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FOR the first time in Mexico’s five-year war on organised crime, the level of violence seems to have stabilised. Last year saw about 22,000 murders, only slightly more than the 21,000 recorded in the previous year. That is still double the number in 2007. But there are tentative hopes that the violence may have peaked: so far, 2012 has been somewhat less bloody than last year. The stable national picture masks sharply different regional trends. Last year Chihuahua, long the most violent state in Mexico, saw a 39% drop in the number of mafia-linked killings. May of this year saw the fewest murders in Ciudad Juárez for 49 months, according to El Diario, a local newspaper. Violence has also dropped sharply in the neighbouring states of Baja California, Sonora and Sinaloa.
But along the eastern half of the United States border, mafia hits nearly tripled in the states of Coahuila and Nuevo León between 2010 and 2011. On May 13th about 49 bodies were dumped on a roadside near Monterrey (the figure was imprecise because the victims had been dismembered). The ebb and flow of violence reflects the changing fortunes of Mexico’s criminal gangs. The north-west has quietened down because the Sinaloa mob has beaten its rivals into near-submission in cities such as Juárez and Tijuana. Meanwhile in the north-east, Sinaloa and its allies in the Gulf “cartel” are bidding to take over turf controlled by the Zetas, with gruesome consequences.