Latin America security by the numbers
Eleven countries have declared days of mourning for deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Iran, Nicaragua, Peru, and Uruguay
Venezuela suffered 16,072 homicides in 2012, according to numbers recognized by then-Vice President Nicolás Maduro. This is 1,980 more than the 2011 figure; the opposition calculates a homicide rate of 56 per 100,000 people. Observatorio Venezolana de Violencia, an NGO, estimated 21,600 homicides last year, for a rate of 73 per 100,000.
Brazilian aerospace company Embraer, together with U.S. joint-venture partner Sierra Nevada Corporation, has been awarded a $427 million U.S. Air Force contract to provide Super Tucano light air support aircraft, maintenance and training to the Afghan air force.
Through a program that will spend US$3.9 billion through 2017, Brazil and France are to produce “five submarines, one of them nuclear-propelled; 50 helicopters; a military shipyard; and a naval base, all with French technology,” EFE reports.
On March 3, it took 1,500 police and 200 Navy sharpshooters 25 minutes to take over the Complexo do Caju favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, part of the state government’s ongoing favela “pacification program.”
In Brazil there has been a land conflict-related murder on average every 12 days since the beginning of 2007. 32 rural activists were killed in 2012, a 10 percent increase over 2011. While that number is not low, attempted murders are even more common, and death threats occur on average almost every day, with 347 in 2011 alone.
Newly released documents reveal that Brazil’s military regime gave Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet US$115 million in aid in the first years after the 1973 coup that brought him to power.
After operating for a total of 50,000 hours, the Colombian Air Force’s U.S.-donated Helicopter Academy flight simulator has trained more than 4,000 pilots. Of those trained, 157 are from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Peru and Panama.
While the number of murders in Medellín, Colombia dropped 24% in 2012, the number of intra-city displacements and threats has dramatically increased. 9,941 people in 2012 had to flee their homes, an increase of 1,507 from 2011, according to the municipal ombudsman.
According to the Colombian NGO Somos Defensores, violence against the country’s human rights defenders increased by 66% from 2011 to 2012. In 2012 alone, 357 human rights defenders working in Colombia were attacked or received death threats from armed criminal groups. Of those, 69 were killed.
In the first three months of Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, 100 police from the three levels of government and the military have been murdered. In February alone, Mexico experienced 944 executions related to organized crime, or 34 per day, estimates the daily newpaper Milenio. When compared with January of this year, February shows an increase of 3 homicides every 24 hours.
The Mexican government estimated that related violence has left about 70,000 people dead since ex-President Calderón went on the offensive against organized crime groups.
The most recent estimate by the Mexican government puts the number of missing/disappeared persons since the beginning of ex-President Felipe Calderón’s administration (December 2006) at 26,122. That includes more than 20,000 ongoing official investigations, but 5,206 have yet to be verified.
11,000 migrants were kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico in 2012, according to the national human rights ombudsman.
According to the International Press Institute and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, 55 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006 for reasons related to their profession.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s plan to launch a new National Gendarmerie police force entails hiring 10,000 member officers by the end of the year. They are reportedly to come from the Army and Navy.
56.5 percent of 1,200 Salvadorans surveyed by LPG Datos said that El Salvador’s citizen security situation was “bad” or “very bad.” This is down from 64 percent in 2011. 83.7 percent said the same about the cost of living.
Thanks to WOLA Intern Elizabeth Glusman for contributing research assistance to this post.