Mexico marks deadliest day with 105 murders amid coronavirus lockdown
Mexico has recorded its deadliest day this season, official data showed Monday, with 105 murders the prior day amid the government-imposed quarantine to combat the spread of COVID-19.
Sunday’s toll exceeded the most recent high of 104 persons on April 4, 2020, federal data showed.
“We are addressing the issue of the coronavirus, but however we continue to end up having homicides,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, referred to as AMLO, acknowledged Monday in his morning briefing.
The data, collected by state prosecutors offices and federal agencies, showed the State of Mexico (center) had the best number of intentional homicides, with 12; Chihuahua (northwest) with 10, while Mexico City, Guanajuato (center) and Oaxaca (south) reported nine each.
Since the health protection measures took effect in mid-March, violence certainly has not slowed in Mexico, which in 2019 recorded 34,608 murders, a record number since 1997.
The 2019 toll is the equivalent to typically almost 95 intentional homicides each day in Mexico - a country affected by a wave of increasing violence because the end of 2006, when the fight drug trafficking was militarized.
Since then, an astounding almost 275,000 persons have already been killed, according to official data that do not detail how several cases would be associated with organized crime.
AMLO, a leftist-populist who took office in December 2018, maintains that violence will be less when poverty, social exclusion and insufficient opportunities are fought, and the use of force against criminals is reduced.
“Once we complete this difficult situation,” he said, discussing the pandemic, “we will give (the criminals) options, alternatives to ensure that they are able to rejoin public life, be good people.”
Mexico’s Congress is scheduled to go over on Monday an Amnesty Law that AMLO is seeking. It could pardon, amongst others, drug traffickers with relatively minor offenses. --AFP
