Of the total number of cities analyzed, the majority are located in Mexico followed by Brazil, the US, Colombia, South Africa, and Honduras.
Ever since Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in 2018, Colima, in the western state of the same name, turned into one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico.
Colima leads the Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice report, with a rate of 181.94 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the 2022 Ranking of the 50 most violent cities in the world, presented this Monday (02.20.2023) by the Citizen Council for Security Public and Criminal Justice.
“For the sixth consecutive year, a Mexican city is the most violent in the world. In 2022, the most violent Mexican city in the world was Colima,” said José Antonio Ortega, president of the organization, in a virtual conference. The homicide rate is the third highest since this classification was made in 2009, after the rate in 2021 of the Mexican Zamora, of 196.63, and the highest peak in Ciudad Juárez, with 229.06, in 2010.
In 2022, nine of the 10 most violent cities in the world were Mexican: Colima, Zamora, Ciudad Obregón, Zacatecas, Tijuana, Celaya, Uruapan, Juárez, and Acapulco. In this sense, Ortega highlighted that “Mexico is the country with the largest number of violent cities”, with 17 out of 50 cities with 300,000 inhabitants in the most recent report.
New Orleans, in the United States, is also added to the top 10 most violent cities, and at least four cities in Venezuela were not included “due to the lack of minimally reliable information.”
“Although Venezuela is the most extreme case of opacity in information on criminal incidents, there are setbacks in countries like Brazil and even in the United States,” said Leonardo García, national coordinator of Misión Rescate México.
Mexico registered 30,968 homicides in 2022, 7.1% less than in 2021, when 33,308 crimes of this type were registered, and after the two most violent years in its history, under the mandate of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with 34,690 murder victims, in 2019, and 34,554, in 2020.
Included in the 2021 ranking, the Mexican Culiacán and Guadalajara, the Brazilian city of Caruaru, and the American St. Louis left the list last year. Meanwhile, in 2022 the Colombian cities of Cartagena and Santa Marta, the American Cleveland, and the Mexican San Luis Potosí entered.
Of the 50 cities on the 2022 list, 17 are located in Mexico; in Brazil, 10; in the United States, 7; in Colombia, 6; in South Africa, 4; in Honduras, 2, and one each in Puerto Rico, Haiti, Ecuador, and Jamaica, respectively.
The report, criticized by the Mexican authorities in the past, analyzes violence in cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants and without an “open war conflict”, and has been running for 15 consecutive editions since 2009 when it began. The Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice defends that this is an instrument that can be used to take action.
“Mexico is the result of failed policies applied so far this century and has consisted of tolerating the violence of criminal groups and the very existence of their private militias that challenge the state’s monopoly on violence,” Garcia said.
Source: La Jornada
