La tendencia de los homicidios en México durante la pandemia por COVID-19
Programa de Política de Drogas — Policy Brief
Homicide Trends in Mexico During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Antonio Ruiz “El Corcito” — Carrera de Bicicletas (1938) Museo de Arte Moderno · Mexico City A jubilant street race through a Mexican town — public life in full motion, flags flying, crowds perched in trees. The same streets where, a generation later, daily life would be reshaped by pandemic and violence.
When COVID-19 reached Mexico in March 2020, a plausible hypothesis circulated across criminology and public health: lockdowns would reduce homicides. Less movement, fewer encounters, thinner street economies — the logic seemed sound. This brief tests that hypothesis against monthly homicide data from January 2019 through April 2021. The answer is unambiguous: Mexico’s lethal violence did not pause for the pandemic.
The Problem
Mexico entered the pandemic already in a historic homicide surge. The year 2019 had closed with 33,176 homicides — the highest absolute count since 1998 and a rate of 27.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. When federal and state governments imposed mobility restrictions in March–April 2020, observers debated whether the disruption to daily life would incidentally suppress violence.
The public health stakes were double. Mexico faced two simultaneous crises: a pandemic killing thousands through respiratory disease, and a homicide crisis that had already been identified as a leading cause of death for men in multiple age groups — outpacing cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Understanding whether these two crises would interact was not an academic question. Resources, police deployment, and institutional attention were all being reallocated. If violence responded to pandemic conditions, that had policy implications. If it did not, that was equally important to document.
The Approach
We assembled a monthly homicide series from official administrative mortality statistics spanning January 2019 through April 2021 — a window capturing 14 months of pre-pandemic baseline and 13 months of pandemic conditions. Data were drawn from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), the same source used in the companion two-decade brief, standardized by population to produce monthly rates per 100,000 at the national level and for each of Mexico’s 32 federal entities.
The analytical strategy centers on longitudinal models testing for structural breaks in the homicide series at the onset of pandemic mobility restrictions (March 2020). The models test whether the rate of change in monthly homicides shifted significantly after restrictions were imposed, and separately assess whether there is a statistical association between monthly COVID-19 case counts and monthly homicide rates — at the national level and state by state.
What We Found
The headline finding is clear: the average monthly homicide rate showed no statistically significant change during the pandemic. The trend that had been underway before March 2020 continued through it — neither accelerating nor decelerating in response to lockdowns, mobility restrictions, or the unprecedented social disruption of the COVID-19 emergency.
A secondary test found no significant relationship between COVID-19 case rates and homicide rates at the national level. As infections rose and fell in waves, homicide moved independently. The two crises coexisted without measurable statistical interaction.
State-level patterns introduced some nuance. Certain states showed localized fluctuations that deviated from the national null result — but no consistent direction emerged, and the variation did not overturn the aggregate finding.
Why It Matters
The “silver lining” hypothesis — that pandemic restrictions would incidentally suppress violence — was false for Mexico. Lethal violence in Mexico is structurally embedded in ways that a public health emergency cannot interrupt. Criminal organizations, territorial disputes, and the institutional conditions that sustain impunity did not pause because streets emptied. The finding matters for policy: resources reallocated away from violence prevention during the pandemic were not compensated for by any spontaneous reduction in homicide. And it matters for modeling: analysts and policymakers cannot assume that extraordinary social disruptions will produce predictable short-term reductions in lethal crime.
Citation
Peralta, Y., Roa, J., & Alarid-Escudero, A. (2021). La tendencia de los homicidios en México durante la pandemia por COVID-19. Programa de Política de Drogas (CIDE-PPD), Proyecto de Análisis de Decisiones en Contextos Inciertos (PADeCI).