Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank, noted in a recent speech, “Latin America has 8% of the population, but contributes 20% of the world’s homicides […] each day, around 350 homicides are committed in this region.” This is not new information. In a recent meeting at the World Bank, a senior staff member showed some figures that highlighted Latin America as the most violent region in the world, with a rate of 29 homicides a year per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Africa, with 17 per year.
As a Mexican interested in security issues, I am familiar with these kinds of figures. But I immediately thought: The most violent region in the world? Data can get tricky, and while these broad figures can be helpful as a reference, the picture in Latin America is much more complex. For example, Bolivia, with a rate of 9 homicides per 100,000 people, is a far cry from Honduras, with a rate of 82. The situation is similar at the city level: San Pedro Sula, Honduras has a homicide rate of 159, which is far from the 17 of Bogota, Colombia.
But assuming the data is correct, it is shocking that 75% of the countries in Latin America suffer from what is considered “epidemic violence” (a rate of more than 10 homicides/100,000 inhabitants, according to the WHO). And this leads to the question: Why Latin-America? What is it in this region that is creating conditions for people to die so violently? A few of the standard answers:
“It must be poverty and unemployment. The only thing left for young people is the use of violence and crime to survive.” But, is there more poverty and unemployment in Latin America than in Africa? If you compare countries within Latin-America, Bolivia is poorer, but much less violent than Mexico, so this does not seem right.
“It is inequality, which generates resentment in society and leads to violent actions.” Well… Chile suffers high inequality and has low levels of violence, right?
“Then, it must be the rupture of the social fabric and the culture of violence that some Latin-American countries have.” Ok… and how do we measure that?
“It must be the drug prohibition policy and the massive amounts of money that it generates, which weakens and corrupts state institutions, making them incapable of protecting its citizens?” Probably. But a lot of drugs pass through Turkey into Europe, and it has a relatively low homicide rate.
There is obviously no single answer to this issue, and we can find exceptions to all cases. I do not want to simplify complexity, and I am sure that all of these variables (and others) affect, in different magnitudes, the level of violence in the region.
UCLA professor and crime and drug policy expert, Dr. Mark Kleiman notes that a key variable to crime and violence is a bad decision-making process by the people that commit it. And so, solutions should focus on improving this process and on devising focused deterrent threats that actually deter “reckless, impulsive, short-term-oriented people.” Yes, it sounds too easy.
Furthermore, although not all countries face the same levels of violence, the “success” of strategies in one country may contribute to a worsening situation in another. A recently published study by Daniel Mejiaand his colleagues at Los Andes University of Colombia, indicates that cocaine seizures in Colombia contributed to increasing violence in Mexico, and the increase in cocaine production in Ecuador and Peru in 2006. This is what is known as the “balloon effect” – instead of solving the problem, it is just displaced from one country to another.
For this reason, it is important to address the violence problem on a regional basis, experimenting with innovative alternatives and replicating what has been successful elsewhere, using evidence-based public policy where possible. A good example of this is the recent Organization of American States Report on the Drug Problem in the Americas, which presents a diagnosis of the situation with public policy alternatives and scenarios that could happen in the future, like the “together” scenario, where “the emphasis shifts from controlling drugs to preventing crime, violence, and corruption.”
By studying the causes of violence and experimenting with public policy solutions, we will make progress toward finding solutions to the serious problem of violence afflicting Latin America. Former IBM executive Dr. Richard Staub recently wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “the recognition of complexity is at its core a view of the world that makes us more humble and more open. It is the awareness that too often our interventions will not achieve what we wanted and we will be shocked by unintended consequences. At the same time, it is the acknowledgement that simplistic ‘can do’ thinking and linear approaches won’t be sufficient. And it is the prod to us to better understand why.”
Staub was writing about business management, but when macro statistics are as shocking as those coming from Latin America, this view of complexity is just as relevant to public policy. Standard explanations of violence and crime, not only in Latin America but in many other places, fall short and ignore the problem’s multi-causality and complexity. Understanding the intertwined causes of crime in Latin America is as crucial for those studying the region as it is for policy makers hoping to solve the region’s problems.
Spanish-language versions of this article appeared in Vanguardia and Mexico Seguridad.
Jose I Lobo Carrillo is a second year Master of International Development Policy student at the McCourt School of Public Policy. He has worked for the federal government of Mexico on security and development issues. He is currently interning at the National Strategy Information Center.