Police work at the scene of a car bomb in Culiacán, Sinaloa, December 3rd, 2024. Photo by José Betanzos Zárate (CUARTOSCURO)
Violence analysis organisation ACLED ranks the state only behind Palestine, Myanmar and Syria in its 2024 report
The level of violence in Mexico is no secret. Human rights organizations, activists and analysts warn about it, and it is evident every day in the death tolls reported in newspapers and newscasts. This year alone, Chiapas has become an occupied border, Sinaloa is the prey of a pitched battle between organized crime groups, and the killing of police officers and politicians is repeated in Guanajuato and Guerrero. Added to this is daily violence that, in total, leaves a trail of more than 30,000 murders a year. The country’s crisis is also evident outside its borders. The violence mapping and analysis organization ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data) has placed Mexico as the fourth country with the most extreme level of conflict in the world in its 2024 report, only behind Palestine, Myanmar and Syria.
“The most violent places are experiencing very different types of conflict: from bombing campaigns in the Middle East, collective violence in India or a civil war between cartels in Mexico,” says the international NGO, which, based in the United States, has been tracking violent political conflicts for ten years. At a global level, ACLED records recent “unprecedented” levels of violence with 200,000 violent incidents in 2024 (double those recorded in 2020 and 25% more than in 2023) and more than 230,000 deaths. This implies that one in eight people in the world is exposed to conflict and that 50 countries suffer from an extreme level of violence.
In its analysis of Mexico, the organization highlights that the country is the second most dangerous for civilians – after Palestine -, the fourth with the most fragmentation between violent groups and the seventh most deadly (the first is Ukraine). The organization cites as examples the drone attack by La Familia Michoacana that caused 30 deaths in Guerrero, the more than 4,000 forcibly displaced people in Tila (Chiapas), or the recurring kidnappings in Culiacán (Sinaloa). For its comparison with other countries, ACLED considers it a key aspect that in 2024 more than 500 violent events against political figures were recorded in Mexico. The June 2nd elections took place “in the midst of an escalation of violence throughout the country, with the electoral process itself marred by unprecedented levels of violence,” the report notes.
The non-profit organization, founded by Clonadh Raleigh, a professor of Political Violence at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom), explains that in addition to the already established hotspots, such as Guanajuato, Nuevo León or Michoacán, in 2024 “the conflict zones have expanded, with violence that exceeded the levels recorded in 2023 in at least 14 of the 32 states.” Behind this is the fragmentation of the Sinaloa Cartel and its struggle with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), in addition to the fight with other local criminal groups, which has led to an 18% increase in the fatality rate of clashes between armed groups in one year, according to ACLED figures.
“The Mexican case is very difficult to define, it is an extraordinary case. For international organizations that try to compare between countries, it is a methodological and theoretical challenge,” says security analyst Carlos Pérez Ricart. “The concept of cartel civil war is an almost failed attempt to describe a reality that does not occur anywhere else in the world, an attempt to bring theory closer to a complex reality.” However, Pérez Ricart highlights the serious project of ACLED and what this label means for Mexico: “The first thing is to recognize that we are in a country with zones of extreme conflict, where civilians are particularly threatened, and recognize that it is not new, that we have been in this reality for at least 15 years, that there is no point in hiding it, on the contrary, let us face the context, understanding the Mexican particularity. We must understand the flows of arms and drugs in which Mexico is immersed because it has the largest drug and arms market in the northern world. Let us recognize that it is transnational, that not everything is attributable to the Mexican political reality.”
In its analysis of Mexico, ACLED zooms in and highlights that “disagreements within the Sinaloa cartel, present in at least ten states, have altered criminal dynamics elsewhere and extended violence to Chihuahua and Sonora.” It highlights the “fragmentation of the criminal landscape” in Tabasco, where a split within the local group La Barredora in December 2023 has ignited disputes over control of migrant trafficking routes between local criminal groups and with the CJNG. It also highlights the latter’s territorial struggles with the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel for control of fuel theft in Guanajuato. It points to a possible alliance between the CJNG and Los Chapitos “to challenge Los Mayitos in Zacatecas”: “An alliance of this type could exacerbate violence in the territories internally disputed by the Sinaloa cartel and in the regions where the CJNG and the Sinaloa cartel are at odds.”
With these fissures present, the organization predicts that 2025 will see even higher levels of violence than this year. Partly due to the large election of judges that will take place in June and that “exposes candidates who may be more vulnerable to partisan or criminal influence, and encourages gangs to penetrate state institutions through selective attacks or co-optation.” “In the long term, the increase in criminal influence in judicial institutions could contribute to the increase in impunity,” the report says.
In addition, ACLED focuses on the new security strategy, led by President Claudia Sheinbaum and Secretary Omar García Harfuch, and on the tightening of US policy with the arrival of Donald Trump.
“Sheinbaum, who took office in October 2024, faces a reshaping gang landscape and potentially greater violence in the coming year,” it concludes.
Original article by Beatriz Guillén, El País, December 31, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.