translated from Spanish: homicides went up 90% in three years

Residents of a municipality to the South of Veracruz, Minatitlán, learned to celebrate in discretion. They changed the mass festivities for small meetings and night life was diminishing with the closure of nightclubs and bars, because had already occurred murders or kidnappings inside and everyone knew it, said a young woman from the place.
This Friday, April 19, a family celebrating a birthday in the filly, a palapa in the colonia Obrera, which served as a party room, very close to the refinery of the municipality. At night, with the last guests, armed men stormed and riddled to 13 people, the smallest, a 1 year old baby.
Even without State authority has clarified the motive or apprehended those responsible, relatives of victims have recognized bodies and others are taking care of the survivors in the hospital.
This is the most violent act that residents have suffered, but in recent years have experienced firsthand what the Government knows only in statistics. In this town that lives between the ‘low lag,”according to the measurements of poverty, and the”prosperity”of Pemex refinery General Lázaro Cárdenas from Minatitlán, one of the largest in Latin America, has increased the violence.
In Minatitlan, with just 157 thousand 393 inhabitants, occurred in 2015 a total of 44 homicides, of which 12 were with firearms; This represented a rate of 0.27%. The next year dropped to 40 the number of homicides.
In 2017, there were the highest number: 146 homicides, and of these 70 were perpetrated with firearms, which meant a rate of 0.92%. By 2018, there were 84 homicides and only the first three months of 2019 has been 20.
This means that you between 2015 and 2018, the number of homicides recorded an increase of 90%. But when 2015 compared with the most violent year in the municipality, the increase amounts to 230%.
That is the high impact of further increase crime, every time that kidnappings, for example, moved from 14 in 2015 to 16 in the following year; 12 in 2017 and neither one in 2018, as have two occurred in 2019. Although it’s the crime incidence registered with the authority, but above all in this crime there is black figure.
That was not in vain, since last January, Minatitlán was one of the 18 regions of Veracruz, considered as “high risk of violence”, according to the security plan of the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in which 266 regions or coordinations were territorial in that the federal Government intends to deploy the National Guard.
Indeed, Veracruz is the second entity with the highest number of municipalities in red focus, only surpassed by the State of Mexico. In addition to Minatitlán, Veracruz localities, considered to be “high risk” are Coatzacoalcos, Córdoba, Orizaba, the port of Veracruz, Xalapa and Cosamaloapan.
Minatitlan also has refinery which distributes fuel to the city of Mexico through one of the vents with larger losses in the country, and that crosses 90 municipalities between Veracruz, Puebla, Tlaxcala, State of Mexico and the capital.
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Original source in Spanish