MEXICO CITY _ After President Donald Trump incorrectly tweeted that Mexico is the second deadliest country in the world after Syria, the Mexican government responded quickly.
No, Mexico isn't the second deadliest place on the globe, said a tersely worded statement issued by Mexico's secretary of foreign relations, pointing to a host of other Latin American countries that have higher per capita murder rates.
And while homicides have been rising in Mexico in recent years, rising violence in Mexico is inextricably linked to demand for drugs in the United States, the statement said.
"Illicit drug trade is indeed the most important cause of violence in Mexico and drug trafficking is costing thousands of lives both in Mexico and the U.S.," the foreign ministry said Thursday. "However, as has been repeatedly stated by the U.S. government itself, drug trafficking is a shared problem that will end only by addressing its root causes: high demand for drugs in the U.S. and supply from Mexico and other countries."
In order to be effective, we must be able to move beyond finger-pointing," the statement said.
The Mexican government issued the response after Trump tweeted a reference to a controversial recent study that ranked Mexico as the world's second most-dangerous conflict zone after Syria.
Trump misrepresented the study in his tweet, saying "Mexico was just ranked the second deadliest country in the world." He also neglected the considerable debate about the study's accuracy.
The annual Armed Conflict Survey, released this year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, has been called into question by the Mexican government and others who say it wrongly points to the existence of an armed conflict in Mexico.
"The existence of criminal groups is not sufficient criteria to speak of a non-international armed conflict," said a joint statement issued by Mexico's secretaries of governance and foreign relations in May, adding that drug war violence is part of a bigger regional problem.
Although Mexico's homicide rate has soared _ the first two months of 2017 were the most violent since the government started releasing such statistics in 1997 _ other countries are experiencing higher homicide rates.
In January, Mexico had a homicide rate of 20 deaths per 100,000 people, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of Mexican crime statistics.
By comparison, El Salvador's homicide rate was 81 deaths per 100,000 people in 2016, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that studies organized crime in Latin America. Venezuela had a homicide rate of 59 deaths per 100,000 people.
Trump ended his tweet with a frequent campaign mantra: "We will BUILD THE WALL!"
