Uruguay recorded a record number of murders in 2018,
with a 35 percent increase to 382, according to a study published on
Thursday.
That amounts to 11.2 murders per
100,000 inhabitants, according to the report by the Fundapro foundation,
which has close ties to the opposition Partido Colorado, published in
Thursday’s edition of the El Pais newspaper.
In 2017, there were 283 murders, already an increase of 5.6 percent on the previous year.
The government blames a significant proportion of the increased murder rate on fighting between criminal gangs.
However, back in August the InSight Crime
website, which studies organized crime in Latin America and the
Caribbean, said “there are probably a variety of factors contributing
to” the increase.
It also noted that Uruguay remains “one of
Latin America’s safest countries and often the country of choice for
criminals searching for a safe haven rather than a battleground.”
According to a study by the Inter-American
Development Bank published in November, the murder rate across Latin
America and the Caribbean in 2017 was 22 per 100,000 inhabitants, double
that of Uruguay’s a year later.
It comes at a time when Uruguay’s unemployment (8.6 percent) and inflation (8.05) figures are on the rise.