this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
-20 points (23.7% liked)

No Stupid Questions

44937 readers
1652 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

top 14 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Your linked article says this:

macroeconomic instability often fuels spikes in violence: a recession in LAC is associated with a 6 percent increase in homicides the following year, while inflation spikes above 10 percent are linked to a 10 percent rise in homicides the year after. Growing inequality further exacerbates the link between economic stagnation and crime.

sound economic policy plays a preventive role. Stability, low inflation, robust social safety nets, and opportunities that reduce inequality and expand access to education and employment are critical to breaking the cycle of violence and stagnation. Financial authorities are also uniquely positioned to weaken criminal networks by addressing illicit markets, curtailing financial flows, and tackling money laundering—cutting off resources that sustain organized crime.

because the impact of crime extends far beyond direct economic costs, economic policymakers must adopt a broader role by targeting high-risk groups, improving crime monitoring, and enhancing interagency coordination.

In Rosario province, Argentina implemented a comprehensive strategy to combat crime, including territorial control of high-risk neighborhoods by the Federal Police, stricter prison systems for high-profile offenders, and collective prosecution of criminal groups under new legislation like the anti-mafia law. These efforts, alongside progress on a juvenile penal code to deter drug traffickers from recruiting minors, have led to 65% reduction homicides in 11 months. In Honduras, strategic security reforms contributed to a 14% decline in the homicide rate and an 8% increase in public confidence in law enforcement.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 1 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Those are relative explanations as in relative to the region. Compare it to Africa where the crime rate and murder rate is quite different despite there being active wars on the continent. Violence is of course present but not at the same level as in South America.

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Relative?

There is a long list of correlations.

A lot of the "relative" is within the same country and just a varied time frame so your different reguon interpretation is flawed.

You seem to need simplistic answers and the quote above pretty clearly points to recessions, gang activity (presumably related to drugs), inequality and governance as having some correlation (but I'm lazy and didn't properly read again). You could look up rates and compare if you wanted to have an idea of where some things might be different. That would be hugely speculative though

Violence is of course present but not at the same level as in South America.

Are you conflating violence (a broad term) with homicide?

[–] LeapSecond@lemmy.zip 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This is entirely speculation but the fact that there are active wars in the continent might affect how the data is classified. I don't know how the article you posted defines homicide. There are some rules here https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/statistics/iccs.html and it seems that deaths during war conflicts might not be counted as intentional homicides. Latin America hasn't had many wars but had/has many conflicts involving guerrillas, cartels and political groups. Is it possible that many of the resulting deaths are counted as homicides whereas similar violence in Africa is counted as, for example, civil war deaths?

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'm inclined to agree:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate-unodc

This source has made a clear definition of homicide that agrees with what you're saying. But in this data, a lot of Africa is missing and I think that includes well know areas with wars. So depending on how that gap in data is filled in could introduce errors. I didn't bother checking the OPs source

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

macroeconomic instability often fuels spikes in violence: a recession in LAC is associated with a 6 percent increase in homicides the following year, while inflation spikes above 10 percent are linked to a 10 percent rise in homicides the year after. Growing inequality further exacerbates the link between economic stagnation and crime.

if things are static in africa, then the base level of violence may be maintained, wheras increases in factors can lead to increases in violence.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Life has the same value to every living human. Everybody has got only one, and without it, there isn't much else.

But some do not recognize it (until late in their life).

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Life has the same value to every living human.

That's an extreme oversimplification, and that way of looking at it completely ignores people with depression and people committing suicide.
Obviously a life with more suffering is more likely to cause depression, and a life in depression is subjectively worth less.

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I get the point you're making but in the context of the OP the reply didn't seem too far off. Yours though is getting pretty close to declaring a depression epidemic in Latin America, I presume because your saw red in their reply

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

No that was a generalization, not specifically in the context of OP. Life definitely doesn't have the same value to all individuals as u/Zwuzelmaus claims. That is NOT specifically related to Latin America.
Regarding that read my response in the main thread.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

a life in depression is subjectively worth less.

Most people have their sufferings. In the end, most people even die from some suffering or other. That is just a part of life, and you cannot substract it away from it.

I don't know why depression should be so different from all other diseases or troubles. I don't know why it should affect the value of life? How would you value a life with no arms and legs, for example? How would the person with no arms and legs value their own life? Have you ever asked one?

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world -2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Most people have their sufferings. In the end, most people even die from some suffering or other. That is just a part of life

I think you skipped an interim there.

I don’t know why depression should be so different from all other diseases or troubles.

Other diseases can cause depression, but it is only when depression hits the subjective value of your life really degrades.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 0 points 3 days ago

You seem to think that...

SUBJECTIVE

... deserves so many capital letters AND is the only thing that counts. Well, then maybe I should officially allow you to NOT read my texts anymore.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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.