Latin American Drugs & links

[Bill Moore]

http://www.latintelligence.com/2011/...ting-violence/

Latin America has the ignominious distinction of being one of most violent regions in world. Though not known for its wars or even (at least violent) border disputes, homicide rates average nearly 20 per 100,000 people. Central and South America are among the most murderous regions worldwide, behind only Southern Africa. Six of the ten most violent nations in the world are in Latin America, with Honduras and El Salvador claiming the number one and two spots. The biggest headline-grabber this last year has been Mexico, which counted some 12,000 deaths in 2011 and over 40,000 drug related homicides since the start of President Calderns term (non-official estimates put these numbers even higher). Though Mexico is not the most violent in per capita terms, this escalation has deeply impacted the country.

Highlights are mine.

[ganulv]

Six of the ten most violent nations in the world are in Latin America, with Honduras and El Salvador claiming the number one and two spots.

Highlights are mine.

I remember first learning about Salvadoran involvement in human trafficking from Central America to the States while at the Guatemalan/Chiapan border in 1995. Last winter I ate at a place in Woodbridge which might just have been a Mara Salvatrucha laundry. It’s a growth industry, I guess.

[tequila]

Homicides in El Salvador Drop, and Questions Arise

MEXICO CITY — Suddenly, killings have plummeted in El Salvador, one of the most violent countries in Central America and a source of growing worry over gangs and organized crime.

But the possibility that the reduction in violence resulted from a secret deal between the government and gang leaders to halt killings in exchange for better prison conditions has rattled El Salvador’s political establishment and led to various explanations from government leaders.

In countries racked by violence, including Mexico, the notion of negotiating with criminals to curtail violence fills blogs and cocktail chatter but is usually dismissed by government officials.

But a Salvadoran government official and an intelligence agent with knowledge of the discussions, both of whom object to such pacts, said in telephone interviews that a deal was widely discussed by security and intelligence officials in the weeks before gang leaders were moved to less-restrictive prisons.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from their bosses or the gangs, said a high-ranking colonel — part of a new team of former military officers promising to take on crime — put the idea in motion shortly after arriving at the Public Security and Justice Ministry in November, with the goal of reducing homicides by 30 percent and reaping political gains.

An intelligence report prepared in February and provided by the government official asserts that top members of the ministry “offered, if it is necessary, to make deals or negotiate with subjects who have power inside organized crime structures to reduce homicides.”

There is no dispute that, in an unprecedented move, 30 of the top leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 criminal gangs were transferred on March 8 and 9 from a maximum-security prison, where many had been for over a decade, to prisons with perks including family visits.

In the ensuing days, killings in El Salvador dropped to five a day, and sometimes even fewer, from the typical 14. All told, homicides nationwide dropped to 186 in the first 21 days of March from 411 in January and 402 in February ...

[Bill Moore]

Interesting observation after the quick Google searches (so admittedly the data is not precise, but still should be in the ball park).

El Salvador's population is a little over 6 million, while NYC's population is a little over 8 million.

Murders in El Salvador average around 4,000/per year, while murders in NYC average around 500/per year. NYC's population is 25% greater than El Salvador's. The murder rate in El Salvador is 7 to 8 times greater than NYC. In and of its self I guess it doesn't mean much, but it does put in context. if NYC had the same rate, we would lose as many people in NYC to violence in one year as we lost in Iraq during all of OIF.

Easy to see how a how a government in a relatively poor nation was overcome with this level of violence and decided to negotiate. Is negotiating capitulation or a reasonable response in this case?

[ganulv]

El Salvador's population is a little over 6 million, while NYC's population is a little over 8 million.

Murders in El Salvador average around 4,000/per year, while murders in NYC average around 500/per year. NYC's population is 25% greater than El Salvador's.

The population of Puerto Rico is around 4 million and there were in the neighborhood of 1,000 murders there last year. I lived on the island for a year in the late ’90s when the rate was similar and it was pretty unnerving. I was forewarned about the crime rate beforehand but thought I knew what I was in for given that I had spent all of my youth on an Indian reservation and had just before that point spent a year in Guatemala as their civil war wound down. Neither of those experiences was comparable. Don’t know if it is still the case but when I was in PR you weren’t required to stop at traffic signals after 2200 due to the very real possibility of being carjacked and no one I knew stopped to get gas after dark unless they were running on vapors. So I don’t really want to imagine what life is like in the Central American countries right now.*

*For all the press the drug related violence in Mexico gets the reported murder rate there doesn’t approach that of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala and is lower than Puerto Rico’s. My understanding is that it is highly localized, however.

[tequila]

This is a New Yorker story from 2010 about the Rodrigo Rosenberg suicide in Guatemala that is a remarkably well-written portrayal of just how out of control Guatemala has gotten.

In 2007, a joint study by the United Nations and the World Bank ranked it as the third most murderous country. Between 2000 and 2009, the number of killings rose steadily, ultimately reaching sixty-four hundred. The murder rate was nearly four times higher than Mexico’s. In 2009, fewer civilians were reported killed in the war zone of Iraq than were shot, stabbed, or beaten to death in Guatemala.

...

Criminal networks have infiltrated virtually every government and law-enforcement agency, and more than half the country is no longer believed to be under the control of any government at all. Citizens, deprived of justice, often form lynch mobs, or they resolve disputes, even trivial ones, by hiring assassins.

Some authorities have revived the darkest counter-insurgency tactics, rounding up undesirables and executing them. Incredibly, the death rate in Guatemala is now higher than it was for much of the civil war. And there is almost absolute impunity: ninety-seven per cent of homicides remain unsolved, the killers free to kill again ...


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...#ixzz1qKeF8qSt