How safe is Mexico?
Mexico sits at the low end of the Americas range — a 24.9 per 100,000 homicide rate (2023, UNODC via World Bank) and three diplomatic advisories flagging crime and kidnapping, including UK guidance against all but essential travel to parts of the country. Risk is heavily regional, not uniform.
Where buyers go
The Mexican corridors North-American buyers move to — graded where you’d live, each paired with a US city at a comparable, FBI-sourced homicide rate so the number means something.
39 homicide victims in all of 2022 across ~2.3M people — one of the safest places in the Americas, nothing like Mexico’s national figure.
An affluent US suburb’s homicide rate — that is Yucatán, not the national number.
Best-sampled of the corridors; the borough range is enormous — read the city page for the spread.
A vast US metro with the same enormous neighbourhood gradient the city number hides.
The figure is Jalisco-state; the resort strip runs its own pattern, but the citable geography is the state.
A large US capital at the same rate.
Quintana Roo-state figure; resort municipios differ but are not separately citable.
A high-rate US city at the same level.
Guanajuato was Mexico’s most violent state in 2022 — driven by the Celaya/Irapuato industrial corridor, not SMA.
Graded at Guanajuato-state. San Miguel de Allende the town is understood to run far below this, but municipio data is not verbatim-citable — we don’t publish a number we can’t show our work for.
A high-crime US city near the state rate; the town itself is not this.
2 of 5 regions earn a C or higher — Mérida · Yucatán leads at 88.9; San Miguel de Allende · Guanajuato drags the country average at 3.1.
Mexico sits at the low end of the Americas range — a 24.9 per 100,000 homicide rate (2023, UNODC via World Bank) and three diplomatic advisories flagging crime and kidnapping, including UK guidance against all but essential travel to parts of the country. Risk is heavily regional, not uniform.
Each bar = number of regions at that grade. Where you live in Mexico matters more than the country average.
24.86 intentional homicides per 100,000 people (2023) — UNODC data via the World Bank Intentional Homicide indicator (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5), the citable UNODC-derived static series.
Exercise increased caution in Mexico due to terrorism, crime, and kidnapping.
Exercise a high degree of caution due to high levels of criminal activity and kidnapping.
FCDO advises against all but essential travel to parts of Mexico.
What a D+ means here
A 24.9 per 100,000 homicide rate (2023, UNODC via World Bank) and three advisories flagging crime, kidnapping and partial travel restrictions both point the same direction. The risk is concentrated in specific states rather than spread evenly — but the national grade is honestly low.
The Safety Score does not average disagreement away. Where the homicide data and the advisories pull in different directions, the composite holds the tension and the editor’s note explains it — because the honest answer for Mexico is that the neighbourhood you buy in matters more than the national grade.
Markets that score within range of Panama on the composite.
Fixed reference points so the grade is legible to a North-American reader.
One market read, one process explainer, one number to know.
Free, no sponsors. Cross-border property and retirement, written for North American buyers.