THE WORLD'S MOST VIOLENT CITY

Our most dangerous cities – St. Louis, Camden (NJ), Detroit, Flint (MI) and Oakland – are pretty damn safe compared to Juarez. And all those scare tactics about the Mexican drug cartel violence spilling over our borders must be a lot of crap because that has not been evident in El Paso which sits right across the border from Juarez.

CIUDAD JUAREZ: FROM 304 MURDERS IN 2007 TO 3,156 IN 2010

Borderland Beat
January 3, 2011

With 3,156 murders in 2010, Ciudad Juarez ended its bloodiest year in a growing and unprecedented streak extending over the past three years.

The number of murders in 2010 was 21 percent higher than in 2009, when Cd Juarez suffered 2,601 murders. (all these figures are unofficial numbers based on the journalistic count.)

The number of murders in 2009 was 62.6 percent higher than in 2008, when 1,607 murders were counted.

But the huge growth of drug related homicides has its most extreme contrast in the figure recorded in 2007 of only 304 murders, which in the context of that year was already considered a very high number.

The number of murders in 2008 were 428 percent higher than in 2007, and if we look at a comparison of murders in 2007 versus 2010, the gap is an increase of 938 percent.

The wave of deaths that began during the month of November, 2007, has led to the conclusion that Juárez is the world's most violent city in spite of (or perhaps because of) the growth of the Mexican government’s security efforts.

Today there are approximately 12,000 military and federal, state and municipal police agents/officers operating in Cd Juarez under the command known as “Joint Operation Chihuahua”.

The conflict between the Sinloa cartel’s “Gente Nueva” and the Juarez cartel’s “La Linea”, and between them and the authorities, continues on its relentless, bloody course.