📊 Safe Cities

Taking a comparative look at just how safe major Latin American cities are.

Welcome to Latinometrics. We bring you Latin American insights and trends through concise, thought-provoking data visualizations.

Today we’re re-publishing one of our favorite charts of all time. We collaborated with Karla Berman to create this data story.

Crime ☠ 📉

One would have thought that Miami, the US capital of the Latin world, would be less dangerous than most of Latin America's major cities. However, when compared by the most common measure for how safe a city is — homicides per 100K people, Miami actually ranked worse than Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Santiago, and Mexico City in 2022. In fact, contrary to public perception, most Latin American big cities are significantly safer than many US metropolitan areas.

These Major LatAm Cities are Now Safer than Some US Cities

Now, Latin America clearly has a crime problem — seven of the ten most dangerous cities this year are in Mexico. But Mexico City, which has historically had a bad reputation for crime, has been relatively safe for over a decade.