Analysis: Never-ending drug war moves to Central America. Andrés Oppenheimer on the region’s growing violence

While Mexico’s bloody war against the drug cartels is making headlines worldwide, there is a little-known fact that is sounding alarm bells among US and Latin American officials: Central America’s drug-related violence is far worse than Mexico’s.

Even Costa Rica, a country known as “the Switzerland of Latin America” for being an island of peace and prosperity in its region, is feeling anxious about the rising tide of drug-related murders.

The average homicide rate of the five Central American countries is 43 people per 100,000 inhabitants a year, more than twice that of Mexico. Honduras and El Salvador have the highest murder rates in the world, according to a new United Nations Global Study on Homicide.

Original source: Miami Herald