Five of the 10 most dangerous cities in the world are located in Mexico according to a recent study published at the beginning of the year by the Mexican research group Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal (Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice).

The study shows that 45 of the 50 cities most violent in the world are in South America and 19 between Mexico and Central America. Five Mexican cities, Torreon, Chihuahua, Acapulco, Juarez and Durango, are in the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world. The Honduran city of San Pedro Sula claimed the unfortunate honor as most dangerous on the list. This position is not surprising since Honduras is a transit country for the majority of cocaine smuggled out of South America. The list also includes American cities such as New Orleans (21st), Detroit (30th), and St. Louis (41st).

Kidnapping, killings, rape and armed robberies are common in Latin-America. In many of these countries, public life is almost paralyzing from the fear of being hit by a stray bullet or being kidnapped.

Jose Cunha, a native Brazilian, explained that, compared to Europe, an everyday routine like going to a cash point to withdraw money is seen by many Latin-Americans with envy. “In my country before we withdraw money from a cash point we have to check several times that the street is clear of danger because we are afraid of being kidnapped or assaulted,” he said.

The report Crime and Violence in Central America: a Development challenge pointed out that crime rates and violence is related to drug cartels’ operations such as turf wars and vendettas between rival gangs. The cartels control the trafficking of drugs from South America to the United States especially , a business that is worth an estimated $13billion a year. The Sinaloa and Los Zetas are the two biggest cartels in terms of geographic presence.

United States is responsible for being the main firearms supplier to Latin American countries.  A Senate report in June 2011, Halting US Firearms Trafficking to Mexico, suggested that some 70% of firearms recovered from Mexican crime scenes in 2009 and 2010 and submitted for tracing came from the US.

A top US military official explained in the report that Mexico’s notoriously violent drug cartels get much of their weapons from stockpiles in Central America left over from conflicts in the region. General Douglas Fraser, head of the US Southern Command, said “there were between 45 million and 80 million weapons circulated in Central America, much of those left over from civil wars and other conflicts”.

Crime and violence related with drug trafficking hampers economic progress in Central America, obliging the states to divert their scarce resources to strengthen law enforcement instead of developing economic activity.

Therefore, many foreign companies or local entrepreneurs are put off to invest in Latin America. As a result, there are fewer jobs and more people, especially young teenagers that choose to enroll into drug cartels. According to the report, it is estimated that around 900 gangs are in Central America and most homicide victims are young men between the ages of 15 and 34.

Serrano Berther and Humberto Pérez, authors of the study, claim that weak criminal justice is the main issue regarding Central America drug trafficking. This weakness limits the efficacy of crime and violence punishment and prevention. “There is a vicious circle in the region where the high crime rates are contributing to weakening the criminal justice system,” they said.

The report suggests setting measures such as more transparent accusatory mechanisms, giving more power to prosecutors, strengthening public defense and changing sentencing mechanisms.

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Using social media to report on drug cartels has become an extremely dangerous practice for Mexican journalists. Last Saturday, the body of the 39-years-old newspaper editor Marisol Macias Castañeda was found decapitated alongside a threatening message: “Here I am, for my reports and yours.”

The note was signed with a ‘Z’, a letter that the police associate with the Zetas cartel, the most violent drug cartel at this time in Mexico. Next to the head, which had been placed in a flowerpot by the murderers, the police also found a couple of keyboard and a CD player.

The victim, who worked for the newspaper Primera Hora in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, near to the U.S. border, was an active member of the local social networking site called Nuevo Laredo en Vivo or ‘Nuevo Laredo Live’.

Under the nickname, La Nena de Laredo or ‘Laredo Girl’, Marisol used to encourage people to report the location of drug dealers’ meetings and drug sales points and any other information related to the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, engaged in a bloody fight for the control of drug trafficking in the states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.

Two weeks ago, a man and a woman were found hanging from a bridge, also in Nuevo Laredo, with a similar message warning people not to report drug violence on social networks. According to Reporters Without Borders, the last victim was the fourth female journalist to be murdered in Mexico since the start of the year.

“The grim landmark of 80 journalists killed in the past decade has just been reached, with the murders getting steadily more horrific as the years pass,” published the NGO on its website. “There seems to be no way out of this horror. The country is immersed in an all-out war and just writing the word ‘narcos’ or ‘trafficking’ can cost you your life.

What will be left of freedom of information while the barbarity continues?” Manuel Gabriel Fonseca Hernández, a young journalist who covers crime for El Mañanero de Acayucan, a newspaper in the south of Veracruz state, has been missing since 19 September. The day he disappeared, he had gone out to conduct interviews for a story he was doing for his main newspaper.

After social media in Mexico became a new tool to fight drug trafficking, people living in Mexican border cities started to post under nicknames to guaranty their anonymity and preserve their life. However, after these three violent murderers, social media users in northern Mexico will think twice before posting anything related to drug trafficking in the Internet.

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