Colombia’s second city Medellin, once the most violent place on earth, has fallen from the world’s most dangerous cities ranking.
The city has long been subdued to waves of drug violence; First carried out by Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and later by the paramilitary group AUC that had taken over the city’s underworld after the drug lord’s death.
More than years after the demise of Colombia’s most infamous citizen and a decade after the demobilization of the AUC, the city’s homicide levels have now reached the point that Medellin can no longer be considered one of the world’s most dangerous cities, according to a Mexican think tank.
Fact sheet
Medellin violence statistics
The Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice left Medellin off its dangerous city ranking, leaving only Cali and Pereira in the infamous top 50.
Medellin last year claimed a homicide rate of 20 for every 100,000 inhabitants from a staggering 381 in the 1990s.
Medellin homicide rate |
The city’s latest homicide rate makes the city in theory as violent as US cities like Cincinatti or Atlanta, which in 2014 registered the same homicide rate.
Cali on the other hand long failed to effectively address its homicide rate, mainly due to ongoing tensions between neo-paramilitary group “Los Urabeños” which for years has been trying to take control of the city at the expense of local Norte del Valle Cartel offshoot “Los Rastrojos.”
However, in spite of still being considered the world’s 10th most dangerous city, also in Cali homicides have been dropping impressively over the past two years, just not quick enough to lower its position in the ranking.
Cali homicide rate |
The world’s most dangerous city based on homicide rate is now Caracas, the capital of Venezuela that has suffered a major collapse in economic and security indicators over the past years.
