The number of murders committed in Mexico fell slightly last year, according to data presented on Wednesday by the president.
In 2020, 35,614 people were killed, according to official statistics, a decrease of 0.4% and the first reduction in five years, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said at his daily press conference.
The total includes 966 femicides, three more than in 2019.
Mexico saw an average of nearly 100 murders a day last year, despite the slight decrease.
The wave of violence broke out in 2006, when Mexico's former president Felipe Calderon took office and declared a war on drugs, unleashing an era of bloodshed that continues to this day.
Organized crime, which has become increasingly fragmented into numerous groups, claims tens of thousands of lives annually in the country.
Cartels and gangs
Many of the killings are committed by cartels and gangs involved in smuggling drugs north to the United States, who also make money through kidnapping and extortion. Some have links to security forces.
Only 3% of crimes that are reported in Mexico are solved, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace.
These figures do not include more than 82,000 people who are said to have disappeared, and mass graves have been repeatedly discovered.
