Mexico Extortion And Kidnapping On Rise Amid President Pena Nieto Promises For Safer Streets [REPORT]

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto ran for office on the promise that he would scale down his predecessor's aggressive drug-war strategy by focusing more on keeping the streets safe and less on taking down cartel kingpins. In his first state of the union address last week, he pointed to falling murder rates - as much as 30 and 40 percent in Mexico's most violent states - as proof that his administration's strategy was working. But according to statistics from the National Public Security System (SNSP), reports of kidnappings and extortions have risen during the new administration's first eight months in office.

From the time Peña Nieto entered office in December of 2012 to June of this year, 1,032 kidnappings were reported to Mexican authorities, according to the SNSP figures. In the previous period, during which Felipe Calderón was still president, 809 cases were logged - a differential of 27.5 percent. By the same token, some 5,242 cases of extortion were reported between December and June, compared to some 4,448 cases in the previous year, which comes out to an uptick of 17.8 percent.

The government says that the uptick can be attributed to a campaign meant to encourage citizens to report crime to the police. Mexico's impunity rates - some 98 percent of the murders committed in 2012, for example, went unsolved - and corruption among police have made many Mexicans reluctant to tell authorities when they've been victimized. Eduardo Sánchez, spokesman for the Secretariat of the Interior, told Animal Politico, "We've seen a great number of kidnapping gangs dismantled and a great number of people liberated...We think this circumstance [the campaign] has fulfilled its objective, which is to increase the number of reports," he said, but admitted, "It's true that reports of kidnapping and extortion have gone up in a substantial way relative to other periods of other administrations."

Other parties take a dimmer view. Francisco Rivas, president of the National Citizens' Observatory for Security told Animal Politico the statistics prove that the most serious crimes aren't decreasing in frequency. "The anti-kidnapping policies have failed, and it will have to be evaluated what good billions of pesos put toward security every year have done if we don't know how states and municipalities have used them." Rivas pointed to lack of funding for public prosecutors' offices, especially for the training and equipment officials need to carry out their work.

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