The Gallup, Inc. world headquarters in Washington D.C. (Photo courtesy of katmeresin on Flickr)

A study released on Monday, 13th May, indicates that out of 134 countries worldwide, Venezuelans are the least likely to feel safe.

Gallup, a research-based company known for its trusted public-opinion polls, conducts safety and security studies every year, asking citizens of participating countries if they feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area that they live. The recently released data comes from the most recent study, conducted in 2012.

In the 2012 poll, nearly two-thirds of Venezuelans responded that they did not feel safe walking alone at night, with only 24% indicating otherwise.

South Africa came in just behind Venezuela in the 2012 poll, with 73% of its citizens reporting that they did not feel safe walking alone at night where they live.

Gallup researchers collected the data from approximately 1,000 telephone and in-person interviews with participants aged 15 and older in each country.

According to Gallup, although Venezuela no longer releases official crime statistics to the public, the country has some of the highest homicide, kidnapping, and drug trafficking rates in all of Latin America.

The release of data indicating Venezuela as the country where citizens feel most unsafe coincides with President Maduro’s announcement earlier this week that troops would be deployed to Caracas to increase safety.

Of the 134 countries included in the Gallup study, in 31 less than 50% of adults indicated that they felt safe walking alone at night. Twelve of these 31 countries are in Latin America, a statistic that Gallup researchers think is directly related to slowed economic growth and lack of stability in the region in comparison with the rest of the world after the global crisis of 2008.

Other Latin American countries that ranked high on the Gallup list of places where citizens feel most unsafe are the Dominican Republic at number seven, Bolivia at ten, Haiti at 11, Paraguay at 15, Argentina at 16, and Colombia at number 17.

The appearance of these countries with such high numbers of citizens reporting feeling unsafe walking alone at night is not surprising, as UN statistics show that although only 8% of the world’s population lives in Latin America, 42% of global homicides occur in the region.

Nine Mexican police officers were killed on Tuesday evening in the southern state of Guerrero as the country’s violent drug war rolls on.

Mexico’s state prosecutor’s office announced the deaths on Wednesday.

The officers were attacked in police vans during a routine surveillance check. The attack is believed to have been carried out by 30 gunmen in vehicles who surrounded the officers and opened fire.

Additionally, one other officer has been seriously injured, according to the authorities.

A spokesperson said: “The state police officers were conducting a routine patrol in the municipality when they were surprised by a group of gunmen and a confrontation began.”

“Police from three levels of the government arrived at the scene to protect the crime scene and to begin removing the corpses of the officers,” the spokesperson added. 

Guerrero is known for the bloody disputes and turf wars between criminal organisations, which are connected to the Los Zetas and the Knights Templar drug cartels.

It is estimated that around 70,000 people have lost their lives from Mexico’s drug-related violence since December 2006.

Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, less than two weeks after taking office, gave indications of his strategy regarding one of the most pressing issues facing the country: crime.

Yesterday he announced that his 2013 budget proposal, currently under review in Congress, includes US$9m for prevention programs, an increase from previous years. “My administration proposes, within the strategy we have for the security and peace between Mexicans, to put special emphasis on prevention,” the president explained. The budget is designed for “the greatest prevention activity against what Mexico does not want: insecurity, unease, and least of all a climate of violence.”

United States Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and members of Peña Nieto’s cabinet met today to discuss security and commerce concerns. Governing Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong planned to appeal to Napolitano to further the Mérida Initiative, a joint crime-fighting program, and for reciprocity in bilateral cooperation regarding security, especially concerning border affairs. “One of the proposals will be: all the support and backing for the United States’ security interests, but we require and demand all the support and backing for Mexico’s interests,” Osorio Chong told Voz de América. Napolitano and US Ambassador to Mexico Anthony Wayne’s visit will last three days.

Peña Nieto also highlighted the benefits of culture and the arts. “Education, art, and culture are instruments that will empower and allow us to truly avoid that children and young people, for lack of other options, might wind up being victims and being kidnapped by organised crime,” he asserted during the inauguration of the Musical Arts Centre in the northwestern state of Tijuana. Peña Nieto has instructed Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, official of the National Culture and Art Advisory (Conacultra) to replicate the centre throughout the country.

The alarming rise in organised, often violent, crime that dominated much of his predecessor’s six years in office poses one of the greatest challenges for Peña Nieto’s administration. According to private research centre México Evalúa, a total of 101,199 people have been murdered since 2006, an increase of 36% from the previous administration.

On Sunday, close to 2,000 police and military personnel occupied five of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest shantytowns. The operation lasted for 30 minutes and is part of the Brazilian security forces’ attempts to pacify the shantytowns and stop drug trafficking.

Yesterday morning close to 2,000 Brazilian police, backed by helicopters and armoured marine, took control over five dangerous shantytowns, or favelas, in the Manguinhos and Jacarezinho complex. It was one of the most efficient favela operations in history. No guns were fired and there were no casualties. However, three arrests were made and they seized 60kg of cocaine and several weapons.

These specific shantytowns in the north of Rio are considered the centre of crack consumption in the city and have since long been controlled by the powerful Comando Vermelho drug gang. The area is commonly called the “Gaza strip” due to the danger of crossing it. The surrounding area outside of the shantytowns is considered an important area that splits central Rio from the richer northern suburbs, and hosts many big subway line stations. In the same neighbourhood are some of the main avenues in the city that will be used as transporting routes during the 2016 Olympics.

“The important thing now is the return of the territory to society and especially transport routes that cut the region, where millions of cariocas [Rio residents] travel through every day,” said Secretary of Security in the state of Rio de Janeiro José Mariano Beltrame.

The raid is one among many planned by state governor Sérgio Cabral Filho to clean up the city in preparation for the Football World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016.

“The next step of the occupation will now be to continue to search for drugs, weapons and criminals,” said Rio de Janeiro’s military police spokesman Federico Caldas.

The Mexican Navy confirmed the death of Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano (‘El Lazca’) a founder and leader of the criminal organisation Los Zetas, who had been murdered on Sunday in a battle in the state Coahuila. The navy authorities presented two photos with a corpse and research results, identical to Lazcano.

The Mexican media had reported the disappearance of ‘El Lazca’s body on Monday. Some media reported the robbery of the body and its delivery to his family. However, the navy reaffirmed that the body had been transported to the authorities of the state Coahuila.

‘El Lazca’ has been recognised as one of the most cruel narco dealers in recent Mexican history and responsible for massive beheadings and multiple murders. He was also appointed an organiser of a fire at a casino, when it was full of people inside.

In fact, this is the third time that the Mexican government announces the death of El Lazca. In September 2007 he was also reported  dead in the state of Tamaulipas, close to the border with the US . The death announcement was repeated later in June 2011 and denied by representatives of Los Zetas.

Security Minister Nilda Garré today denied that there was an increase in the crime rate in the capital.

“There is no such thing as a crime rate increase in Buenos Aires,” declared Garré to press this morning outside a downtown city hotel. The government official went on to affirm that certain areas of crime were in fact “decreasing” and pointed to her recent initiative Plan Unidad Cinturon Sur as being a key factor in the decline of crime in the South of the city. The project was launched on 4th July 2011 and involved the deployment of 2,500 troops from the gendarmerie and national coast guard to Southern parts of the city of Buenos Aires.

Garré also highlighted the need for “more participation and organisation” from the local communities in order to further tackle crime rates and assured the press that she will continue in her mission “to purify” the police force.

Among the complaints against the government in last week’s street protests was a demand for greater security on the streets.

Garré spoke before she was due to inaugurate the Second Regional Encounter of Strategic Orientation for the United Nations’ International Police, a conference of Latin American security forces. A press release describes the purpose of today’s international conference as “to ensure professionalism within the police force.”  The program is a U.N. peace-keeping initiative.

The homicide rate in Bogotá, Colombia decreased by 44% in the month of August, to 16.1 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, according to City Mayor Gustavo Petro Urrego. This is down from August of 2011, when the homicide rate was 22 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

The Andean capital city has not seen a homicide rate this low since 1984.

Petro credits the reduction in homicides to the disarmament decree implemented on 1st February 2012. The law prohibits the bearing of arms in all public spaces throughout the city. Exceptions are made for active members of the Fuerza Pública, official government bodyguards, accredited personal safety agents, and members of certain sporting clubs, among others.

Since the law’s implementation, gun deaths in the city have fallen by 58%, according to the mayor’s office. Of 143 homicides in August 2011, 100 were committed with a firearm. Of 80 homicides in August 2012, 42 involved a firearm.

“In the entire decade, the city has never reached results so favourable with regard to personal safety,” Petro said.

In August, five of the city’s 20 localities – Chapinero, Teusaquillo, Antonio Nariño, Puente Aranda, and Candelaria – did not report any homicides. According to authorities, the city overall saw a 19% reduction in violent crime and robberies, and 22% in cellphone theft.

According to the city governments’ website Bogotá Humana, the disarmament decree is “just one part of the process” of demystifying guns and their association with security, prestige, and economic gain.

Petro implied that the law’s positive results could have a similar impact throughout the rest of the country. “If we ever see the day that the complete regulation of firearms is in the hands of the state, you can be sure that the level of homicides in all of Colombia will decline radically.”

In Caracas, capital of neighboring Venezuela, the homicide rate is 71 cases per 100,000 inhabitants as of July 2012, according to the Observatorio Metropolitano de Seguridad Ciudadana.

The Madres del Dolor Association submitted a letter this morning criticising Security Minister Nilda Garré for the government’s silence after protests held in response to the killing of two brothers in Cañuelas.

The association was formed in 2004 by a group of Argentine women who lost their innocent children in different crimes and situations of violence. After sending the letter to the security ministry, Viviam Perrone, president of the association, read the document on Radio 10.

The letter emphasized the crime that resulted in the death of two brothers at a supermarket in Cañuelas, as well as other recent violent crimes that have taken place in the province of Buenos Aires.  Perrone commented on the radio program that “the feeling we have is that, the people who should be moved by these occurrences, don’t even move a muscle.” The letter stated: “Pain and impunity attack us again and again. And what is the response? Silence.”

Perrone stressed that she and the association were seeking concrete solutions to problems of crime and violence taking place in Argentina.  The document ended by affirming that: “we are looking for definitive solutions, solutions for those who need to look towards a violent life in order to survive, and solutions for those of us who want to live in peace with what’s left of our families.”

US officials announced today the arrest of seven in connection with a major money-laundering ring used by drug gang, Zetas, to funnel drug proceeds through American horse racing.

US authorities have cited the case as an example of the penetration of Mexican gangs into legitimate US businesses.  A total of 14 have been indicted in connection to the case.

Authorities arrested suspects in connection with the horseracing scheme across the US in California, Texas, and the Ruidoso Downs racetrack in New Mexico.

Miguel Angel Trevino, known by the street moniker “Z40” is believed to be the ringleader of the cross-border horse racing scheme.

Prosecutors announced that Zetas members used drug money to buy American quarter horses, which race over short distances.

Brazenly giving the horses names carrying obvious crime and drug references such as “Corona Cartel” and “Number One Cartel” the success of the horses allowed the gang members to purchase top trainers and Jockeys.

Horses connected to the crime syndicate won major prizes such as the All American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs where horse, Mr. Piloto, captured US$ 1 mill on Labor Day, 2010 in New Mexico.

The cartel used a company named Tremor Enterprises, as well as many others, fronts.

Since 2008, Trevino and brother Oscar Omar Trevino Morales directed millions of dollars in drug money to brother Jose and his wife for buying, breeding, training, and racing the horses across the US.

According to authorities, cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino and his brother are still at large and are believed to be somewhere in Mexico.

Buenos Aires and Mendoza have been signalled as dangerous areas, according to travel warnings issued by six countries.

Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Brazil, all speaking from government agencies, upped their warning levels for travellers after a series of violent crimes where foreigners were victims.

The US site says travellers should be cautious in areas like San Telmo and La Boca, adding that criminals work in groups, and people should assume they are armed.

“Street crime in the larger cities, especially greater Buenos Aires and Mendoza, is a problem for residents and visitors alike,” it states.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s travel advice site warns its citizens that they should avoid protests and demonstrations.

“There have been an increasing number of protests against British interests in Argentina in the context of the higher profile being given to the Falkland Islands issue during 2012 – the 30th anniversary of the Falklands conflict,” it states.

Brazil’s Consulate General in Buenos Aires also recommends that people “avoid walking on the streets or in deserted places at night,” and suggests people phone taxis after 10pm rather than take one off the street.

On 8^th February, French tourist Laurent Schwebel was stabbed to death in broad daylight after a man tried to steal his camera near the Malvinas memorial in Retiro.

A Buenos Aires Pub Crawl staff member was also attacked 5^th February and almost died after having his neck cut open.

Last July, the bodies of two French tourists were found in San Lorenzó, in the province of Salta. Forensic experts determined that they had been sexually assaulted and shot.