> All homicides in Mexico don't add up to 250k per decade. And at most half of the total is drug-related.
Homicides were 20,525 in 2015 by official government numbers [1]. Same in 2014 (see same report). Far more than half are crime related, which in Mexico often means it can be connected to drug trade or other activities of the cartels (extortion, people trafficking, etc). This has been a 10 years drug war, and official numbers under-report deaths dramatically, since executions by army and police are rarely counted as homicides and many other killings by drug cartels end up never being investigated and reported as "missing person" cases. This also mostly affects non-criminals, unlike in the US.
Say it is 20,000 a year for 10 years, which seems reasonable based on the figure in the second page of the report. That adds to 200,000 with only the official numbers, only counting homicides classified as such. Add all the missing person numbers (which sure, might partly count displaced migrants, but just as often means dead and thrown in a clandestine burial) and 250k sounds conservative.
I believe the US has a similar mortality rate of car crashes to Mexico, and I can tell you, having lived in both places, that the social side-effects are not even in the same ballpark. This is not a "terror attacks in developed nations kill a few hundred a year, cars kills tens of thousands, we over-react to the first!" kind of argument (which is an argument I agree with), this is a "we have a death toll from the war on drugs that puts us as the 4th bloodiest conflict currently ongoing in the world in absolute numbers[2]".
From that article: "Based on the survey results, INEGI estimated that in 10.7 million households in Mexico (33.9 percent of the total) at least one member of the household was the victim of crime in 2013, or some 22.5 million people -- a rate of 28,224 victims per 100,000 residents". I don't think you can quite understand what it is like to know that in a given year, almost 1/3rd of the population will have to deal directly with crime happening to them. Even if it is mostly theft or extortion, rather than outright murder.
Homicides were 20,525 in 2015 by official government numbers [1]. Same in 2014 (see same report). Far more than half are crime related, which in Mexico often means it can be connected to drug trade or other activities of the cartels (extortion, people trafficking, etc). This has been a 10 years drug war, and official numbers under-report deaths dramatically, since executions by army and police are rarely counted as homicides and many other killings by drug cartels end up never being investigated and reported as "missing person" cases. This also mostly affects non-criminals, unlike in the US.
Say it is 20,000 a year for 10 years, which seems reasonable based on the figure in the second page of the report. That adds to 200,000 with only the official numbers, only counting homicides classified as such. Add all the missing person numbers (which sure, might partly count displaced migrants, but just as often means dead and thrown in a clandestine burial) and 250k sounds conservative.
I believe the US has a similar mortality rate of car crashes to Mexico, and I can tell you, having lived in both places, that the social side-effects are not even in the same ballpark. This is not a "terror attacks in developed nations kill a few hundred a year, cars kills tens of thousands, we over-react to the first!" kind of argument (which is an argument I agree with), this is a "we have a death toll from the war on drugs that puts us as the 4th bloodiest conflict currently ongoing in the world in absolute numbers[2]".
See also: http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/6062-mexico-victimiz...
From that article: "Based on the survey results, INEGI estimated that in 10.7 million households in Mexico (33.9 percent of the total) at least one member of the household was the victim of crime in 2013, or some 22.5 million people -- a rate of 28,224 victims per 100,000 residents". I don't think you can quite understand what it is like to know that in a given year, almost 1/3rd of the population will have to deal directly with crime happening to them. Even if it is mostly theft or extortion, rather than outright murder.
[1] http://www.inegi.org.mx/saladeprensa/boletines/2016/especial...
[2] Granted, is over a bigger country, but I would still not wish it on anyone...