Mexico’s War On Crime Now Ranks Among Latin America’s Bloodiest Conflicts

[longknife]

-- McClatchy News

MEXICO CITY — The revelation that as many as 27,000 people may have gone missing in Mexico in recent years renews attention to the huge human toll left by the war on crime that former President Felipe Calderon waged during his six years in office.

Combined with the 70,000 dead acknowledged recently by the new administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto, who succeeded Calderon on Dec. 1, the number of the disappeared makes the Calderon tenure the bloodiest period in Mexican history since the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century.

On Thursday, human rights campaigners said the numbers place Mexico far above some of the better-known Latin American human catastrophes of decades past, including the rule of military regimes in Argentina, Chile and Brazil and civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Read more @ http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/21/183820/mexicos-war-on-crime-now-ranks.html

And then, the War News Update editor provides these chilling statistics:

The bottom is a list of conflict totals for past Latin American conflicts:

Dead and missing in Latin American violence:

CHILE 1973-1990 (Augusto Pinochet regime) – 3,197
ARGENTINA 1976-1983 (Military dictatorship) – 10,000
EL SALVADOR 1932 (La Matanza) – 32,000
NICARAGUA 1981-90 (Contra war) – 60,000
PERU 1980-92 (Sendero Luminoso) – 69,000
EL SALVADOR 1979-1992 (civil war) – 75,000
COLOMBIA 1948-1958 (La Violencia) – 200,000
GUATEMALA 1960-1996 (civil war) – 250,000

Compared to this, our own losses in Iraq and Afghanistan pale.

 

[Mad Scientist]

I don't understand. I mean, guns are prohibited in Mexico so it should be one of the safest places on Earth.