Bogotá's Homicide Rate Dips, but the Region's Stays High

'Bogotá is no longer one of the most violent' cities, boasts the headline.

Bogotá's media celebrated a dip in the city's homicide rate to 'only' 16.7 per 100,000. That's still a terribly high number by world standards, but moderate in Latin America and positively low in the general context of Colombia, whose national rate is about 33 homicides per 100,000 people.

Bogotá's homicide rate, meanwhile, is half that of Medellin, where 34 people were murdered per 100,000 residents last year. But Medellin's homicide rate was a great improvement over the previous year, when the city suffered a rate of 52 homicides per 100,000 residents. And Colombia's third-largest city, Cali, ended last year as the world's 6th most violent city, with 90 homicides per 100,000 people.

For its part, Latin America is the world's most violent region.

Colombia's national homicide rate, in the low 30s per 100,000 population, is still the highest in South America, but way below some Central American nations. (Actually, Venezuela almost surely has a higher homicide rate than Colombia's, but Venezuelan authorities stopped releasing homicide numbers years ago.)

According to the police's statistics, many of these murders stem from gang battles. But those gangs aren't fighting for carrots. They're fighting over drug sales and territory in which to market illegal drugs. So, Colombia's violence is directly related to the outlawed drug economy. (During the most violent years of the Medellin Cartel, that city's homicide rate neared 350 per 100,000 people, perhaps a world record.)

But Colombia's violence pales in comparison to that in some poor Central American countries, whose police and legal systems are no match for the power of the cartels which traffic drugs across their territories. San Pedro Sula, , Honduras, had 187 homicides for each 100,000 residents last year. Some cities in northern Mexico, where drug cartels battle to control the United States market, have homicide rates almost as high.

Colombia's homicide rate peaked during the final years of the Medellin and then rose again during the early 2000s, when the war against leftist guerrillas was at its hottest.  

To put that in context, the World Health Organization labels a rate above 10 homicides per 100,000 people as 'epidemic.'

Unlike epidemics caused by viruses and bacteria, this one is completely human-caused, and therefore humans can stop it. But the region is far from trying the only realistic: ending the policies of drug prohibition, which push this multibillion-dollar market into the hands of violent, outlaw groups which settle their differences with guns and bombs.

In Bogotá, Mayor Petro may deserve credit for the city's homicide drop because of the restrictions he placed on gun ownership.

Bogotá is near the bottom of this ranking of the homicide rates in 15 cities in the Americas. 

Yet, the North and South American cities are far more violent than these European cities. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The UN's Vital Arms Control Treaty!

You probably haven't heard of it, but at the United Nations headquarters in New York they're discussing a treaty on arms traffic which could someday make Colombia a much safer place.

Unfortunately, a few confused fanatics in the United States make the treaty's passage unlikely anytime soon.

A Swedish-made AT4 anti-tank missle launcher
like those sold to Venezuela and then transferred to
the FARC guerrillas.

Incredibly, no international treaty exists on arms trade, despite the fact that small arms such as handguns and automatic rifles kill a half million people every year, while they together with heavy weapons can destabilize governments and carry out wholesale repression and massacres of civilians, as we've seen in places like Syria, Sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico and Colombia.

Regulating the trade in weapons, which cause so much havoc and killing, seems like a no-brainer. And it would help Colombia, not only by keeping weapons out of the hands of illegal groups, but also to reduce Colombia's extremely high homicide rate.

The treaty under discussion would, according to ArmsControl.org, prohibit international arms transfers when they would cause:

• The undermining of global, regional, local, or internal peace and security;
• Violations of international humanitarian law or human rights law;
• Involvement in genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes;
• Risk of diversion to organized criminals or terrorists;
• Impairment of socio-economic development;
• Risk of unauthorized re-export from the recipient state.

It's predictable that authoritarian governments which want weapons to repress and kill their own people would oppose this treaty, as would the governments which earn billions of dollars selling arms to human rights trampling dictatorships. (Recent sales and attempted sales of weapons by China to Zimbabwe and Russia to Syria come to mind.)

Illegal arms seized by Colombia's military. 

Colombia has helped write the new treaty. But neighbor Venezuela, which has made huge weapons purchases and is building an AK-47 factory, abstained from a vote on the issue, as did China and Russia, two big arms exporters. The U.S. voted against the proposed treaty, altho the Obama administration has expressed support for it.

Undoubtedly, the most powerful opponents of this treaty are the United States' fanatical domestic organizations - even tho they actually have nothing to fear from this treaty (altho I wish they would). The evidence, from both common sense and scientific research, is overwhelming that more guns in circulation usually mean more crime and violence, and the drop in homicides following Bogotá's recent ban on carrying weapons is even more evidence of that. U.S. organizations like the notorious NRA choose to ignore the evidence because of their paranoia that any sort of arms registration will end up taking away their handguns. That's ridiculous. Nevertheless, for the time being, they appear to have won their war in Washington. But the proposed treaty says explicitly that it wouldn't affect nations' domestic gun laws, but regulate only international transfers. In addition, the U.S.'s controls on weapons exports are already quite strong, meaning that treaty's impacts would be small. 


The U.S., as the world's largest arms exporter, is critical to this treaty. But ratification by the U.S. would require a two-thirds vote by the Senate, and far more than one third of the U.S. senators live in fear of the NRA.


Standing in the way of sane gun laws in the U.S. is bad enough. But gun-rights fanatics should be ashamed of themselves for blocking a treaty a treaty which could save millions of lives and stabilize nations around the world. By taking this position, the NRA and its allies make themselves passive accomplices to mass murder on a global scale. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

24 Hours Without a Homicide?

Shoot 'em dead.

Today, we were watching bicycle polo in the National Park when this oddly-dressed troupe of young people appeared, and, without explanation, carried out a silent theatre.

Only afterwards did they explain: they were part of a campaign called 24-0, which is calling for a day without any murders. That's a tall order, particularly on a Saturday, in a city with a murder rate of almost two people per day. More importantly, the campaign is intended to draw attention to the problem, which overwhelmingly impacts poor people, and ask Bogotanos to think about solutions.

Down he goes. 

It's mind-boggling that Colombia, despite its wonderful people and culture and increasing stability, has a annual murder rate of 38 per 100,000 people more than double that of Mexico, at 18 per 100,000, which is under siege from narco cartels. That's to say nothing of Europe, Asia or even the gun-saturated United States.

It's tempting to blame Colombia's murder rate here on its half-century of armed conflict. But, in fact, that conflict can be blamed for only a few thousand murders per year. That's a lot, but only a fraction of the nation's 18,000 annual killings. However, I suspect that this conflict feeds a general atmosphere of lawlessness and a tendency to resolve conflicts with firearms. The closely linked illegal drug trade, of course, also fuels violence on all levels.

What would you do about this? activists ask passers-by.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Alex makes it to the game - but not to age 18.

Alex at the game.  (Photo: El Tiempo)

The incident was certainly novel and entertaining: Alex, age 17 and victim of a fatal shooting in the border city of Cucuta, had been a great fan of the local football team.

The mourners spent barely a half hour in the funeral home before leaving for the city's stadium, where Cucuta was playing against Envigado. Attending this game had been Alex's final wish. After circling the stadium unsuccesfully the mourners crashed thru a gate and carried the coffin inside, fulfilling Alex's final wish. In Alex's presence, evidently bouyed by the dead youth's moral support, if not his enthusiasm, Cucuta scored the tying goal. It's all quite heartwarming, really.

The incident has generated news stories about other strange things which have entered stadiums and discussions of whether this security breach was caused by the failings of the police or stadium management. Alex's mother said she was happy to see her son's wish fulfilled.

Few appear to have reflected over what must have been Alex's much greater wishes: to survive to adulthood and be able to attend many more football games with his eyes open and heart beating.

Colombia has a horrific homicide rate, particularly in poor neighborhoods. Such killings are so common that nobody seems to have found the details of Alex's death important enough to report. Murder is too routine, unlike post-mortem stadium visits.

By Mike Ceaser of Bogotá Bike Tours

Homicides: Declining, But Still Way Too High!

Murder numbers drop (Graph from El Tiempo)

Colombian authorities congratulated themselves recently that a historic drop in homicides - a decline to nearly half since 2002, even though Colombia's population has increased.  

Nevertheless, the murder rate of about 33 per 100,000 people is still horrible. The United States murder rate is only 5 per 100,000 , Brazil's is 22 per 100,000 and even Mexico, in the throes of a drug-fueled wave of violence, has a murder rate of only about 14 per 100,000. Venezuel is in a different class, with 49 murders per 100,000 people. 


(Then, there are sane nations, such as Chile, Canada, Australia, Japan and most of Europe, where the murder rate is just a few per 100,000 . Most of those countries, incidentally, restrict gun possession.)

In recent weeks, murders have generated headlines because of the murder of two vacationing Universidad de los Andes students, who because of their cameras may have been mistaken for spies by an illegal armed group. And the killing of two Catholic priests in Bogotá. Ordinarily, most murder vicitms are poor and anonymous.


Why Colombia's murder rate is so astronomically high is a mystery to me. The nation's armed conflict might contribute a few thousand killings. Is there a streak of violence in Colombian culture? Anyway, let's hope it continues declining.

For the record, the great majority of murders in Colombia and elsewhere are committed during drug disputes, domestic conflicts, etc, rather than crimes against people not looking for trouble.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours