During Mother’s Day, the Ministry of Interior published the official murder figures for the first five months of the current administration. According to the report, from December 2012 to April 2013 there have been 5,296 killings related to organized crime, which represents an 18% decrease from the figures of the last five months of the previous administration. This is one of the indexes that Peña Nieto’s government intends to use in order to differentiate itself from its predecessor, highlighting past mistakes rather than showing current successes or future strategies. Regardless of the official rhetoric, what can we infer from these numbers?
Beyond the official rhetoric regarding the so-called success of the “interstate coordination” and “crime prevention”, the lack of knowledge of the government’s security strategy or how these numbers have been achieved still remains. It is likely that the decision on announcing the figure is related to the fact that the government finally found favorable data to brag about. Given that the numbers are correct, there is no certainty on the causality of the aforementioned decrease and it’s daring (though understandable) that the Federal government is linking that drop to a yet unknown (or more likely, inexistent) strategy. Now, maybe there is a strategy: to continue the work of the previous government, just with a diminished role from the President, less setups and less fuss. If that is the case, perhaps it may not be as profitable as imagined to disseminate it since it would imply the acknowledgement that Calderón’s government did something right, which certainly does not subscribe to the official communication strategy.
For the government, on the other hand, to continue playing around with figures which do not say too much equals to “tying a rope around its neck”. It should not be ignored that just the murder data is not representative of the complex criminal situation that Mexico is going through. If killings decrease, this does not necessarily mean that every act of criminality is being reduced, especially considering serious offences such as kidnapping and extortion. Another point to be considered is that the comparison with the previous government is done in the past months of the previous government against this administration’s first ones; these are not comparable periods since, according to statistics, the later half of the year is usually more violent than the first one. In short, it is irresponsible to limit the security issue to only the murder rate. If there isn’t a different security strategy than the one used by the previous administration, results will remain the same: reconstruction of social fabric, crime prevention, efficient law enforcement and violence reduction in real terms will keep on being promises without any solid basis. Another hypothesis could be envisaged: at last, the effect of violence reduction is being felt, as the previous government claimed it would happen. Only time will tell.
The comment stage regarding the “mess” inherited from the former administration is reaching its limits and expiry date. The current government will have increased pressure on facing hard numbers and being responsible of it as a source to evaluate its overall performance. The President has put has set a target date of one year to change the situation; when this “grace period” reaches its end, the effectiveness on blaming his predecessors will also expire. Trying to hide the images and news on violent incidents all across Mexico is also a futile strategy. So far, the government has been successful in not highlighting security issues. However, those same numbers might destroy this illusion in the near future. If the government wished to mitigate that effect using the obsolete manipulation of numbers it is a strategy that is most certainly destined to fail.
CIDAC
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