Friday afternoons at my desk tend to go the same way. I try to finish one more thing, and the dogs have their own ideas about when we’re going outside. If you’re catching up over a late coffee, here’s where I’d start.
Same year, two very different homicide counts
President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday that her government is reviewing Mexico’s 2025 homicide figures state by state. INEGI, Mexico’s statistics agency, registered 29,488 homicides, while the federal security tally, which draws on state prosecutors’ case files, counted 24,348 victims of intentional homicide and femicide. That’s a gap of 5,140.
INEGI published its final numbers this week. It works from death records, so its tally includes some people who died earlier and whose deaths were registered in 2025. When Data Cívica, a Mexican research nonprofit, limited the comparison to deaths that happened in 2025, the gap narrowed to 3,741.
Both counts show homicides fell from 2024, but the prosecutors’ figures put the drop at about 21% and the death records put it closer to 14%. When someone asks me whether Mexico is getting safer, my first question is usually where they mean. If you’re weighing a move or planning a road trip, I’d pay particular attention to what the review turns up in the states where you’ll actually spend time.
What else is making news today
Mexico’s visitor fee goes up in January. Starting Jan. 1, the federal fee for short-stay foreign visitors without permission to work rises from 983 to 1,158 pesos. If you spend the winter here on visitor status, that’s another 175 pesos per person when the fee applies. The part that caught my eye was where the money goes. Under the new law, 57% of the revenue from tourists goes to Mexico’s Defense Ministry and 15% goes to its immigration agency.
El Mencho’s brother gets 22½ years in a U.S. prison. A federal judge in Washington sentenced Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “Tony Montana,” to 17½ years for conspiring to traffic cocaine and methamphetamine and another five years for a firearms offense. Mexico transferred him to U.S. custody last year, and he pleaded guilty in July. U.S. prosecutors said he also collected drug proceeds and oversaw money laundering for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which his late brother helped found.
Vallarta grew outward faster than its population grew. A Tecnológico de Monterrey study presented this week found that the centers of major Mexican cities lost about 2.5 million residents between 1990 and 2020 as more people settled farther out. Puerto Vallarta stood out for how quickly its built-up area spread relative to its population. One researcher pointed to the price of housing near city centers, which got me thinking about how much of the savings on rent farther out you give back in bus fare and time if you work near the Malecón.
Today’s Spanish phrase is tiempo de traslado, the time it takes to get somewhere. Have a good weekend, and hit reply if there’s a trip across town that takes you twice as long as it used to. I’d love to know which one.
Ian