By Ivana Mowry-Mora
A week marred by high-profile murders also saw the release of Mexico’s Peace Index (MPI) 2025 by the Instituto para la Economía y la Paz (the Institute for Economics and Peace, or IEP), the country’s most comprehensive data-based analysis of peace, its economic value, and violence trends. The MPI is based on the Global Peace Index, the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness. This report also includes examples of the practical application of Positive Peace in Mexico at the national, state and local level.
The year 2024, which saw national elections, was the most violent on record for political figures in Mexico, with at least 201 politically motivated assassinations reported. Last Sunday, mayoral candidate Yesenia Lara Gutiérrez and three of her supporters were shot dead in Veracruz. Attacks on politicians are common at the local level, due to violence linked to cartels, corruption and the multibillion-dollar narcotics trade. Organized criminal groups remain the primary driver of extreme violence in Mexico, largely due to their efforts to supply the U.S. market with illicit drugs, particularly fentanyl. Illicit trafficking of arms and people along the Mexico–United States border has become a core activity within organized crime.
Following that incident, Jalisco social media influencer Valeria Márquez was shot dead during a TikTok livestream on Tuesday, with her murder being investigated as a femicide – the killing of a woman or girl for reasons of gender. Along with political violence, femicide deaths are growing rapidly, with the number of reported victims increasing from 428 in 2015 to 829 in 2024 – a 93.7% rise. Femicides, the murder of a woman for gender-based reasons, has become a major concern in Mexico and across Latin America in recent years. In 2023, Latin America and the Caribbean recorded at least 3,897 cases of femicide, averaging 11 women killed per day in the region. The majority of these crimes were committed by current or former intimate partners, highlighting the widespread
prevalence of gender-based violence within the family sphere.
This map depicts the rate of homicides per Mexican municipality, with dark green being the lowest rate and dark red being the highest rate.