Mexico’s security landscape is shifting, and the numbers from President Claudia Sheinbaum’s most recent press conferences are sparking cautious hope—and plenty of debate—across the country. On December 9 and 10, 2025, Sheinbaum and her security officials took center stage to lay out the facts: homicide rates are down, high-impact crimes have dropped, and the government is touting a new approach to tackling cartel violence. But beneath the surface, experts and everyday citizens alike are questioning what these numbers really mean for the country’s safety and future.
Marcela Figueroa Franco, the head of Mexico’s National Public Security System, shared the headline figure during Sheinbaum’s daily news conference: the average number of daily killings in Mexico has fallen by 37% since Sheinbaum assumed office in September 2024. In November 2025, there was an average of 54.7 murders per day—down from the 86.9 daily murders recorded in September 2024, the final month of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term. According to Mexico News Daily, that’s the lowest November murder rate in a decade.
“The result in homicides that we’ve had over these months is very significant,” Sheinbaum said, highlighting the importance of her government’s security strategy. Sheinbaum credits the decline to a four-pronged approach: strengthening intelligence and investigative practices, enhancing coordination among government agencies, bolstering the national guard, and targeting organized crime’s resources and operations. As she put it in a previous press conference, “There is a strategy, there is monitoring of the strategy, and there is specific monitoring municipality by municipality in some cases. The strategy works. And we have to keep working at it every day.”
For context, Mexico’s murder rate reached a grim peak of 36,773 killings in 2020, according to the national statistics agency. That rate was four times higher than that of the United States, and while it dropped to 33,550 in 2024, the country remained gripped by cartel violence and public anxiety. The latest figures suggest a sharper decline: government data show an average of 65.1 homicides per day in the first eleven months of 2025, representing a 29% drop compared to 2024 and a 35% decrease from the same period in 2018, as reported by Mexico News Daily.
However, a closer look at the numbers reveals that violence is far from evenly distributed. More than half—51%—of the 21,743 homicides from January to November 2025 occurred in just seven states: Guanajuato, Chihuahua, Baja California, Sinaloa, México state, Guerrero, and Michoacán. Guanajuato alone accounted for 2,388 murders, or 11% of the national total, plagued by bloody turf wars between the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Chihuahua and Baja California, home to the notoriously violent cities of Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, also topped the list. Meanwhile, Sinaloa, riven by internecine cartel conflict, and Michoacán, where the federal government recently launched a 57-billion-peso “Plan Michoacán for Peace and Justice,” continue to face daunting challenges.
Yet there are bright spots. Homicides declined in 26 of Mexico’s 32 federal entities between January and November 2025 compared to the previous year. Zacatecas saw the largest decrease, with murders dropping by an astonishing 70.5%. Four states—Yucatán, Durango, Coahuila, and Aguascalientes—recorded fewer than 100 homicides during the same period, a testament to regional disparities in security outcomes. Even Guanajuato and Chihuahua, two of the most violent states, posted year-over-year reductions of 15.9% and 11.5%, respectively.
High-impact crimes, which include kidnapping, extortion, and violent robbery, have also declined. According to Figueroa, an average of 518.2 such offenses were reported daily in the first eleven months of 2025—a 13.8% reduction from the previous year. Compared to 2018, the incidence of these crimes is down 47%. Most categories, including femicide, kidnapping, burglary, and vehicle theft, have trended downward since 2019. However, reported acts of extortion rose by 23.1% between 2019 and 2025. The government responded by launching a national anti-extortion strategy in July, after which extortion reports dropped by 20% from July to November.
Operationally, the government has not been idle. Federal Security Minister Omar García Harfuch reported that nearly 40,000 people were arrested for high-impact crimes between October 2024 and November 2025. Authorities seized 311.7 tonnes of drugs, including over 4.3 million fentanyl pills—manufactured with precursor chemicals from China—confiscated 20,169 firearms, and dismantled 1,760 methamphetamine laboratories. García Harfuch emphasized that these efforts have dealt “an economic impact of billions of pesos for organized crime.”
Despite these achievements, not everyone is convinced that the numbers tell the whole story. Security analysts warn that relying solely on homicide statistics may paint an incomplete picture of Mexico’s security crisis. As reported by The Guardian, Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, an expert on Mexican organized crime, advised, “It would be excellent news if this were a reduction, but I think we can’t just focus on the homicide data and say: ‘Oh well, great.’ I would be cautiously optimistic.”
One major concern is the rise in forced disappearances, which increased by 15% overall—and by as much as 200% in some states—during the first ten months of 2025, according to the public policy think tank Mexico Evalúa. Armando Vargas, a security expert at the organization, argued that “data on homicides is no longer valid for estimating the context of public insecurity.” He pointed to challenges with police and prosecutors’ ability—or willingness—to properly identify and classify corpses, as well as the capacity of organized criminals to conceal violence through disappearances. “Using the daily average makes high peaks of violence invisible,” Vargas added, suggesting that the government’s narrative may obscure underlying volatility.
The social reality on the ground remains fraught. In November 2025, the high-profile assassination of a mayor in Michoacán—one of ten mayors murdered in the past year—sent shockwaves through the country. Just weeks later, thousands of young people took to the streets of Mexico City and other cities to protest corruption and ongoing drug violence, underscoring persistent public distrust and frustration.
Vargas summed up the tension between political messaging and lived experience: “The federal government presents [data] in a way to construct a narrative of security. Politically it’s very effective, socially it’s very questionable.” He noted, however, that “Donald Trump cannot accuse President Sheinbaum of doing nothing, because in reality she is doing a lot with these thousands of arrests, thousands of seizures, and all the operational weakening of organized crime. It’s very politically profitable.”
As Mexico heads into 2026, the numbers may be improving, but the reality remains complex. For many, the decline in homicides is a welcome sign—but it’s just one piece of a much larger puzzle. The challenge now is to translate statistical gains into genuine, lasting security for all Mexicans, and to ensure that progress on paper is felt in the streets and communities most affected by violence.