Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - Organized crime is no longer just a public-security headache for Latin America and the Caribbean. It has become the region’s single biggest development hurdle, the World Bank warned Monday in its flagship Latin America and the Caribbean Economic Review (LACER). Unless governments curb soaring violence and criminal networks, the lender argues, the hemisphere will remain “trapped in a poor equilibrium” of low growth, high inequality and fragile institutions.
