An interactive guide to drug crime in Mexico

FOR the first time in Mexico's six-year war on organised crime, the level of violence seems to have stabilised. Last year saw about 12,400 murders linked to gangs, only slightly more than the 11,600 recorded in the previous year. That is still double the number in 2008. But there are tentative hopes that the violence may have peaked: so far, 2012 has seen 22% fewer gangland "executions" than in the same period last year. The improving national picture masks sharply different regional trends. Last year Chihuahua, long the most violent state in Mexico, has seen a 46% drop in the number of mafia-linked killings. May of this year saw the fewest murders in Ciudad Juárez for 49 months, according to El Diario, a local newspaper. Violence has also dropped sharply in the neighbouring states of Baja California, Durango and Sinaloa.

But further east along the United States border, mafia hits have risen sharply in the state of Coahuila. On May 13th about 49 bodies were dumped on a roadside near Monterrey, in Nuevo León (the figure was imprecise because the victims had been dismembered). The ebb and flow of violence reflects the changing fortunes of Mexico's criminal gangs. The north-west has quietened down because the Sinaloa mob has beaten its rivals into near-submission in cities such as Juárez and Tijuana. Meanwhile in the north-east, Sinaloa and its allies in the Gulf “cartel” are bidding to take over turf controlled by the Zetas, with gruesome consequences.

Our maps above (updated November 22nd 2012) detail Mexico's drug-related murder tallies per state, "cartel" controlled areas, and trafficking routes by drug type.


MORE MEXICAN INTERACTIVES: Track the fate of Mexico's drug bosses with our "most-wanted" timeline gallery, and compare the murder rate and body count of each state against entire countries on our equivalents map.