“Stickers declaring that ‘#ElBuenoEsHarfuch’ (‘Harfuch is the one’) still adorn car windows in Mexico City. The slogan dates from Omar García Harfuch’s mayoral bid in 2023. During his four-year stint as the city’s security chief under then-mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, the murder rate fell by about 40%, one of the biggest drops in the country. This made him wildly popular. He won Morena’s nomination in a landslide, then stood aside for the female runner-up so the party could meet its gender quotas. Instead he followed Ms Sheinbaum to the National Palace in October 2024 as her security minister, to apply his intelligence-led approach to tackling Mexico’s drug gangs on a national scale. Many Mexicans believe he is their best hope of stemming the violence that has plagued their country for years.

Early evidence suggests they are right. Ms Sheinbaum’s government says Mexico’s murder rate has come down by 32% in the year since she took office. Analysis by The Economist confirms that the rate has fallen, though by a significantly smaller margin, 14%. Counting homicides alone misses an important part of the picture, namely the thousands of people who disappear in Mexico every year, many of whom are killed and buried in unmarked graves. A broader view of deadly crime that includes manslaughter, femicide and two-thirds of disappearances (the data for disappearances is imperfect), shows a more modest decline of 6% (see chart). Still, Mexico is on track for about 24,300 murders this year, horribly high, but well below the recent annual average of slightly over 30,000. Ms Sheinbaum is the first Mexican leader in years to push violent crime in the right direction.”

From The Economist.