Replies

Amlo might be fiddling the numbers. No body, no crime. Would be amusing, but unsurprising if the guy took a direct hand, by having a goon squad from among the cartels who have him on payroll cremate or bury remains from homicide scenes, so as to keep the stats in the capital pristine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/mexico-city-murder-rate-dropped-disappeared-number-rises
[But one data point complicates the picture: the ever-growing number of disappeared people in the capital. Each year hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand, go missing.

This has spurred investigators to take a closer look at the city’s success story.

“I think it’s quite probable that lots of the people who disappeared have in reality been murdered,” said Elena Azaola, an academic and member of the citizen council for the Search Commission in Mexico City. “And these homicides are not being counted.”

Azaola’s research underlines that the official data on homicides and disappearances is so fragmented and inconsistent that it is hard to draw any conclusions with confidence.

Mexico’s forensic service, its National Geography and Statistics Institute and the National Public Security System each compile their own homicide tallies – and most years those totals differ by hundreds.

Meanwhile, every year since 2016, the cause of between 25 and 47% of violent deaths has not been identified, making it difficult to know if they were homicides, suicides or accidents. This proportion is far higher in Mexico City than anywhere else in the country, for reasons that are unclear.]

Amlo is also working the reduce the missing people statistics, by declaring that people who are still missing are no longer missing. Amlo being on the cartel payroll is no mere rumor:

https://www.propublica.org/article/mexican-president-lopez-obrador-called-our-story-slander-and-our-reporter-a-pawn-here-are-some-facts
[To recap: Our story, which was based on interviews with current and former officials and a review of government documents, disclosed the existence of a previously secret investigation by the DEA into reported donations to López Obrador’s 2006 presidential campaign by traffickers working with the so-called Sinaloa Cartel.

The case began when a Mexican drug lawyer working as an informant for the DEA reported in 2010 that he had participated in the meeting at which the donations were first negotiated, officials said. He reported having given most of the agreed-on funds to an operative in López Obrador’s 2006 campaign, Mauricio Soto Caballero. The informant then enticed Soto to come in on a small-time cocaine deal. DEA agents arrested Soto in McAllen, Texas, and he agreed to work undercover for the Americans to stay out of federal prison.

Ultimately, three other witnesses, including Soto, confirmed the drug lawyer’s account to the DEA, officials said. To gather more evidence for a possible corruption case, the DEA had Soto surreptitiously record two conversations with the man to whom he said he had given most of the traffickers’ money, Nicolás Mollinedo Bastar, one of López Obrador’s closest aides.

Justice Department prosecutors reviewed the tapes and found them incriminating but not decisive, people familiar with the case said. DEA agents wanted to go forward with a more elaborate sting operation inside Mexico, but DOJ officials rejected that plan in late 2011, in part over concerns that even a successful prosecution would be viewed by Mexicans as egregious American meddling in their politics.]