The typical number of per-day murders each month in Mexico has dropped by thirty-seven percent since President Claudia Sheinbaum assumed power, according to recent government data. However, security analysts have cautioned that murder figures may not signal improved national stability.
There was an average of close to 55 killings a day in the month of November as opposed to roughly 87 when Claudia Sheinbaum assumed the leadership in September of last year. This information was shared by the director of the country’s national public security agency, Marcela Figueroa Franco, during the president’s regular press briefing on Tuesday.
“The result in killings that we have seen in these months is remarkably important,” Sheinbaum said, noting that last month the least number of homicides were registered for any November in the past 10 years.
Fierce organized crime internal conflicts, alongside the administration's heavily military campaigns to confront the drug gangs, have led to Mexico’s homicide numbers soar in recent times. The rate peaked at a peak of 36,773 killings in 2020, per the country’s national statistics agency.
That gave Mexico a homicide rate over four times higher than the United States. However, homicides have been on the decline, dropping to 33,550 last year. Sheinbaum has linked her public safety plan for an seemingly more pronounced reduction in homicides this year.
At a media briefing in August, the President said: “We have a plan, we have tracking of the strategy, and we have specific tracking municipality by municipality in some cases. The approach is effective. And we have to persist at it every day.”
The main pillars of Sheinbaum’s security plan involve:
But, public safety researchers cautioned that relying on murder data to draw a conclusion of pacification was flawed. This is notably true in light of the uptick in other criminal activities such as abductions.
“This would be positive information if this was a reduction, but I think we can’t just concentrate on the murder data and think: ‘Oh well, great,’” commented Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, an authority on Mexico's criminal organizations. “I would be cautiously hopeful.”
As reported by the public policy analysis thinktank Mexico Evalúa, homicides overall fell by over 20% in the initial 10 months of this year versus the same timeframe last year. However, disappearances have gone up by 15% and in certain regions have surged by as much as 200%.
“Data on homicides is not valid for gauging the situation of public insecurity,” said Armando Vargas, a safety expert at Mexico Evalúa. “First, we have law enforcement and prosecutors who lack the ability or the desire to accurately recognize and categorize remains. Second, organised [criminals] … have the means to conceal violence through disappearances.”
Vargas noted that using month-to-month means of everyday killings was additionally problematic because it might obscure days when there were particularly elevated levels of killings.
“Using the daily average renders high peaks of violent crime invisible,” he said.
Where the government can cite the success of its safety strategy is on detentions and confiscations. Close to 40,000 individuals were apprehended between last October and November 2025 for major offenses, per official figures. More than 20,000 guns were confiscated and 311 tons of drugs confiscated.
“Trump cannot accuse President Sheinbaum of inaction, because actually she is doing a lot with these thousands of detentions, thousands of seizures, and all the operational degrading of organised crime. It’s highly politically beneficial,” commented Vargas.
Yet notwithstanding these measures, Mexico is still beset by severe violence, with a number of states in the grip of cartel-fueled conflict. Last month there was a prominent murder of a popular local official in the state of Michoacan, among 10 mayors murdered in the past year.
A short time later, many thousands of protesters took to the streets in the capital and throughout the country to express their frustration at graft and cartel violence.
“The government shares [data] in a way to build a picture of security. From a political standpoint it’s very effective, from a social perspective it’s extremely problematic,” Vargas said.
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