Puerto Vallarta (PVDN) – Nine of the 10 most violent cities in the world, based on their registered homicide rates per 100,000 inhabitants, are located in Mexico, according to the results of the study carried out by the civil association Mexican Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice.
The list is headed by the metropolitan area of Colima, Colima (Colima, Comala and Villa de Álvarez) with 601 homicides in 2022, with a rate of 181.94 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants (h/100,000 inhab).
It is followed by the metropolitan area of Zamora, Michoacán (Zamora, Jacona and Tangancícuaro with 310,575 inhabitants) with 552 homicides registered in 2022, with a rate of 177.73 h/100 inhab.
In third position is Ciudad Obregón, Sonora with 328,430 residents, which in 2022 registered 454 homicides and a rate of 138.23 h/100,000 inhabitants. It is followed in fourth place by the metropolitan area of Zacatecas, Zacatecas (Guadalupe and Zacatecas with 363,996 inhabitants), registering 490 homicides last year and a rate of 134.62 h/100,000 inhabitants.
In fifth position is Tijuana, Baja California Mexico (Tijuana and Playas de Rosarito with 2,070,875 inhabitants) which registered 2,177 homicides in 2022 and a rate of 105.12 h/100,000 inhab.
The sixth place is occupied by the metropolitan area of Celaya, Guanajuato (Apaseo el Grande and Cortázar with its 742,662 inhabitants) which registered 740 homicides and a rate of 99.64 h/100,000 inhabitants.
The city of Uruapan, Michoacán, with 360,338 inhabitants, occupies the seventh position in the international ranking with 282 homicides registered in 2022 with a rate of 78.26 h/100,000 inhabitants.
The only non-Mexican city that is among the first 10 positions was New Orleans, United States with 376,971 inhabitants that in 2022 registered 266 homicides and a rate of 70.56 h/100 thousand inhabitants.
The ninth place is Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua with its 1,527,482 inhabitants and 1,034 homicides in 2022, given a rate of 67.69 h/100,000 inhabitants.
The list of the 10 most violent cities is concluded by Acapulco, Guerrero with 782,661 inhabitants, which in 2022 recorded 513 homicides and a rate of 65.5 h/100,000 inhabitants.
After appearing in the 2021 ranking in 47th place, Guadalajara managed to leave the list of the 50 most violent cities in the world.
Guadalajara has periodically entered and exited this scale, appearing in 2019 and 2021 and reaching a maximum of site 40 on this list. Another Mexican city that managed to leave the ranking in 2022 was Culiacán, Sinaloa.
During the presentation of the results, which have been made public every year since 2009, it was highlighted that Colima is close to the homicide rates per 100,000 inhabitants that prevailed in Medellín, Colombia in the late eighties and the beginning of the nineties, when the war between the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar and the Colombian State took place, to prevent his extradition to the United States.
Of the 50 most violent cities in the world, 17 of these are Mexican, with an average age among the victims between 21 and 35 years of age.
The situation in the cities of Mexico is the result of failed policies applied so far this century, which have consisted of tolerating the violence of criminal groups and the very existence of their private militias, which challenge the State’s monopoly on violence. But the worst of these policies is the current one, that of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador: “hugs, not bullets.”
There is no precedent in the world of a national government -as is the case today in Mexico- that has adopted as a public security policy that of giving criminals a free hand to exercise violence and on top of that openly proclaims it, highlighted José Antonio Ortega Sánchez, president of the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice, AC.
By contrast, in countries that have not followed criminal-friendly policies, there has been notable progress. The cities of Guatemala and El Salvador are still out of the ranking. Brazil has fewer and fewer cities and lower rates. The rates of Honduran cities continue to drop, while in the years 2011 to 2014, San Pedro Sula was in first place with high homicide rates, he added.
The exercise was carried out based on official data in cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants, however, the organization highlights, the biggest obstacle they face is the lack of transparency.
Cities from countries suffering from open armed conflicts were not included, as has been the case in Syria, Sudan, or Yemen, since the majority of violent deaths do not correspond to the universal definition Methodology of the ranking of the 50 most violent cities in the world, but to deaths caused by war operations, according to the classification of the World Health Organization, the organization highlights.
Puerto Vallarta (PVDN) - Nine of the 10 most violent cities in the world, based on their registered homicide rates per 100,000 inhabitants, are located . . .
