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Latin America Is the Murder Capital of the World
Wall Street Journal ^ | September 20, 2018 | David Luhnow

Posted on 09/20/2018 1:06:21 PM PDT by reaganaut1

ACAPULCO, Mexico—It was the beginning of just another day in one of the world’s most murderous places.

Cristian Sabino was sitting on a plastic chair by this beach resort’s central market when a gunman walked up and shot him five times. As the 22-year-old dropped to the ground, the assailant fired a final bullet to the head and walked away.

Six more people would be killed that day in Acapulco, including a cabdriver who was hacked to pieces. Death is so much part of the landscape that once police cordoned off the area around Mr. Sabino’s body, some patrons at a nearby rotisserie chicken restaurant stayed to finish their meals.

Acapulco’s days as a tourist resort with a touch of Hollywood glamour seem long ago. In a city of 800,000, 953 people were violently killed last year, more than in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal and the Netherlands put together.

It’s not just Mexico. There is a murder crisis across much of Latin America and the Caribbean, which today is the world’s most violent region. Every day, more than 400 people are murdered there, a yearly tally of about 145,000 dead.

With just 8% of the world’s population, Latin America accounts for roughly a third of global murders. It is also the only region where lethal violence has grown steadily since 2000, according to United Nations figures.

Nearly one in every four murders around the world takes place in just four countries: Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia. Last year, a record 63,808 people were murdered in Brazil. Mexico also set a record at 31,174, with murders so far this year up another 20%.

The 2016 tally in China, according to the U.N.: 8,634. For the entire European Union: 5,351. The United States: 17,250.

(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Mexico; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: latinamerica; murder
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I feel sorry for the innocent victims of crime, but it is not in Americans' interest to have lots of people from failed states (Trump used a different phrase) come here. Sometimes the people fleeing will not be innocents but gang members themselves. How are we going to sort out who is who?
1 posted on 09/20/2018 1:06:21 PM PDT by reaganaut1
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To: reaganaut1

The New World was Colonial Spain’s political gulag and criminal slave labor camp.

The people of today are their descendants.............


2 posted on 09/20/2018 1:08:44 PM PDT by Red Badger (Q..........................Future Proves Past..............WWG1WGA.....................)
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To: reaganaut1

The amount of ghastly murder and torture in Brazil is incredible.

Life isn’t worth two cents there.


3 posted on 09/20/2018 1:09:22 PM PDT by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrat's John Dean])
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To: reaganaut1

But guns are completely illegal in Mexico....


4 posted on 09/20/2018 1:12:16 PM PDT by indthkr
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To: reaganaut1

Sorry Arkansas and Washington, D. C., but it was a valiant effort under the Clintons.


5 posted on 09/20/2018 1:12:24 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (01/26/18 DJIA 30 stocks $26,616.71 48.794% > open 11/07/16 $215.71 from 50% increase in 1.2183 yrs)
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To: reaganaut1

We need to send them our liberal gun-control advocates. That should fix it.


6 posted on 09/20/2018 1:12:27 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia (Democrats: The perfect party for the helpless and stupid, and those who would rule over them.)
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To: Red Badger
The New World was Colonial Spain’s political gulag and criminal slave labor camp.

The number of African slaves imported to Brazil was around ten million.

The number imported to the United States was less than one-half million.

7 posted on 09/20/2018 1:12:56 PM PDT by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrat's John Dean])
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To: Steely Tom

Brazil was Portugal’s colony.....................


8 posted on 09/20/2018 1:13:40 PM PDT by Red Badger (Q..........................Future Proves Past..............WWG1WGA.....................)
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To: reaganaut1
It is in their DNA. It is a genetic trait that is passed down generation to generation. If it were merely a local phenomenon then you wouldn't see the same thing repeated in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Bolivia, Brazil, etc. Pretty much everywhere south of our border is that way. There are some isolated nice regions in Chile and Argentina, but those areas are populated by mostly pure European stock: Welsh, German, English, French.
 
9 posted on 09/20/2018 1:15:43 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie ("Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.")
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To: reaganaut1

Chiraq needs to step up their game.


10 posted on 09/20/2018 1:16:58 PM PDT by rktman (Enlisted in the Navy in '67 to protect folks rights to strip my rights. WTH?)
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To: Steely Tom

At least they are a world leader in something.

In Bananas Woody Allen’s character said his country was number one in hernias. At least number one in something.


11 posted on 09/20/2018 1:19:46 PM PDT by frank ballenger (.End noncitizen & illegals voting & leftist media news censorship or we're finished.)
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To: Red Badger

We mustn’t forget that there were already some murderous people in the New World before the Spanish. The Aztecs, for one.


12 posted on 09/20/2018 1:28:50 PM PDT by laplata (Leftists/Progressives have diseased minds.)
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To: Steely Tom
Can you offer any explanation of why this has become more and more so in the last thirty years. Brazil has always been a place where it was easy to die but today it seems it is beyond reality. I know a fellow who married an upper middle class Brazilian woman from Sao Paulo and lived there for several years. I asked him about this and he just mumbled some embarrassed crap about poverty and oppression.
13 posted on 09/20/2018 1:32:03 PM PDT by robowombat (Orthodox)
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To: robowombat

The drug trade. Gangs. Extreme gap between rich and poor.


14 posted on 09/20/2018 1:34:12 PM PDT by AC86UT89
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

I agree that there is some sort of genetic taint on mixed-race Latin Americans.

But also consider that about one-third of Latin Americans are white. I divide the population of these countries into two classes: “Spaniards” and another word beginning with “s” that I don’t think I’d be allowed to use here.

Just read about the Aztec practice of human sacrifice. These Native American cultures were violent to the core.

The Cubans I grew up with back in the 1970s were for the most part obviously of either pure Spanish descent or so lightly mixed as not to matter. We had no problems with them at my high school in Miami — they were first generation Americans, most of us were second generation, mainly Italian and Jewish from New York.

Mexicans, on the other hand, are the inheritors of one of the sickest cultures in human history.

“But the Aztecs built and empire. And their architecture was magnificent — just look at those pyramids.”

The problem is what happened on those pyramids.


15 posted on 09/20/2018 1:37:34 PM PDT by Nothingburger
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To: laplata

Yes, and they married them.................


16 posted on 09/20/2018 1:39:34 PM PDT by Red Badger (Q..........................Future Proves Past..............WWG1WGA.....................)
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To: robowombat
Can you offer any explanation of why this has become more and more so in the last thirty years.

I only know what, not why. I could hazard a guess, but it would be completely unscientific and I have nothing to gain by putting it on the internet.

17 posted on 09/20/2018 1:42:13 PM PDT by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrat's John Dean])
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To: reaganaut1

Caracas, VZ is the worst.


18 posted on 09/20/2018 1:47:34 PM PDT by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~ Eat Sleep Fly Repeat ~)
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To: Nothingburger
You are absolutely right. The Spaniard stock of Latin America has no more violence than European stock anywhere. Cubans are an excellent example as you point out. They should not be conflated with the afro-mestizo-aztec-mayan-inca Amerindian populace.

A friend of mine was stationed in Panama in the early sixties. He used to regale us with stories of his adventures in the region, and the gruesome, unspeakable violence he witnessed there among the native peoples. We were mesmerize by his tales, long before America had been invaded by MS13.


 

19 posted on 09/20/2018 1:55:42 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie ("Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.")
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To: reaganaut1

Dumb article. There are dangerous places in all of Latin America, of course (although Mexico is technically NOT “Latin America”.... Mexico is actually part of NORTH America). You can, for example, live in Oaxaca, which is a beautiful, temperate city of about half a million, and almost never worry about drug violence. I lived there for a bit and it is safer there than any mid sized city I have ever seen (my brother says any city in Japan is safer). I never worried about my safety, and I carry a handgun (CC Licensed) almost everywhere here. You could also be in Aguas Calientes, Veracruz (more iffy), Guadalajara, or if you want to see something really COOL, you could go right into the middle of the most dangerous drug infested state in MX, and stay in Cheran.... a city of 30,000 that got so fed up with the drug violence that they ABOLISHED ALL POLITICIANS AND FORBADE ELECTIONS. THere is NO municipal government.... AT ALL. It has been that way for 7 years now, and the murder rate has fallen to zero. Corruption is nonexistent, and amazingly, the water system, sewer, power, TV, and trash collection STILL WORKS.... and works better than anywhere other city in MX. Narcos showed up and tried to bully some citizens and they called a meeting with them, told them they would get their a$$es shot off if they returned. You should check out the vids on YouTube about the place if you don’t believe me.

Anyway, If you are in the high drug trafficking states (Michoacan... with the exception of Cheran....., Guerrero, Tamaualipas, Coahuila, Chihuahua, especially) then there is a danger of random violence. OR you go down and stupidly try to get involved in buying quantities of dope (I don’t do any drugs myself, other than alcohol and only a few beers at that), then yes, you will get killed, probably, but I won’t wail for you any more than if you were buying skag on the street in Chicago, Houston, Atlanta and got shot or knifed. I would steer clear of the crazy, and do.

What Mexico REALLY needs is an armed citizenry. They would put a stop to this crap in about 2 weeks. They know who the bad guys are. As it is, they are like most Americans, stupidly believing that “our government will protect us.”

It is sad, because it is really a beautiful country with some of the kindest, warmest and most gracious people I have ever known.


20 posted on 09/20/2018 2:20:31 PM PDT by mostly_lies
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