Here at the Infographics Show we have travelled
far and wide, and so let me tell you a story involving the intrepid writer of today’s
video. Back in the day whilst living in Mexico he
and his friend – a rather large and imposing Norwegian man, had been warned by Mexican
locals not to walk down a particular street in the city, and they said especially don’t
think you can enter that male-only swinging-door cantina at the end of the street. That, said our Mexican buddies, could be a
hostile place and definitely not a place where naive foreigners would go. We went of course, and the giant Norwegian
soon got into a raw chili eating contest with some rather grizzly-looking men, while they
plied him with a heroic quantity of tequila. Your humble writer had to carry the large
man out, and we were helped by some fine young men that turned out to be not-so-fine pickpockets. When this writer felt a hand in his pocket
he berated these men, who then looked at us, likely deciding whether to just beat us up
and mug us. Instead they ran, which came as quite a surprise
given the giant Viking was blind drunk and this writer looks as useful with his fists
as Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. Your storyteller has been mugged on two other
occasions, once at knife point and once at knuckle-point. Nonetheless, when you hear what we have to
tell you today, being robbed at knife point doesn’t seem like such a big deal. First let’s add a disclaimer and tell you
that times change, but crime and violence have indeed recently plagued the places we
are about to tell you about. In terms of danger, let’s just imagine how
things would turn out if you were to hang around these streets and neighborhoods as
an outsider. Baltimore – N Monroe St / W Lanvale St,
United States We’ll start with the USA, and we know some
of you will argue that there are more dangerous places in America. Maybe you might think that a tourist armed
with an expensive camera taking shots of the homeless on LA’s Skid Row might find themselves
in more danger. We are aware that some streets and neighborhoods
in St. Louis or Detroit might be no-go areas for newbies, but we’ve picked Baltimore
today. The violence and drug problem in certain parts
of this city have been well-documented by David Simon, a seasoned journalist and later
the co writer of the series “The Wire”. The city since then has tried to revitalize
some of the more notorious neighborhoods, but some places still look apocalyptic. A trip down these streets late at night could
be a bad decision if you are just there to hang around, see the sights, and look at locals. We don’t want to offend anyone from this
part of Baltimore, but just do a Google Maps tour right now and you can see how many buildings
are boarded up and looking like they should be pulled down. This neighborhood needs a bit more revitalizing. It has a violent crime rate 19 times higher
than the U.S. national average and your chances of walking around here at night alone without
any incident we think is quite low. We even found a long list of incidents in
which police were accused of wrongdoing, with some recent incidents of officers being charged
with fraud and second degree assault. Is it the most dangerous place in America? Well, you can tell us what you think in the
comments after you’ve seen the much worse places on this list. Areas of Kingston, Jamaica
In 2019, the U.S. State Department said just avoid certain neighborhoods of Kingston in
Jamaica and then added, “violence and shootings occur regularly.” Even U.S. government personnel are not allowed
to drive outside some Kingston neighborhoods during the night. It’s that bad. Beautiful Jamaica has one of the highest homicide
rates in the world, and usually when tourists visit the country they only visit areas where
they are told to go or are chaperoned there by locals. Let’s just say that tourists walking around
at night in strange neighborhoods might be beaten, mugged, or killed, and you can find
instances when that has happened. Some people in poorer neighborhoods are living
in appalling conditions, while armed gangs roam the streets in numbers. The police force is understaffed, and Jamaican
police have at times come under scrutiny and been accused of corruption as well as their
own style of brutality. In 2018, because of rampant violence and murders,
the government of Jamaica declared a state of emergency. The U.S. government has said there are areas
that should be totally off-limits, areas it calls “M-Zones.” These aren’t just pockets of Kingston, but
two thirds of the city. In case you’re planning to go, some of those
areas are Mountain View, Trench Town, Tivoli Gardens, Standpipe, Cassava Piece, Grants
Pen, and Arnett Garden. We went looking for an actual Jamaican to
tell us about the danger in Kingston, and we found a man who said he knew only too well
where the worst places were because he was brought up in them. He said many of the areas are kind of interconnected,
so you should be able to stay away from them. He said he left Kingston because of the mayhem,
but also said there are lots of decent folks there just trying to make a living. As for visiting his family, he wrote, “I
only visit when it is absolutely necessary and only in the days because of the possibility
of being robbed or being caught in a gang shootout or drive by.” He seemed to agree with the U.S. Embassy as
to where not to go, but he also added a few more places. Those included, “JonesTown, Dunkirk, South
Side, Hannah Town, Whitfield Town, Rose Town, Water House and Two Miles.” We just looked at local crime in Arnett Gardens,
aka, the concrete jungle, and found a lot of bad news, including a child being killed
and then set on fire. In fact, we found an article from 2018 that
talked about Jamaican expats who’d left the country a long time ago but returned there
to retire. These people seem to have become soft targets
for criminals. According to the Guardian, from 2012 to 2018,
85 Britons, Americans and Canadians were murdered in Jamaica. One Jamaican who’d spent most of his adult
life in the UK but later retired in Jamaica had this to say, “This country is anarchic,
there’s no law here.” We imagine they didn’t pick the most violent
and downtrodden areas to live in. An outsider waking around some of the worst
areas of Kingston would certainly be putting their life at risk. Vila Aliança in Bangu, western Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil There are lots of favelas in Rio, but as for
which is the most dangerous, well, some are said to be better than others. They are all perhaps a little unpredictable. Favela just means something similar to a shanty
town or slum, although some are in a much better state than others. The one we are talking about today, Vila Aliança,
is said to be totally lawless. Armed thugs rule the roost there, not the
police. While families get on with life, go to work,
enjoy their free time as much as possible, there are also “bandidos” that run the
favelas and they also help run the drugs trade in Rio. If you enter one, you might see teenage boys
armed with machine guns. They might not kill you, since they are usually
just on the lookout for other armed gangs that want more territory. We say might, but it’s perhaps not worth
trying to find out. Shoot-outs with police or other gangs are
common, and one young man said he hated seeing his friends die. He said because life in Brazil offered him
little to nothing, the gang-business was what he went into. An Australian man a few years ago actually
asked a taxi driver to take him to this most dangerous favela, and the driver said the
best she could do was drop him off about 500 yards away. He said people were just on their way to work
since he entered in the early morning, but as he got farther in he was met by three young
men armed with machine guns. Believe it or not, once they found out he
wasn’t a cop, he was invited into the middle of the favela. There he met one of the bosses and had an
all-day drinking session with him and the community. But don’t go thinking that you can just
wander into a favela, mainly because the crime rates are through the roof and you might rouse
suspicion. One journalist who had spent years writing
about the favelas said this: “Brazil’s favelas are not inherently dangerous places
and offer a different perspective on life, but in the pockets where drug gangs dominate,
intruders and outsiders are taken very seriously.” Cape Flats, Cape Town, South Africa
It’s hard to pick one street here since it covers such a big area, but we found locals
saying anywhere around the “Flats” is a no go area for tourists, especially walking
around the streets during the night. One writer said the place was virtually “quarantined”
to keep the violence inside, and the police were fighting a losing battle. The place, which covers a lot of ground, is
overrun with gangs, and according to one of those gangsters who was interviewed by The
Guardian, the police don’t give them any trouble – not exactly a good thing. A guy that wrote a book on gangs in Cape Town
said over the last five years things have gotten much worse. He said, “Until now, the government seems
to have been willing to let the Cape Flats burn.” The Flats saw 1,000 murders in the first six
months of 2019. That’s a lot, for just one part of a city. The reason that writer said, “until now”
is because armored convoys were sent in by the army. This is how one local put it, “Every weekend
round here, we hear someone is dead, shot, sexual assaulted, stabbed.” Another local said, “You hear gunshots and
hope it’s not your child.” When the army went in to patrol in 2019 there
was some really good news after the first weekend of them being there. Only 46 people were murdered that weekend…ONLY!! The government said it was actually good news
because it was a payday weekend, and usually 50, 60, or 70 or more people are murdered
on those weekends. The township Nyanga, which is also in the
Flats, had one less murder than the city of Baltimore in 2017, but Baltimore’s population
is more than ten times the size. Yep, we don’t recommend you go walking around
some streets in the Cape Flats at night. Rivera Hernández neighborhood, San Pedro
Sula, Honduras San Pedro Sula has long been recognized as
one of the most dangerous places on Earth... of late anyway. As locals will tell you, there are places
you can go in San Pedro Sula, and places that you should stay away from. There is widespread poverty here and as industries
and jobs disappeared, some people either headed out and tried to look for work elsewhere,
or stayed and earned money through crime or became victims of crime. Some neighborhoods are incredibly run down
and some of the people face dire living conditions The New York Times did a long piece on this
neighborhood, saying dead bodies on the tarmac were common and the battered streets at nights
were almost empty besides the presence of rival gangs, those of Mara Salvatrucha, aka
MS-13, and the 18th Street gang. The older gang there is called Casa Blanca,
which is now fighting among those other two gangs. All the gangs are busy trying to take over
certain areas, areas that we think would likely be a no-go place for an outsider at night
or in the day. Of course, a tourist is not involved in the
gang warfare, but still, you guys might want to give this neighborhood a miss. We can’t point out one street, but thanks
to the New York Times we have a map of which areas are run by one of those three gangs. If you walk around some of those streets you
might get mugged, extorted, or worse, killed. There are no police in the streets and the
government has left the place to its own ruin. 95 percent of homicides are unsolved, or were
in 2019 at least. We doubt things have suddenly changed in 2020. One of the gang members said there is no way
out. They have nothing, no work, and so they vie
for control in the drugs trade or extortion. Nightly the gangs kill each other. As one gang member put it, “Either they
kill us or we kill them.” A few years ago, Honduras had the highest
murder rate in the world and the city of San Pedro Sula had the highest homicide rate in
Honduras…and the worst part of that city was the Rivera Hernández neighborhood. From what we can see, things got better, and
then they got worse again. We doubt you’d enjoy a trip to this neighborhood. Catia, Caracas, Venezuela
This country has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for some years, just like
another South American country called El Salvador. But the street gangs and very high murder
in the Catia area has made the headlines for years now, a neighborhood said to be full
of grieving mothers. A few years ago it was said killers were using
chutes to dispose of bodies, and the murderers were very rarely arrested. Catia is called a barrio by the way, which
is similar to the favelas that we have already talked about. This means there is a certain amount of lawlessness,
and unlike a place like Baltimore, the cops might not come running to your aid if you
decide to enter there and then get into trouble. Robbery is common, but more worrying are the
reports of armed kidnappers. The country itself is still said to be one
of the friendliest places you can visit, but there are these no-go areas. The UK government says don’t stray out of
the city at night and gives it the highest level of security risk for travellers. The Canadian government said the same, stating,
“Organized criminal groups and gangs are rampant. Many criminals carry firearms, and victims
are often injured or killed for failing to cooperate.” It even says the cops have been found to have
extorted money from tourists. It’s no longer the most dangerous city in
the world in terms of murders, but warnings are still issued stating that Shanty areas
around the city of Caracas such as Catia are off limits. You might be robbed, or beaten, or extorted,
or kidnapped, or killed. Neighborhoods of Tijuana, Mexico
So, the last place we’ll talk about is Tijuana, the city on the American border where many
young Americans have visited to throw down tequila shots or look for certain things they
wouldn’t be able to buy on the other side of the border. The city right now has the highest murder
rate of any city in the world, but since that’s mostly gang-related, does that mean it’s
dangerous for you, our dear non-gang-related viewers? Well, this writer has visited Tijuana and
despite warnings, he visited some places he was told not to go…way past where all the
nightlife entertainment is for one-night border crossers. He stayed in the cheapest, dirtiest places
we doubt a tourist has ever frequented. In one place, the doors didn't even lock and
you could see guys gambling in the other rooms. And no, this wasn’t the city where the pickpocketing
incident took place, that was on the other side of Mexico in the Yucatán Peninsula. But, this writer did find out that there are
some really sketchy places in Tijuana, and that was before it became the world’s most
dangerous city. It all depends how deep you go. Looking at blogs, many people say it's no
more dangerous than San Diego and you shouldn’t believe the hype, but we can assure you, if
you get off the tourist trail you will find some shady places and shady police. This is a fact, and we can say that with experience. You might get robbed, or certainly get scammed…get
“taxed” by the cops, and worse, you might bump into gangsters that are wondering what
you are doing in a certain part of town. You might also want to give taking photos
a miss where cartel members are everywhere...and as for taking notes on your laptop...give
that a miss, too. Then you can find bits of recent news reports,
like this one, “The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and
stabbed in a van in Tijuana, two days after they reportedly left their Southern California
homes for a night at the Mexican clubs.” They were all just young folks looking for
fun. One U.S. cop said the two young men and two
young women must have “bumped into the wrong people.” Or you can read the beginning of this 2020
report, “A fifth body has been located on a property in Tijuana where two Americans
were found dead earlier this month.” In 2018, two teens from California were found
dead in Tijuana. They had been tortured and then shot execution
style in the back of the head. We won’t go on, but we will say that while
party town Tijuana can be a lot of fun, there is a much darker side and we think you need
to stay well away from that. As it’s the murder capital of the world,
you should really already know this. As you leave the bars far behind and the dance
music fades out, there might just be some really bad people around the next corner. It actually gets darker in some parts of the
city if you keep going. We’ve seen it with our own eyes. Tijuana might not be as in-your-face dangerous
as some places we’ve mentioned, but it’s certainly got a “missing body” potential. Ok, because we talked so much about gangs
today, we think we should educate you some more about these criminal entities. So, take a look at one of these shows, “What
Makes Someone Join a Gang?” or “Most Brutal Gangs in History of Mankind.” Click one now!
