Lynching by the Mob in Latin America

Note: Half of the videos in this article require you to have a Youtube account with an age over 18 to see.

Let’s say you wanted to take a trip to Latin America….

Go on a life changing journey that you will surely remember.

Get a bunch of money saved up from working and from online donations.

Visit some village in rural Peru to “study ayahuasca.”

Long story short, you kill an old lady after getting scammed for thousands of dollars….

And then get lynched by the whole village.

Now, I’ve talked a few times on this website about that story.

Here’s a video referencing what I am talking about here.

And I figured I might as well get it out of the way for today’s topic of examples of lynching in Latin America.

That way we can focus on all of the other examples that are out there.

You see, your average person going to Latin America probably isn’t worried about this thing.

And, to be honest, I’m not either after some odd years down here now.

But it does happen!

There’s this video here of this British guy who visits a village in Bolivia and gets warned about how “they burn people alive up there!”

Did he get lynched?

No, he survived and had a good time!

But while that particular foreigner got away without getting lynched by the mob…

Not everyone, as you can see by the Canadian example above, is so lucky.

About a month or so ago, a reader named Kevin posted this comment below on this article here citing examples of people getting lynched:

“Where is the real problem I’ve seen? Neighborhoods have their own justice system from capturing who they believe is the bad guy then holding a court on a street corner with conviction sentencing and death within minutes at times. What is unbelievable is all the lynching done by your local neighbor and even worse burning people to death. In 2015 a 15 year old girl was caught by a crowd who said she was with two men who had killed a taxi driver.

First the crowd beat her then poured petrol on her and after she died along with the flames they lynched her. Police investigated and was afraid to come out with their findings because there would be either more deaths or very possible the girl was innocent. 25% of the people killed with social justice are usually innocent.

For instance one in Brazil a teenager was pointed at as being guilty of stealing an iPhone. A crowd of 25 or more teenagers beat him , stabbed him with screw drivers then had a broken bottle shoved into his stomach. He was innocent and all the kids videoed it!

That’s just a small portion and it’s not just kids it’s middle age and elderly. In one case an elderly woman went to a body that had been burned with a spoon. She wanted to rip out his eyes so his would couldn’t find the gate and would wonder for ever. The police had to fight with her to keep her from doing it! Brazil study in 2015 found 1.5 million people had watched or participated in a lynching in last 60 years.”

Though that comment was on an article more about social justice warriors, the comment itself had a lot more to do with actual lynching that gets people killed.

And I found the topic interesting!

Much thanks to Kevin for giving me inspiration for this new article topic where now we’ll look into examples I could find myself of lynching in Latin America.

And if you have any examples you know of or anything to comment, don’t forget to leave that in the comment section below.

Anyway, let’s get to it!

Lynching the Bolivian Police

First, we have this video here showing this example in Bolivia where police officers were lynched after being accused of extortion and smuggling.

In which indigenous folks from the Bolivian city of Oruro sought community justice.

 Of course, that’s just one example.

The video goes on to explain how, in Bolivia, about 8 mob lynchings are done every week.

As the video explains, there are various reasons why these lynchings happen….

One of them being that, in their words, the police don’t do anything so they have to take matters into their own hands.

In a more extreme example, the citizens of an area in Bolivia known as Ayo Ayo burned alive their own mayor in 2004 for corruption.

This idea of “community justice” doesn’t involve just murdering folks though.

It can also involve other things like whippings, being expelled from the community and more.

Cases of Lynchings in Argentina

Admittingly, it was a little bit harder to find a good video on a lunching in Argentina.

First, we have this video here though of some random Peruvian guy seemingly getting the shit kicked out of him in Argentina.

But now here’s a news video documenting an apparent small rise in lynchings in the country.

With one example brought up of how 2 individuals in the Argentine city of Rosario got confused for being thieves and murdered (even though they were not the actual thieves in question).

Lynching a Child Rapist in Chile

Now here’s a story I can get behind!

Granted, I can understand why folks might do lynchings down here if they find the police don’t do anything…

Like in the case of Bolivia.

But here’s an example of someone who really deserves to get the shit kicked out of them.

A child rapist.

In this case, some dude in a Chilean city of 55,000 people known as Rengo…

Which, based on my brief research, seems to be somewhere in the central part of the country…

Got the shit kicked out of him.

Though I find Chilean Spanish a little bit harder to understand…

What I think happened was the mom gave her 11 year old daughter to her brother (who was a known criminal) to look after the daughter while she was away.

Then the brother was the one who sexually abused the kid.

Afterwards, her and some neighbors beat the shit out of him as you can see in the video here.

If my understanding from the reporting missed any details, let me know!

Anyway, fuck that guy.

Child Abductors Lynched in Ecuador?

And speaking of people who harm children…

Here’s 3 individuals who got lynched in Ecuador after being accused of abducting children.

However, the case here is a little bit different than the one above…

In which the 3 individuals actually didn’t harm any children at all!

Instead, they were taken by the police for other reasons such as stealing money and cell phones.

Which, based on the other stories out there that we’ve covered, seems like that would’ve been seen as justifiable perhaps to the locals to lynch them anyhow.

At any rate, the crowd overpowered the cops and beat the suspects as you can see in this video here.

The video ends with the police trying to convince the crowd that they were not child abductors…

But then the crowd replied “ME VALE MADRES!”

Well, OK, they probably didn’t say that because they’re not Mexican.

But still – lynched anyhow.

Images of a Peruvian Thief

Here, we have some Peruvian guy who was robbing people.

Consequently, people in the area didn’t seem to like that.

So they kicked his ass and burned his vehicle.

Before ultimately he was, from what I can tell in the video, taken by the police.

Perhaps the word “saved” by the police is better since who knows when the crowd would’ve stopped.

But you can see anyway in the video above all the damage they did to the guy.

All bloody and what not.

Hating the Haitians in the DR

For those who don’t know, there’s always been some tension in the Dominican Republic regarding Haitian immigrants.

From what I know, supposedly the same tension exists in Chile also.

Anyhow, discrimination and racism exists against them generally.

And here’s a video where a Haitian guy is getting the shit kicked out of him by a crowd.

For what reason?

I’m not sure.

But it might not necessarily involve a reason….

Though I’m not as familiar with the DR, I know a guy who lives there and says that sometimes shit happens against them just because of who they are.

Then there is this video here…

Warning: The video actually shows a dead guy hanging from a tree.

Why was he killed?

It was said in the comments that he was killed by other Haitians in the DR for some lottery money he had.

Lynching the Extortionists in Guatemala

Next, we have some folks in a part of Guatemala known as Panajachel that were lynching folks extorting small businesses and vendors.

As you can see in the video, folks even went after burning these folks alive when they could.

In two cases, a 14 year old and a 17 year old were killed by the mob after being accused of being extortionists.

Did they really extort anyone?

Who knows.

But as a previous Guatemalan president says in the video, these lynchings often happen in areas with no sufficient police presence.

Xenophobia Fueling the Lynching in Colombia?

In this video here, we have a pretty simple story of possible xenophobia.

Or no?

You be the judge.

In the video, it goes on about, from what I can understand, how there are cases of lynchings against Venezuelans in Colombia.

In Bogota I think in the case of the video.

Especially around the transmilenio transport system in the city.

And, according to some of the locals, it is believed that Venezuelans are committing many of the crimes.

Like theft and so on.

But some Venezuelans think it is xenophobia and that they are an easy target for crime in the city.

Here is another video of that in which some Venezuelan guy almost got lynched after being accused of stealing from a Colombian chick in the Colombian city of Cucuta.

Taking Justice into Their Own Hands in Venezuela

But it’s not just Colombians lynching Venezuelans…

Seems to be a favorite pastime in Venezuela also!

Joking, joking….

But in this video here…

It says that there were 26 reported lynchings in Venezuela in 2016.

The video goes on to explain how only 6% of cases brought to the police are brought before a judge.

Obviously implying that the locals then take the matters into their hands at times.

Like how, as you can see in the video, some criminal was lynched after being accused of robbing a pregnant lady.

Anyway, the video itself shows many other examples of lynchings that happen in Venezuela.

And here’s another video showing examples of lynchings in Venezuela.

Lynchings in Mexico

Finally, we have this video here of lynchings in Mexico.

For those without any Spanish skills, this one is in English for you all.

The video begins talking about signs warning thieves of getting lynched if caught.

Which is interesting because I have never seen these signs before in Mexico City or Pachuca.

Though the video does go on then saying that it isn’t as common anymore after a mistake was made…

In 2018, two folks were taken by the police for drinking in public…

Then a rumor spread that they were kidnapping children and basically the crowd stole the two individuals from the police and killed them.

Beaten and burned alive as you can see in the video.

Someone later in the video said that social media makes the matter worse in terms of how fast these rumors spread.

And that the rumors are very influential in getting people together to lynch others.

Sadly, the video shows the mother talking about seeing her son be one of those two folks killed on Facebook live while she was in the US at the time.

Final Thoughts

So what do I think about all of this?

Well, it makes sense obviously why some folks would go to this length.

Truth be told, the presence of police is not very high in various parts of Latin America.

And even then, as you can see, the police are not always effective at getting the job done.

Sometimes, as I have seen personally down here, the police might be corrupt and want to steal from you also!

As I wrote in this article here where I got robbed by the police once in Mexico.

In my case, what was I supposed to do?

In a case like that, I could understand why the locals would want to lynch somebody as the justice system just isn’t going to work.

Plus, you got cases like that one guy accused of molesting a child in Chile…

Where I could understand why the locals did what they did.

If you hurt a child, I’ll grab a vodka bottle and enjoy watching your ass get beat.

Having said that, it’s obviously not perfect.

Like the case where those folks got wrongly accused of abducting children in Ecuador…

Or cases of xenophobia against other nationalities.

At any rate…..

For some countries, it wasn’t possible to find any examples of lynchings on Youtube in Spanish or English.

Some of those places include Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Uruguay, Paraguay, the territory of Puerto Rico, Cuba, etc.

I’m sure I could’ve found something though if I searched for articles instead of videos.

Anyway, that’s all I could find.

If you got any interesting examples, drop them below in the comment section.

Or any comments in general.

And follow my Twitter here.

Thanks for reading.

Best regards,

Matt