The 50 most violent cities in the world

Latin America holds the undesirable distinction of having the most violent cities in the world, according to the annual ranking from Mexico Citizens Council for Public Security.

Of the 50 cities on the list, 41 are within Latin America and 21 of those cities are located in Brazil.

The lion share of the elevated violence in the region is due to drug trafficking supplemented with gang wars, political instability, and the deregulation of economies triggering widespread poverty.

"Narcotics are the biggest black market earner of all. Estimated to be worth more than three hundred billion dollars a year, the global industry has pumped huge resources into criminal empires decade after decade," Ioan Grillo author of "Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America" wrote. 

"So that amount of money, $100 billion a year, 10 years, a trillion dollars, 30 years, $3 trillion. That amount of money pumps in these organizations ... buying more guns, paying more assassins, bribing more police, bribing more politicians ... and that is why the region right now, Latin American and the Caribbean, are at a boiling point," Ioan Grillo told Business Insider.

The council's ranking includes cities with a population of more than 300,000 and doesn't count deaths in combat zones or cities with unavailable data, so some dangerous cities might not be represented on the list.