askchapo

Crime has always been front and center in LatAm. It isn't nearly as violent as global north people like to act like it is, but it is still a place where there is so much poverty and inequality, it makes the perfect environment for crime to happen. You can point to imperialism, neoliberal policies adopted to appease the IMF or simply ideological privatization, economic conditions can't improve too much without sustained, systemic reforms over a long time, if not straight up revolution.

Add to this the venezuelan migrant crisis, where millions of people were trying to escape the worst of the effects of the sanctions and blockade, and you suddenly have LatAm countries dealing with something they had never dealt with before: mass migration and xenophobia. When impoverished migrants are met by an unprepared state apparatus usually leads to ghettoization, where organized crime can thrive, offering migrants what the state cannot. Crime suddenly has a national character, rather than it being about race or class.

On the other hand, many crime rates have been consistently dropping throughout the region. Things are getting better, even if it doesn't seem like it, and here we go to why the far right has successfully capitalized on this perception: fascists never have to deal in truth. It's been shown time and time again that votes for harsher policing and "tough on crime" policy are motivated by people's perception of crime, not the actual amount of crime they experience. This perception is in turn shaped by media, sensationalizing any instance of crime they find, and right wing politicians and influencers hammering the same points about public safety and crime, even if they're nothing but canards. The right wing has managed to succeed in this because they make up people in their head and then promise to get rid of them. Liberals and socdems hedge their statements, talk about long-term interventions, while fascists promise to imprison or kill anyone who violates the law.