6 ms·

For comparison, Venezuela had a 57.15 murder rate in 2015 (per 100k habitants) while pre-war Syria had 2.23 in 2010. My point being that many countries in LatA

For comparison, Venezuela had a 57.15 murder rate in 2015 (per 100k habitants) while pre-war Syria had 2.23 in 2010. My point being that many countries in LatAm live in a disguised civil war state and it's just "normal" (far from it, actually).

meri_dian 9y ago
Wow. How much of that is due to drug cartels and gang violence though?
- sseveran 9y ago
  A lot. However drug cartels often also fill in as a form of local government in the areas they control. Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    I wonder how the graph would look if you included police violence? If the cartel is filling the void (granted the things they enforce are different) then you may as well make it an equal comparison. I really wonder how the US graph would look if you included people killed by police.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ provides the numbers for the US (it's up to 714 this year - 23 more than last year by this date). Last year the US police killed 1162 persons, so that's a rate of 0.36 per 100k inhabitants.
    - MichaelGG 9y ago
      In 2014, estimated murders in US is about 14,249. Estimated people killed by police is 1111 according to one site. So a 7-8% increase. Washington Post has a neat interactive page I came across. The most shocking thing is the unashamed misandry when it comes to police killings. This year, only 25 women were killed versus 556 men. That's rather ... disproportional. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/murder https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-... http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014 http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
    - meri_dian 9y ago
      Police killings are hardly equivalent to gang and cartel killings. Gangs murder people out of cold blood. The overwhelming majority of police killings involve people who present an immediate danger to the innocent and are violent, dangerous criminals.
      - tyingq 9y ago
        That's generally true, but there are places where the police and cartels are intermingled.
        meri_dian 9y ago
        Yes, I was writing about the US specifically
  - distances 9y ago
    > Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles. I wonder how big an impact the free flow of guns in Americas has had on the violence in the continent. It seems like one of the main reasons behind the extreme Mexican violence, at least, is the uncontrolled US weapons market.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      Some but I'm guessing it is minimal. The countries from Mexico to the south have had unstable regimes and violence for a long time (probably because the Spanish institutions were exploitative and exacerbated differences between the landholders/other and Europeans/natives). There have been lots of violent and terrorist movements from the 70s onward and even prior to that. Guns didn't help but the US is far from the only suppliers or cause.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Brazil is also a huge producer of guns. Given Venezuela's location at the edge of Central and South America, its hard to say where they would get most of their guns from.
    - justadeveloper2 9y ago
      People have been killing each other long before guns were invented, so I doubt very much it has any real effect. The "uncontrolled US weapons market?" Give me a break! The biggest seller of weapons to those countries is the US Government itself!
      - distances 9y ago
        The scale of potential violence with guns vs. without guns should be obvious, so not commenting on that. As for the US weapons flow to Mexico, there was a NPR article last year on the topic [1]. Wikipedia [2] mentions "many of the traceable weapons come from American weapons markets and festivals that do not have regulations for the buyers", which very much is the uncontrolled weapons market, right? To be fair, the Wikipedia page also points to the other direction with "weapons [..] come from either government personnel who defect to the cartels, or are sourced from Central American black markets". [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/in-mexico-tens-of-thousands-of-illegal-guns-come-from-the-u-s http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins
- mikaeluu 9y ago
  Imagine the amount of suffering these countries could be spare their people if they just legalized drugs of any kind (it's not like it not freely available anyway), and just swept the cartles income from under them.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    It's too late for that. The cartels are up and running in various industries like extortion and sex trafficking. The Mexican cartels control politics anyway, so good luck just making them go away.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    The drugs are mostly for export. Legalising them would run an increased risk of US military intervention.
  - neves 9y ago
    Nothing would change much. The countries would still be exploited by small a oligarchy. They would still have one of the worst wealth distribution in the world. And they would still have a ultra violent police that routinely kills a lot of poor, black and indigenous people.
tyingq 9y ago
Infographic showing per capita murder rates for that region, by country: http://www.insightcrime.org/images/2017/January-2017/17-13-1-HOMICIDE-RATES-MAP.jpg http://www.insightcrime.org/images/2017/January-2017/17-13-1... Edit: Though, of course, countries like Mexico and Brazil would look more alarming if this map was broken down into provinces/states.
elcapitan 9y ago
Syria being a dictatorship that makes people 'disappear' without official statistics, though.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  Are you implying that the Salafist-Jihadist rebels in Syria don't do the exact same? Because they make people "disappear" too, in addition to brutally and savagely executing people in public (decapitation, mutilation, etc). And I'm not just talking about the now-defunct Isil -- al-Qaeda (AKA Jabhat al-Nusra AKA Jabhat Fateh al-Sham AKA Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) are equally guilty of using religious pretext to subjugate and murder at their discretion. There's more to the situation in Syria than what CNN and MSNBC spoon-feed the ignorant masses.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    No, he's not implying that. He's saying that prior to 2010 (pre civil war), a lot of people could quietly disappear in Syria due to the government. CNN and MSNBC don't have anything to do with reading comprehension.
    - elcapitan 9y ago
      Exactly. Thanks.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
simonsarris 9y ago
Constant low grade civil war and dictators has been the offhand history of south america for a very long time, sadly. Definitely predates drug cartels and US influence. See Darwin: http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD From: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=F11&pageseq=183 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&... I only raise this because there is a common and lazy supposition to Venezuela's state of affairs that goes something like, "It must be drug cartels or the US that caused all the problems, fundamentally." The country's problems are probably nuanced, deeper, and older.

meri_dian 9y ago

Wow. How much of that is due to drug cartels and gang violence though?

sseveran 9y ago
A lot. However drug cartels often also fill in as a form of local government in the areas they control. Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  I wonder how the graph would look if you included police violence? If the cartel is filling the void (granted the things they enforce are different) then you may as well make it an equal comparison. I really wonder how the US graph would look if you included people killed by police.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    http://killedbypolice.net/ http://killedbypolice.net/ provides the numbers for the US (it's up to 714 this year - 23 more than last year by this date). Last year the US police killed 1162 persons, so that's a rate of 0.36 per 100k inhabitants.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    In 2014, estimated murders in US is about 14,249. Estimated people killed by police is 1111 according to one site. So a 7-8% increase. Washington Post has a neat interactive page I came across. The most shocking thing is the unashamed misandry when it comes to police killings. This year, only 25 women were killed versus 556 men. That's rather ... disproportional. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/murder https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-... http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014 http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    Police killings are hardly equivalent to gang and cartel killings. Gangs murder people out of cold blood. The overwhelming majority of police killings involve people who present an immediate danger to the innocent and are violent, dangerous criminals.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      That's generally true, but there are places where the police and cartels are intermingled.
      - meri_dian 9y ago
        Yes, I was writing about the US specifically
- distances 9y ago
  > Additionally they are often just as well armed as the police minus things like helicopters and armored vehicles. I wonder how big an impact the free flow of guns in Americas has had on the violence in the continent. It seems like one of the main reasons behind the extreme Mexican violence, at least, is the uncontrolled US weapons market.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Some but I'm guessing it is minimal. The countries from Mexico to the south have had unstable regimes and violence for a long time (probably because the Spanish institutions were exploitative and exacerbated differences between the landholders/other and Europeans/natives). There have been lots of violent and terrorist movements from the 70s onward and even prior to that. Guns didn't help but the US is far from the only suppliers or cause.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Brazil is also a huge producer of guns. Given Venezuela's location at the edge of Central and South America, its hard to say where they would get most of their guns from.
  - justadeveloper2 9y ago
    People have been killing each other long before guns were invented, so I doubt very much it has any real effect. The "uncontrolled US weapons market?" Give me a break! The biggest seller of weapons to those countries is the US Government itself!
    - distances 9y ago
      The scale of potential violence with guns vs. without guns should be obvious, so not commenting on that. As for the US weapons flow to Mexico, there was a NPR article last year on the topic [1]. Wikipedia [2] mentions "many of the traceable weapons come from American weapons markets and festivals that do not have regulations for the buyers", which very much is the uncontrolled weapons market, right? To be fair, the Wikipedia page also points to the other direction with "weapons [..] come from either government personnel who defect to the cartels, or are sourced from Central American black markets". [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/in-mexico-tens-of-thousands-of-illegal-guns-come-from-the-u-s http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/12/462781469/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Gun_origins
mikaeluu 9y ago
Imagine the amount of suffering these countries could be spare their people if they just legalized drugs of any kind (it's not like it not freely available anyway), and just swept the cartles income from under them.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  It's too late for that. The cartels are up and running in various industries like extortion and sex trafficking. The Mexican cartels control politics anyway, so good luck just making them go away.
- pjc50 9y ago
  The drugs are mostly for export. Legalising them would run an increased risk of US military intervention.
- neves 9y ago
  Nothing would change much. The countries would still be exploited by small a oligarchy. They would still have one of the worst wealth distribution in the world. And they would still have a ultra violent police that routinely kills a lot of poor, black and indigenous people.

tyingq 9y ago

Infographic showing per capita murder rates for that region, by country: http://www.insightcrime.org/images/2017/January-2017/17-13-1-HOMICIDE-RATES-MAP.jpg http://www.insightcrime.org/images/2017/January-2017/17-13-1... Edit: Though, of course, countries like Mexico and Brazil would look more alarming if this map was broken down into provinces/states.

elcapitan 9y ago

Syria being a dictatorship that makes people 'disappear' without official statistics, though.

ihsw2 9y ago
Are you implying that the Salafist-Jihadist rebels in Syria don't do the exact same? Because they make people "disappear" too, in addition to brutally and savagely executing people in public (decapitation, mutilation, etc). And I'm not just talking about the now-defunct Isil -- al-Qaeda (AKA Jabhat al-Nusra AKA Jabhat Fateh al-Sham AKA Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) are equally guilty of using religious pretext to subjugate and murder at their discretion. There's more to the situation in Syria than what CNN and MSNBC spoon-feed the ignorant masses.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  No, he's not implying that. He's saying that prior to 2010 (pre civil war), a lot of people could quietly disappear in Syria due to the government. CNN and MSNBC don't have anything to do with reading comprehension.
  - elcapitan 9y ago
    Exactly. Thanks.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

simonsarris 9y ago

Constant low grade civil war and dictators has been the offhand history of south america for a very long time, sadly. Definitely predates drug cartels and US influence. See Darwin: http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD http://imgur.com/Q68r0uD From: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=F11&pageseq=183 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&... I only raise this because there is a common and lazy supposition to Venezuela's state of affairs that goes something like, "It must be drug cartels or the US that caused all the problems, fundamentally." The country's problems are probably nuanced, deeper, and older.