Many of those living in Latin American countries, fed up with the fear of falling victim to violence, are joining brutal lynch mobs to carry out justice, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.
The newspaper calls it "Latin America's dark secret."
There are about 400 murders a day in Latin America – half of those coming in Brazil. Less than 20 percent of those killings are solved. Over the past 60 years, as many as 1.5 million Brazilians have taken part in a lynching, sociologist José de Souza Martins estimated.
The Journal noted people are fed up with lack of arrests of violent offenders and are living in fear. They are now turning to mob justice:
- A Canadian tourist, suspected of murdering a local shaman, was dragged around by a noose around his neck by Amazonian villagers in Peru back in April. He was eventually killed.
- A Mexican mob ignited a fire around a 21-year-old man and his uncle in August. The two were mistaken for child snatchers, the newspaper said. A video showed gasoline being poured on them until their charred bodies stopped moving.
- A woman and her two sons were tied to a tree, covered with poisonous fire ants in Bolivia in 2016. The three were mistaken for car thieves. The woman's neck swelled up from the ant bites and she suffocated to death.
And a prosecutor in Brazil said people are becoming "less civilized."
"Brazilians are losing their capacity to feel empathy for the strangers continually slain around them," said Leonardo Jubé de Moura, a public prosecutor in Brasília. "That is making people less civilized."
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