Beheadings, shootings, yet violent death rate dropping

MEXICO CITY - Decapitated bodies dumped on the streets, drug-war shootings and regular attacks on police have obscured a significant fact: a falling homicide rate means people in Mexico are less likely to die violently now than they were more than a decade ago.

Mexico City's murder rate today is about on par with Los Angeles and is less than a third of that for Washington, DC.

Yet many Americans are leery of visiting Mexico at all. Drug violence and the swine flu outbreak contributed to a 12.5 per cent decline in air travel to Mexico by United States citizens last year, says the US Department of Commerce.

Mexico, Colombia and Haiti are the only countries in the hemisphere subject to a US government advisory warning travellers about violence, even though murder rates in many Latin American countries are far higher.

Mexico's murder rate has fallen steadily from a high in 1997 of 17 in 100,000 people to 14 in 100,000 last year, a year marked by an unprecedented spate of drug slayings concentrated in a few states and cities, said Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna.

The national rate hit a low of 10 in 100,000 people in 2007, said government figures compiled by the independent Citizens' Institute for Crime Studies.

By comparison, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have murder rates of between 40 and 60 in 100,000 people, government statistics show. Colombia was close behind with a rate of 33 in 2008.

Brazil's was 24 in 2006, the last year when national figures were available. Mexico City's rate was about 9 in 100,000 in 2008, while Washington DC was more than 30 that year.

"In terms of security, we are like those women who aren't overweight but when they look in the mirror, they think they're fat," said Luis de la Barreda, director of the Citizens' Institute.

"We are an unsafe country, but we think we are much more unsafe than we really are."

Of course, drug violence has turned some places in Mexico, including the US border region and some parts of the Pacific coast, into near-war zones since President Felipe Calderon intensified the war against cartels with a huge troop deployment in 2006.

That has made Ciudad Juarez among the most dangerous cities in the world.

"The violence, homicides and cruel and inhuman assassinations, which fill the pages of our media, make us feel there has been much more violence since this war against drug trafficking," said Bishop Miguel Alba Diaz of La Paz, a holiday city at the tip of the Baja California peninsula.

In just one week in December, the severed heads of six police investigators were dumped in a public plaza, kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva died in a two-hour shootout with troops at a luxury apartment complex in a resort city and gunmen slaughtered the family of the only marine killed in that battle.

In the new year, it's become even more grotesque. Three weeks ago, a victim's face was peeled from his skull and sewn on to a soccer ball. Days later, the remains of 41-year-old former police officer were put into two separate ice chests.

Authorities say the vast majority of victims are drug suspects, but bystanders sometimes get caught in the crossfire.

Mexico has the same problems with corrupt police, gang violence and poverty as other Latin American countries with higher homicide rates.

Experts say while drug violence is up, land disputes have eased. Many farmers have migrated to the cities or abroad and the Government has pushed to resolve the land disputes.

During the height of the Zapatista uprising in the mid-1990s - a rebellion fuelled by land conflicts - southern Chiapas state had a murder rate of nearly 40 in 100,000 people with 1000 homicides a year.

By 2008, that fell to eight in 100,000 people with 364 killings.

De la Barreda attributes the downward trend to an improved quality of life. More Mexicans have joined the ranks of the middle class in the past two decades, and education levels and life expectancy have also risen.

Drug violence has encroached on the resort towns of Zihuatanejo, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta and Cancun. The millions of foreign tourists who visit each year are almost never targeted, but a handful have been caught in the crossfire.

In 2007, two Canadians were grazed by bullets when someone fired into a hotel lobby in Acapulco. In January, a Canadian couple was shot and wounded in a robbery attempt just outside Zihuatanejo.

The US State Department travel alert says dozens of US citizens living in Mexico have been kidnapped over the years, and warns Americans against travelling to the states of Chihuahua and Michoacan.

Chihuahua, home to Ciudad Juarez, had a horrifying homicide rate of 173 per 100,000 in the city of 1.3 million, or more than 2500 murders last year.

Michoacan is widely known as the place where five heads rolled across a dance floor. Drug violence is blamed for many of the state's 660 killings last year.

But in many parts of Mexico, villages are more tranquil than ever.

* In the latest development, US officials say Mexican authorities have arrested two reputed leaders of a drug cartel that has terrorised the border city of Tijuana.

US Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman Amy Roderick says Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental were arrested in La Paz.

That town at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula is where the cartel's alleged leader, Teodoro Garcia Simental, was captured last month.

The two men reported arrested today were the cartel leader's top lieutenants and their arrests would be a severe blow to the gang, leaving it apparently leaderless.

No further details were immediately available on the arrests.

- AP