The countries with the highest murder rates are not, as you might expect, in black Africa — they are in Latin America. El Salvador and Honduras top the list, and the only two countries outside of Latin America and the Caribbean in the top 15 are South Africa and Lesotho. Mexico currently ranks at 23 — they owe their relative distance from the top to their enormous population (over 120 million). If you rank nations by number of murders instead of murder rate, Mexico is third from the top, just after two even bigger nations: Brazil and India.
A big cause of these nightmarish murder rates is that many Latin American nations are so corrupt and inept that street gangs become so large and ferocious, they practically operate as competing governments. The result is an intensely violent struggle for legitimacy–and resources.
Below are some photos of what that power vacuum looks like, and it raises a question: at what level should persistent street violence be classified as civil war?
Gangs in this part of the world have military weapons:
In America, blacks have outpaced Hispanics in criminality for decades. But over the course of this century the black portion of the population is projected to stay roughly steady at 12 or 13 percent. Meanwhile, Hispanics will about double their share . With that will come the decay of government institutions such as the court system and police force, and an rise in corruption and nepotism. In that environment, it will be just a matter of time before the gangs of Latin America rise to power in the Latin parts of America.
A “Mexican Southsider” gang member in Los Angeles, California. (Credit Image: Mark Allen Johnson / ZUMAPRESS.com)