The murder rate in Mexico has actually dropped by 30% from 1997 through last year, the LA Times reports. However there are localities, such as Juarez in the state of Chihuahua, where the local murder rate is amongst the highest in the world. “If the state of Chihuahua were a country, today we would have the fourth-highest level of major violence in the world”, observed Chihuahua Sen. Gustavo Madero.

Looked at another way, though, Mexico isn’t as deadly as it used to be.

That’s the point the nation’s attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, was pushing this week when he cited figures showing that Mexico’s overall homicide rate has fallen since the 1990s.

“The levels of violence that the country is experiencing are very serious,” Medina Mora told a gathering of advertising executives. “But they are much less than we had 15 years ago.”

The drug-related violence has scared away tourists and prompted some commentators to warn that Mexico risks collapse. But Medina Mora said the country registered about 11 homicides per 100,000 residents last year, down from 16 in 1997.

Additional info here.

Mexico’s ultimate hurdle is not room rates, flu or even drug violence, but perception. You’re three times as likely to contract H1N1 flu in the United States as in Mexico. And the drug war’s front lines still occupy just five of the country’s 2,400 counties; most Americans caught in the fray were in the border towns of Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and Nuevo Laredo. Read more here.