The increasing influence of drug cartels in Mexico made 2025 a very violent year, according to a recent investigation by a civil society organization that documented thousands of cases involving crimes of extreme violence across the country.
According to Causa en Común, a nonprofit focused on security, police strengthening, and victim support, violence in Mexico remained at critical levels in 2025, with 4,783 crimes involving extreme violence recorded. Among the most frequent were murders involving torture, massacres, violent acts against authorities, and the discovery of human remains in clandestine graves.
Causa en Común's recent investigation found that crimes of extreme violence recorded between January and December 2025 resulted in a total of 6,707 victims, representing a daily average of 13 atrocities and 18 victims across the country.
In its 2025 report, Causa en Común placed murders involving torture at the top of the list of atrocities reported in media sources last year, with 1,255 cases documented in Mexico. As noted by the investigation, obtained by Animal Político, killings of women under extreme cruelty ranked second with 608 cases recorded, followed by mutilation cases totaling 456 incidents.
Massacres, defined by the organization as the killing of three or more people in a single incident, totaled 386, equivalent to an average of one massacre per day.
Among the top five crimes committed in 2025 was the discovery of human remains in clandestine graves, a crime that accounted for 301 findings with an estimated more than 400 illegal burial sites, averaging 25 cases per month.
Although the numbers presented by Causa en Común cover the entire Mexican territory, the report showed that most crimes occurred in five states, characterized as strongholds of drug trafficking cartels.
The state of Sinaloa, which since September 2024 has been immersed in turf wars involving two factions of the Sinaloa cartel, topped the list with 641 cases, followed by Guanajuato (477), Guerrero (384), Chihuahua (367), and Michoacán (321).
The report was based on extreme violence crimes documented in media coverage, but Causa en Común warned that these figures represent only a sample of the crisis in Mexico, as an undetermined number of atrocities have gone unreported or undocumented by the press.
The organization emphasized that, despite drug cartels gaining more power and influence across Mexico, most crimes were not committed by alleged cartel members, highlighting how extreme violence has spread into the general population.
"In all cases, it is criminal violence, yes, but also gender-based violence, domestic violence, community violence, and social violence," it said.
Based on its findings, Causa en Común made a call for authorities and organizations alike to "shed light on the darkest aspects of our society — those we prefer not to see, those governments try to downplay, but which we must never ignore."
The organization also called for sociological and psychological approaches to better understand local realities and to "generate proposals for the prevention of and response to violence," Animal Político reported.
Originally published on Latin Times
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