Despite representing just 8% of the world’s population, the region accounts for nearly one-third of global homicides.
Breaking Latin America’s Cycle of Low Growth and Violence
North and Sub-Saharran Africa are poorer than Latin America but have much less murder going on. What’s going on in Latin America?
The article doesn’t seem to show any context to this, are equally poor countries on other continents better or worse?
My guess is the main problems are probably poverty inequality and corruption. Catholicism may also be a problem, as every crime can be absolved by the church, and Catholics may believe themselves free from the ultimate personal consequences of their crimes.
So the corruption and inequality may create a sense of need for many people to need to balance the injustice, and combined with a lack of perceived ultimate consequence may be a toxic cocktail that stimulate violent crime.
This however is pure speculation on my part. But it seems evident there must be some kind of social factor to cause things to be so bad. And it seems to me that statistically poverty and Catholicism combined promotes this.