Latin America has traditionally been the world’s most unequal region, but it has recently shown signs of change. Through the 2000s, high international prices for exports have brought inequality levels down. Governments have made more concerted efforts to tackle poverty, mounting schemes such as conditional cash transfer, where recipients must meet certain criteria to access welfare benefits.
But despite all of this, levels of inequality remain high—and all the while, violence and insecurity have increased across much of the region.
This comes in part from the growth of drug-related organized crime, as well as the youth gangs that have proliferated in much of the region—but extreme inequality is a big part of the problem too.
The nature of violence and insecurity in Latin America reflects how unevenly the region has developed economically and socially since the boom years of the 2000s. Central American countries in particular have the worst problem with gang violence in Latin America, and some of the highest murder rates in the world. Part of the reason is because—with the exception of Costa Rica—these countries have especially weak ineffective governments, which have had less success at tackling inequality than various of their South American neighbors.
This means that levels of inequality in Central America are relatively higher than the rest of Latin America. Again, this has opened up a space for crime, and Mexican and South American drug cartels alike have strengthened their footholds in these especially precarious states.
Government initiatives to combat inequality and poverty, such as Venezuela’s Plan Bolivar 2000, have done little to make the region safer. Generally focusing on education, public health, and vaccination programs, they have principally targeted rural areas even though violence is increasingly an urban phenomenon.
