have been killed in Mexico's drug war since a U.S.-backed military crackdown on cartels began more than three years ago, according to a government report.
But when I finally clicked the link today to see the story, it brought me to that page, but the story was completely different "2 soldiers, 2 gunmen killed in north Mexico clash" was the headline and it was dated the 14th. Hm… smells fishy.
However, a search on Google using the original headline shows not every outlet has yanked it down.
Anyway reminds me of a Stevie Wonder song I recently put up some lyrics to: Powers keep on lying, while your people keep on dying, world keeps on turning, 'cause it won't be too long…
Stay safe Walter!