Photo essay in The Atlantic. Just an initial comment…despite the fact that Juarez is still the epicenter of the violence, note that many of these photos are from other cities and regions…notably Monterrey and Acapulco. I did just check to see if I could find a figure of TOTAL homicides (homicidios dolosos) for Mexico in 2011 and I got many cites to this number from the SNSP (Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública) of 22,223… (and just another aside, I never saw this figure in the English-language press… But here is one of many links:
http://noticias.aollatino.com/2012/02/23/homicidios-dolosos-en-mexico…)

If this is added to the cumulative numbers from INEGI for 2007-2010 (67,050 as reported here:
http://www.inegi.org.mx/inegi/contenidos/espanol/prensa/Boletines/Bol…)

we get a TOTAL homicide count of: 89,273 for 2007-2011. If we add in the estimate on “narco-deaths” from Walter McKay** for all of Mexico for 2012  (5,278) then the total looks more like: 94,551 for Calderon’s term in office so far. As I have noted before, the “drug-war homicides” number of 47,500 or 50,000 is an estimate based on various criteria for what murders count as drug (or organized-crime-related). I really believe that we should use the total number (as best as we can figure it) since these government criteria for what counts as “drug-related are sketchy and in almost all cases, not based on a real investigation of the crimes.  I’ll try to summarize with more numbers detail in subsequent post.  molly

**Here is the link: https://sites.google.com/site/policereform/narco-killings