In Latin America, organized crime and the increase in violence that accompanies it threaten the safety of citizens, and governments are struggling to find effective solutions.
According to data sent by the office of the vice president of the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean, this is the most violent region in the world and violence is increasing. “The number of homicides per person is five times higher than in North America and 10 times higher than in Asia,” he noted.
Furthermore, the international organization Doctors Without Borders indicates that, although economic incentives are a reason to migrate, violence is a key factor that drives migration to the United States from Central America. “This violence also aggravates existing inequality” and the people most affected are usually the most disadvantaged, such as “the poor, young people, ethnic minorities and the LGBT+ community.”
Violence in the social and domestic sphere is widespread and especially affects women. Political violence is also common, including violent protests, police brutality, extrajudicial executions, and attacks against human rights defenders, environmental activists, politicians, and journalists. However, since the early 2000s, the main source of violence in the region has been organized crime.
Although homicide rates have stabilized in recent years – although they are still among the highest in the world – and have even decreased in traditionally violent countries such as Colombia and El Salvador, the situation remains worrying.
A “worrying” situation
“There is widespread alarm and there are good reasons to be alarmed. Firstly, because Latin America has, in fact, very high rates of criminal violence,” explains Kevin Casas-Zamora, secretary general of International IDEA and researcher of legislative programs at the Inter-American Dialogue, recalling that “a third of murders worldwide world occurs in Latin America.”
“It is worrying because Latin America only has 8 or 9% of the world’s population, so Latin America is disproportionately represented in this terrible statistic of intentional homicides,” he added.
Along these lines, Casas-Zamora also warned that “39 of the 50 most violent cities in the world” are located in this region, “the vast majority in Mexico and Brazil,” and it is estimated that around 200 million people “are victims.” of any crime, either directly or in his immediate family circle.”
Geography plays a crucial role in the crime problem in Latin America. The region includes three of the world’s largest cocaine producers – Colombia, Peru and Bolivia – and is a key point for cocaine exports to Europe and the United States. For more than 40 years, this region has been central to the illicit drug markets. Although countries such as Central America, Colombia and Mexico have long experienced violence, changes in drug trafficking routes and networks have led to an increase in violence in countries such as Ecuador and Costa Rica, which were previously considered safer.
The citizen insecurity
The issue of citizen insecurity already occupies second place in the general ranking of concerns in the region, according to the latest report from Latinobarometera non-profit organization that researches the development of democracy, the economy and society as a whole.
“It is a widespread concern throughout the region also because there is a qualitative change in what is happening with violence in Latin America because it is increasingly evident that a very high proportion of violence has come through organized crime. It is no longer the little thief who stole your wallet on the bus but it is a much more serious thing in terms of the intensity of the violence,” indicated the Inter-American Dialogue researcher.
The impact of organized crime
Several factors have contributed to the increase in insecurity. Drug production has reached unprecedented levels, and lucrative new drug trafficking routes in countries such as Paraguay and Argentina have emerged. Economic difficulties in Latin America, exacerbated during the pandemic, have pushed more people into organized crime. Furthermore, corruption in the region has facilitated the proliferation of illicit markets that are not limited to drug trafficking, but include human trafficking, fuel theft, illegal logging and mining, and extortion. Some criminal groups attempt to increase their control over legal businesses and communities to recruit new members and expand their territorial influence.
This situation, Casas-Zamora admits, “has multiple social, economic and political effects” that directly affect “democratic systems.”
“It negatively affects support for democratic institutions and basic principles of the rule of law. Afterwards, citizen insecurity has a corrosive effect on social capital and the obvious and omnipresent limitation in the exercise of very basic freedoms for citizens to freedom of movement or the possibility of enjoying property, among other things,” he lamented.
drug trafficking
For his part, Juan Pablo Luna, professor at the School of Government at the Catholic University of Chile, also points to “the expansion of different illegal markets” and describes it as “a rather regional or even global phenomenon.”
“There are a series of illegal economies that are beginning to gain relative participation with respect to formal and legal economic activity, which ends up generating a series of externalities and a series of chains in the economies of the region, in the political systems of the region and in the structures of the region,” he stated.
In his opinion, these “illegal markets”, such as drug trafficking, “mutate very quickly”, which makes states incapable of pursuing them.
“These mutations happen, many times, faster than the states’ ability to react to what is happening. Among these markets is drug trafficking, which is the one that usually attracts the most attention, in part, due to the margins. [económicos] and the violence it generates,” he noted.
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