Body Count from Drug Cartel Wars Earns Mexican Cities Label of ‘Most Violent in the World’

Seven Mexican cities, including the border towns of Tijuana and Juarez, are among the world’s most violent, says a group that tracks homicide rates worldwide.

This has to do with Mexico being the home of several warring drug cartels that try to kill each other off in a country where the government has taken a “hands off” approach toward organized crime and impunity is high, according to the group.

“Mexico for the past two years has been the world’s epicenter for homicidal violence. This is no fluke. In 2019 and 2020, the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has applied the worst crime-control policy,” the Mexico City-based Citizens Council for Public Safety and Judicial Justice said.

The group says Lopez Obrador hasn’t moved against organized criminal groups, which it says are responsible for much of the violence, under the assumption the criminals “will behave well” if police leave them alone. The government also is pursuing a policy of social spending hoping people will say no when gangs try to recruit them. The council calls both strategies “questionable.”

The council every year publishes a list of the most violent cities in the world based on murder rates. Tijuana was number one in the 2019, study, followed by Juarez.

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Celaya’s 109 murders per 100,000 inhabitants were greater than Tijuana’s 105. The group ranks Juarez as the third-deadliest city in the world with 103 murders per 100,000 population. Mid-sized Mexican cities in Sonora, Guanajuato and Baja California followed, with St. Louis, Mo., coming in seventh with 87.83 murders per 100,000 people. Baltimore is 16th on the list.

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