Some Latin American big cities have lower murders/100K inhabitants ratio than some American big cities
That graphic is correct, but I would stress some things:
A) São Paulo state is the safest state in Brazil in per capita data. São Paulo and Santa Catarina states both have less than 10 homicide rate (well below the Brazilian average of 23), but states in the North and Northeast can consistently have averages higher than 30!
Rio de Janeiro state, a touristic postcard, has an average rate of 28, which I consider pretty high for Southeast and South Brazil. Sure, the poorer suburban metropolitan area surrounding Rio in its outskirts pushes the state average up a lot, but the Rio de Janeiro city itself (which is what people tend to visit) is still usually around 19-20.
So if you put Rio instead of São Paulo in that graph, it would only be safer than Philadelphia; Las Vegas and Minneapolis. And if you included the ENTIRE metropolitan area of Rio with all its adjacent municipalities that are more dangerous, it would still only be safer than Philadelphia.
And like I said, there are definitely many cities with a higher rate than Rio in the Northern part of the country, Rio only stands out as somewhat more dangerous when analyzing Southern Brazil of which is a part of.
B) USA isn’t like Europe (I have experience of visiting both places) and it IS a quite violent country despite having more money, so some major cities in LatAm being on par with or safer than many US big urban center’s doesn’t really say anything tbh.
And even that data in this graph is more focused on big cities, US interior areas outside of big cities ARE known to be significantly safer than their big city counterparts, reducing the overall homicide rate average. Gap between city and interior is significantly more reduced in LatAm, some interior small towns won’t necessarily be safer than the big city.
So it’s somewhat like taking some of the worst of a country (USA) and comparing it with what are far from the worst in LatAm, which makes the graphic a bit misleading but still useful in providing some level of perspective that US is on some levels at least on par with the violence that exists in LatAm
C) The most dangerous cities in the world are in the Americas (both USA and Latin America), so comparing both is kinda useless anyway unless you want to show snobby Americans that their country isn’t thaaaat much safer as they tend to believe.
That some major cities in LatAm are safer than some major cities in USA doesn’t really prove how safe Latin America is because the USA isn’t considered a safe country to begin with. Both USA and Latin America are at minimum places where you don’t have the same freedom of movement like you have in Europe for example.
One thing I don’t understand though is why St. Louis in USA wasn’t included in the graphic, as that’s the most dangerous US city and the only one from USA in the top 20 highest homicide rates with an absurd high average of 80 murders per capita, occupying 10th place and being higher than Brazilian most dangerous major city (Natal in 12th). This video is more useful because it shows many Latin American cities instead of only one and as I said São Paulo is one of the safest cities in Brazil, probably the same for Mexico City in Mexico, etc:
Still, the video doesn’t show ALL cities, only ones with significant amount of population, therefore being a comparison of big cities only. If you compared smaller towns with low population instead there sure would be much more sketchier places in LatAm as the US interior areas outside big cities tend to be relatively safe.
