The costs of Latin American crime

THIS month police in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo went on strike for ten days, during which 143 people were murdered and all hell broke loose in Vitória, the state capital. In Reynosa, on Mexico’s border with the United States, two alleged robbers were beaten, bound with duct tape and dangled from a footbridge, with a message from a drug baron pinned to them. On February 17th a gunman killed five people and injured nine at a shopping centre in Lima. A day later in Flores Costa Cuca, a small town in western Guatemala, an 83-year-old woman and her disabled grandson were murdered, prompting calls for the army to patrol the streets.