Talk:Crime in Mexico

Merge into Mexico
Is there an intent to expand this article? If not, it should be merged into the Mexico article since half of its content is already there.

--Richard 19:00, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

yeah we should put this information in Mexico —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.38.69.172 (talk • contribs) 13:31, 18 May 2006 (UTC).


 * This proposal is moot since the article has expanded significantly since 17 May.
 * --Richard 15:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it is clearly preferable to leave the Latin-State crime articles alone for independent expansion and discussion, as an obvious grain-size of information management. Here is the reasoning:
 * The particular topic is of intense interest, in context of a study sparked by the "refugee" status claims of Latin American migration to the North, being exploited in the major media in advocacy.
 * However the article quality needs to be better - in particular there are many discrepancies in the statistics themselves, that should bind and unify rather than confuse, like a disproportionately high murder rate to other crimes especially vis-a-vis the U.S.; and the blank spots (marked "NA") of U.S. statistics that should obviously be available.
 * Xgenei (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:47, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Merge from Mexican Crime Rates
Information in Mexican Crime Rates has been merged into this article as proposed. I have not replaced that article with a redirect because it is up for deletion. Aguerriero ( talk ) 18:05, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Spanish version
A spanish translation of some of this article is now available on the spanish-language Wikipedia. If anyone is interested, check it out here. Aguerriero ( talk ) 20:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Another note - an editor on the spanish Wikipedia made some interesting comments about the neutrality of the article; it was great to get the perspective of a Mexican national. I will use his comments to improve the article.  Aguerriero  ( talk ) 15:52, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Critique from Mexican editor on Spanish Wikipedia translation of this article
Spanish version: La única fuente que cita el redactor de este artículo es estadounidense. Por lo tanto, una buena parte del texto consiste en la influencia negativa que ejerce el crimen mexicano sobre sus vecinos del norte. Por otro lado, cuando aborda la descripción del crimen, sólo señala a la ciudad de México, cuando cualquier medio noticioso de cualquier tendencia muestran que la violencia derivada del crimen es mayor en los estados del norte, en Michoacán, Guerrero y Sinaloa. No se ocupa de las causas sociales de la delincuencia y se limita a señalar que la causa del aumento en los índices delictivos son ocasionados por la impunidad imperante en el país. Nada dice, por ejemplo, entre otros de los muchos problemas de seguridad en el país.
 * de los crímenes de Estado,
 * de los asesinatos de mujeres en Ciudad Juárez,
 * del crecimiento del narcotráfico en la frontera,
 * de los asesinatos de periodistas,
 * de la influencia negativa que tendría el alto consumo de estupefacientes en Estados Unidos,
 * de la incapacidad del Estado para afrontar los índices delictivos,
 * de la colusión de las autoridades en redes criminales,
 * de los secuestros,
 * de los crímenes menores,

English translation: The only source(s) that the editor of this article cites is American. Moreover, a good part of the text deals with the negative influence of Mexican crime on its neighbors to the north (i.e. the U.S.) On the other side, when it comes to description of crime, the article only talks about Mexico City when just about any news report regardless of (political) leaning indicates that the crime-related violence is greater in the northern states of Michoacán, Guerrero and Sinaloa. The article doesn't deal with the social causes of delinquency and only attributes the cause of increasing crime rates to ("imperante") impunity in the country.

For example, it says nothing about:
 * Crimes of the State (?)
 * Murders of women in Ciudad Juárez,
 * Increase of drug trafficking on the border (with the U.S.)
 * Assassinations of journalists
 * The negative influence of high drug usage in the U.S.
 * The collusion of Mexican authorities in crime rings
 * Kidnappings
 * Crimes by minors (or juvenile delinquency)

among the many problems of security in the country (of Mexico)

--Richard 17:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks Richard - your translation is workable. In reference to the statement about Mexico city, the editor was saying that when you watch news reports in Mexico, most of the violent crime reported is in the states of Michoacán, Guerrero and Sinaloa, as opposed to Mexico City.  By "los crímenes de Estado" (the first bullet) I don't know what he meant.. I think that is a spanish-language colloquialism that means either Federal crimes (like tax evasion, etc.) or perhaps crimes committed by the Mexican government.  Will ask for clarification on the article's talk page at the spanish-language Wikipedia.  Aguerriero  ( talk ) 17:54, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Aguerriero. I've updated the translation.  I was also unsure what "crimenes menores" meant.  I assumed it meant "minor crimes" but that seemed unimportant so I was wondering if it meant "crimes by minors" or "juvenile delinquency".  How would you read it?


 * Whoops, forgot that one. I would interpret that as juvenile deliquency, because I would expect "minor crimes" to be expressed as "crimenes de menor importancia" or similar.  Aguerriero  ( talk ) 21:59, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

This is now ready to be a Good Article
This was not quite ready to be a Good article but it's pretty close. It needs a good copyedit and maybe some restructuring and then it'll be there. For that reason, I didn't "fail" the GA nomination. However, as a contributor to the article, I shouldn't "pass" it either. I'm going to do some copyediting while we wait for some unbiased reviewer to look at it and make a decision.

--Richard 15:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I took a whack at it and, IMO, the article is now much improved and hopefully ready to be passed into GA status. Some of the subsections are "stubs" though and should be fleshed out. Any subsection that has only one or two sentences in it needs to be expanded.

Finally, while copyediting, I found this sentence: "The Mexican mafia has close ties to Mexican organized crime syndicates."

I don't understand it. In the U.S., the "mafia" is a colloquialism for "organized crime syndicate" so the sentence above seems like a tautology. What is it trying to say? I've deleted it for now.

--Richard 16:04, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your attention to the article, Richard. I agree with your statements, and your deletion of the above sentence. I feel that the article is ready for GA status.  In particular, the prose is excellent, it is well researched and referenced, and it provides a broad overview of the important aspects of the topic without the detail that FA status would require.  Of course, I am a contributor as well, so I thought I would nominate and see.  Aguerriero  ( talk ) 16:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Reviewing the criticism in the section above, I notice that the following are still missing from the article:
 * 1) murders of women in Ciudad Juarez (not sure if this is important or just a passing incident)
 * 2) murders of journalists (this is important and needs to be covered)


 * Can you try to cover #2 at least? Thanx.


 * --Richard 17:30, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I think some more authoritative sources can be consulted to expand the stub sections (e.g. "Protest march against crime", and "Domestic production of illegal drugs"). Maybe give this another week or so, to work on.  Also, I concur with Richard that more detail is needed on Ciudad Juarez, and journalists. -Aude ( talk | contribs ) 17:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, I notice that the spanish version of this article (largely a translation of this article) still has a NPOV tag at the top. I'm curious if Yavidaxiu's concerns have been addressed yet? I think more can be done. -Aude ( talk | contribs ) 17:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * We are addressing or have addressed Yavidaxiu's concerns in the English article; since the effort to translate is considerable, I am going to re-translate once the English version is stable. I will work on #2 above today.   Aguerriero  ( talk ) 17:45, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello everyone. I have reviewed your article for the Good Article nomination (and some minor copyediting for ya). Did not realise that Richard has already started the process here. I think it's pretty close but I won't promote the article just yet since it's been changing quite dramatically recently. I will leave it on "hold" on the Nominations page for a couple of days. Just to make sure that the changes the article is going through right now won't detrement its status as a GA. (But as it is, I think it is decent enough).

A little aside: The biggest suggestion I would give you is to be more dilligent with your in-line quotations. It is not a requirement for GA, but I think leaving them out will just make it harder for you to get to FA stage. Just as examples of what I think needs citations, things like: Drug trafficking has led to corruption, which has had a deleterious effect on democracy in Mexico. and Arratia's murder, which was particularly brutal, and others like it, have sparked demands from other journalists that President Vicente Fox do more to enforce security and bring those responsible for the murders to justice. I think it's important to allow the reader to verify facts like these for themselves.

Well done everyone for creating such a nice article from an AfD in just a couple of months!--Konstable 13:54, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Hey, thanks for all the great feedback! May I ask for clarification regarding the inline quotations issue above? For the passage about Arratia's murder, for example, I just put the citation at the end of the paragraph because the entire paragraph was rendered from that source.  How should I do that differently?  Thanks,  Aguerriero  ( talk ) 16:37, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, ok, didn't notice that. I think it's fine like that (but I'm really no expert).  Though some statements in the intro are still lacking citations I think.  But as I said, for a GA this is not a requirement.--Konstable 00:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, it's a good article. Well done. Work hard for FA!--Konstable 13:01, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * All right! Thanks for your feedback and help everyone. Now let's see what we can do to get this to FA!  Aguerriero  ( talk ) 13:27, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Domestic production of illegal drugs
82.40.21.240 deleted reference to domestic production of opium poppy without explanation and despite the fact that the sentence had a citation

I am reverting pending explanation of the deletion.

--Richard 14:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Suggested pictures
Can anyone find a public domain picture of Francisco Arratia Saldierna?

It would also be good to have a picture of the 2004 protest march.

Is there a picture that depicts U.S. and Mexican border patrol forces? Ideally, it would be a picture related to crime and NOT to illegal immigration. --Richard 02:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Taking this article to FA status
Congratulations everybody on getting this article to GA status so quickly after it was just a stub extracted from the Mexico article.

Here are my thoughts on getting this to FA status:


 * 1) More pictures, see my suggestions above
 * 2) Keep up the in-line citations
 * 3) Expand the "Efforts to combat crime" section, the subsections are kind of stubby and don't flow together to provide an integrated narrative
 * 4) Provide a section about the root causes of crime in Mexico, see my discourse below
 * 5) Provide some historical context about crime prior to the last couple of decades

--Richard 15:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Root causes of crime in Mexico
NOTE: I am an estados-unidense and actually know relatively little about Mexico which is why I have contributed little of substance since the initial creation of this article. Below are some questions that I think need to be answered to help make this an article worthy of FA status.

Is poverty really a cause of crime? If so, Mexico has been a poor nation for most of its history and thus crime should have been a problem since its inception. Has it been? What is the support for the statement that "crime in Mexico has declined over the last 100 years"? Can statistics be provided?

I'm reminded of the film "Los Olvidados" by Luis Buñuel. Crime was clearly a problem back in 1950. Why did he make the film? Was crime an increasing problem that was worth noting? What precisely was Buñuel describing? Was it the problem of urban slums and urban crime? Have things improved since then or gotten worse?

It would be useful to have crime statistics for a longer period of time to get a better trend analysis. It would be good to have some statistics that spans at least a decade or two, if not the 50 years since Buñuel's film.

Here is my very "OR" perception of Mexicans. Many of the campesinos in the country side are poor but are honest and hard-working. I am not convinced that poverty causes crime. Poverty is more likely a function of urban settings and the breakdown of family and social structures. It is also very much a function of weak and corrupt governmental institutions (police and judiciary) and the pernicious influence of the international drug trade.

Do you agree with this? If so, do you feel that the article tells this story? I think parts of this story are told by the article but the reader is never given an integrating overview. Maybe the above points are "obvious" to a sociologist but they might not be so obvious to the average reader.

NB: This "story" could be considered POV and OR unless supported by reliable sources.

If my assessment that crime in Mexico is primarily an urban problem, it would be useful to have statistics that prove this point by comparing crime rates in urban areas vs. rural areas.

--Richard 15:20, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Facts disputed
Recently three subsections appeared in the Corruption heading titled "Corruption in Government", "Unions", and "Political Parties". The new sections contain some pretty hefty claims, all unsupported by citations. Since this is a GA and we would like to maintain that status, I propose removing those sections unless citations can be found. Does anyone disagree? -- Spike Wilbury  21:45, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Material lacking reliable source citations is unacceptable. Feel free to remove them. --Aude (talk) 21:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

GA on hold
This article has been reviewed as part of WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed.

1) Some claims are unsupported by references, one important link is dead. I added a few 'fact' tags in addition to those, which had already been their;

2) The layout of the article is not well thought through, because there are lots of short (1 or 2 sentences) subsections, which should be merged (see 'Crime rate', Corruption, and 'Efforts to combat crime in Mexico' sections). In addition some sections are also short, and their content can be moved into other sections. For instance, 'Crime in Mexico City' can be merged with 'Crime rate'.

3) The 'External links' section should contain full citations, not only web links;

I fixed some minor problems myself, but the editors should do the rest. I will check back in no less than seven days. If progress is being made and issues are addressed, the article will remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it may be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far. Regards, Ruslik 13:36, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Now I am going to delist this article, because no actions have been taken to address my concerns. Ruslik 05:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

In order to uphold the quality of Good articles, all articles listed as Good articles are being reviewed against the GA criteria as part of the GA project quality task force. While all the hard work that has gone into this article is appreciated, unfortunately, as of October 4, 2007, this article fails to satisfy the criteria, as detailed below. For that reason, the article has been delisted from WP:GA. However, if improvements are made bringing the article up to standards, the article may be nominated at WP:GAN. If you feel this decision has been made in error, you may seek remediation at WP:GAR.

Ruslik 05:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Excommunication
There have been proposals to excommunicate drug cartel leaders ; this might be relevant for the article if it goes into effect. ADM (talk) 06:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Propaganda
Wow, just wow. This is such a load of proganda BS that I don't even know where to begin. Crime statistics from 2004 that are estimates from the UN? Mexico City is the locus of crime in Mexico? Murder is not one of the top crimes? Sheesh. I'll tell you, I lived in Mexico for 3 years and while I'm careful but not afraid of Mexico City, I won't even go to the border cities. This article is beyond salvation and should just be deleted. I know I know but there really are so many weasel words and false assertions in this article, I can't see fixing it.

strangely limited statistics -- strangely vague and useless article
The time-series table of Mexican crime statistics begins with 2000 and ends with 2004.

Wow. Double wow. Didn't anything happen before 2000? Hasn't anything happened since 2004? Many people are prudently afraid to travel to Mexico, and particularly the border cities. But this article sheds very little light on whether that fear is justified.

Is it impossible to present important truths here because those truths might be offensive to someone? On the other hand, is it impossible to debunk popular delusions -- can it be that Mexico truly is not a dangerous place, but no one can say that either? This article is so "neutral" that it is essentially devoid of useful content.

Can anyone (knowledgeably) fix this? I certainly cannot -- I don't know. Paul (talk) 04:06, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Paul. Why limit the stats to 2000-2004? Especially since the drug was supposedly escalated in 2007. --Jabbi (talk) 23:18, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

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Forced dissapearance
Hello,

I would like to inform everyone that I am planning to edit the existing section on forced dissapearance. I want to expand the current section by writing more elaborately on the subject by using recent figures. These figures will be provided by cedible sources such as amnesty international and the human rights watch. By doing this the section will reflect the current situation more accurately in a cohorent manner. Moreover, I would like to mention the enforced disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa to illustrate the gravity of this issue. This will be linked to the existing wikipedia on that event.

––IPUvA (talk) 16:30, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

This article is incredibly outdated
Just the first chart of this article suggests that this article is outdated. I suggest consolidating pre-2010 stuff into a historic section or work it in with the rest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.231.98.48 (talk) 03:36, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

If anybody feels like bringing this more up to date, here are a few links:
 * Smaller Mexico Cities Now Most Violent in the World
 * Tijuana
 * Juárez
 * Uruapan

2001:BB6:4713:4858:DDE:AA97:5936:EEF (talk) 13:12, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Damn reading this in 2024
Damn reading this in 2024 105.112.123.124 (talk) 00:16, 11 August 2023 (UTC)