African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
245 p., This book discusses gangs and drug trafficking in Jamaica and the United States and their impacts on the countrys' social conditions. A product of the ghettos of Kingston as mercenary street-fighters for the island's politicians, these groups began migrating to the United States in the early 1980s. Feared and honored for being "harder than the rest," these Jamaican cocaine syndicates laid claim to their new American territory with outlaw bravura and a ruthlessness that was immortalized in song; the raw dance hall music born of their world defined "gangsta" culture for a generation of angry sufferers in Jamaica, America, and England.
Brazil's tourist-jammed cities are some of the most violent on the planet. A considerable number of the country's 43,000 annual murders occur on the streets of Sao Paulo, Recife, and Rio de Janeiro. And Brazilian cities are not alone in what might be called a bad neighborhood. The fact is that most major Latin American and Caribbean cities are today plagued by an epidemic of violence. With more than 20 murders per 100,000 people, the regional homicide rate is roughly three times the global average. Many of the larger urban centers -- from Caracas and Ciudad Juarez to Kingston and Port-of-Spain -- register the highest rates of lethal violence in the world.
