Numbers in the news

06/15/10
Latin America and the Caribbean
Counternarcotics

Three articles in today's news provided interesting statistics about security and narcotrafficking in Latin America: Bolivia's chief of the FELCN (the U.S.-aided Police Special Forces for Counternarcotics), Félix Molina, provided the following statistics about FELCN operations in 2010:

  • 6,237 counternarcotics operations have been carried out so far this year;
  • 14.8 tons of cocaine and more than 922 tons of marijuana have been seized;
  • 2,713 hectares of coca have been eradicated
  • 1,777 people linked to the narcotrafficking have been detained, 127 of whom are foreigners;
  • Of the 127 foreigners, 72 were Colombians, 55 Peruvians, 19 Brazilians, and 7 Chileans. Other countries listed include Argentinians, Spanish, French, Mexicans and more (We know this adds up to more than 127, but these are the numbers as they appear in the El Deber article).

The ACAN-EFE wire service published numbers announced at a conference by an official of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which reveal Central America as a region with one of the world's highest murder rates. According to the article, the vice-president of the IACHR, Paulo Sérgio Pinherio, argued that the policies used to combat insecurity in the region "are insufficient" and are "suicide in that they do not strengthen the rule of law and democracy." The murder-rates for 2008 for the Central American countries included in the article are as follows:

  • El Salvador: 71 murders/100,000 inhabitants;
  • Honduras: 58 murders/100,000 inhabitants;
  • Guatemala: 48 murders/100,000 inhabitants;
  • Costa Rica: 11 murders/100,000 inhabitants.

And finally, as Mexico is experiencing its "bloodiest days yet," today's Wall Street Journal includes an article about a New Mexico State University librarian, Molly Molloy, who has been keeping a tally of drug-cartel-related killings in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. According to Ms. Molloy's count, in 2009 alone, Ciudad Juárez experienced 2,633 drug-related homicides. This outnumbers all murders in the top eight U.S. cities combined. Below is the Wall Street Journal's graphic representing this finding.