Of the 50 cities on the list, 43 are in Latin America, including 19 in Brazil, eight in Mexico, and seven in Venezuela.
The region’s violence is in large part drug related, driven by traffickers and supplemented by gang wars, political instability, and widespread poverty that has been exacerbated by sluggish economic growth or economic reversals.
The council’s ranking contains cities with populations of more than 300,000 and does not count deaths in combat zones or cities with unavailable data, so some dangerous cities don’t appear on the list
In some cases, the Council has determined homicide rates through estimates based on incomplete data.
In Venezuela, for example, the government has not consistently released homicide data (though it did this year), so to find the rate for Caracas, the Council made an estimate based on entries at the Bello Monte morgue — though, as the Council admits, that morgue receives bodies from an area much larger than Caracas itself. Here are the ten most violent cities:

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1. Caracas, Venezuela, had 130.35 homicides per 100,000 residents.

2. Acapulco, Mexico, had 113.24 homicides per 100,000 residents.

3. San Pedro Sula, Honduras, had 112.09 homicides per 100,000 residents.

4. Distrito Central, Honduras, had 85.09 homicides per 100,000 residents.

5. Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, had 84.67 homicides per 100,000 residents.

6. Maturin, Venezuela, had 84.21 homicides per 100,000 residents.

7. San Salvador, El Salvador, had 83.39 homicides per 100,000 residents

8. Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela, had 82.84 homicides per 100,000 residents.

9. Valencia, Venezuela, had 72.02 homicides per 100,000 residents.

10. Natal, Brazil, had 69.56 homicides per 100,000 residents.