Danger across the border: Nine Mexican cities place among the 10 deadliest in the world

Newly released data shows that nine Mexican cities rank among the 10 deadliest in the globe in 2022, according to World of Statistics.

The report listed the western Mexico municipality of Colima as the murder capital in the world with 181.9 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

The city is the second largest in the state of Colima and placed first in the list in 2021 with 196.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

Murders are on pace to equal or slightly surpass those figures in 2023, with 512 homicides registered through the first seven months of the year, an average of 73.1 per month, after 887 people were murdered the previous year at a clip of 73.91 homicides a month.

New Orleans, the only non-Mexican city in the list, was ranked eighth with 70.6 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants

According to World of Statistics, nine of the ten most dangerous cities in the world are located in Mexico. An additional two placed 13th and 14th

Mexican troops were dispatched to Tijuana International Airport on August 13, 2022 following a weekend of violent incidents that left 24 burned vehicles across the state of Baja California, including 15 in Tijuana, a border city across from San Diego. Tijuana ranked fifth with 105.1 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022

Police in Acapulco stand near the body of one of the five men who were shot and killed at Santana’s Sports and Snacks Bar on December 5, 2022. Once a top destination for the Hollywood elite, the beach resort town has been engulfed with crime and registered 65.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022

The municipality of Zamora, located in the western state of Michoacán, came in second, with 177.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants while Ciudad Obregón, the second largest city in the northwestern state of Sonora, recorded 138.2 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

Zacatecas, the capital and largest city of the north-central state of Zacatecas, came in fourth with an average of 134.6 per 100,000 inhabitants and the Pacific border city of Tijuana, across from California, ranked fifth 105.1 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

The cities of Celaya and Uruapan in the central state of Guanajuato placed fifth and sixth, respectively. Celaya registered 99.6 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants and Uruapan followed with 78.3 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

The top 10 list is rounded out by Ciudad Juárez at nine. The border town, located in the northwestern state of Chihuahua and south of El Paso, Texas, registered 67.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. It was second in 2019 with 104.4 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

Once a top destination for the Hollywood elite, the beach resort town of Acapulco placed 10th, tallying an average of 65.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

Forensic personnel work at the crime scene where unknown assailants left the bodies of three dismembered people in a vacant lot in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on August 31. Ciudad Juárez, which sits on the northern Mexico border across from El Paso, Texas, ranked ninth in 2022 with 67.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants

A forensic technician walks at a crime scene where unknown assailants left the bodies of men wrapped in blankets in Zacatecas, Mexico on February 5, 2022

The Guanajuato municipality of Irapuato ranked 13th with 61.60 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants and the city of Cuernavaca in the central state of Morelos was listed in 14th place with 60.2 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

Each of the cities listed in the report are within the Mexican states that the U.S. Department of State has issued travel advisories due to crime and kidnapping.

María del Carmen López, 63, a Mexico-U.S. dual citizen, has been missing since February 9 when gunmen kidnapped her home in the Colima municipality of Pueblo Nuevo.

In June, one of her seven children held a press conference in Los Angeles and pleaded with President Joe Biden to help find her.

She revealed that the kidnappers had sent the family an audio in which the woman can be heard begging to be brought back home.

Her daughter, Zonia López, said her mother asked them to ‘please hurry, act quickly, my children, and give them what they want. My life depends on it.’