Fifteen years after the end of Central America’s civil wars, this region is once again becoming the world’s most violent place, and a major source of drug trafficking, organized crime and illegal immigration to the United States.

According to United Nations estimates, more than 15,000 people a year are dying in drug and human trafficking-related violence in Central America.

Honduras is already the world’s most violent country, with a homicide rate of 67 per 100,000 people a year, four times higher than Mexico’s, the weekly The Economist reported recently.

During a five-day visit to Honduras, Nicaragua and a stop in El Salvador, I was surprised to see a huge increase of private security guards on the streets — like nothing I had seen in recent years. You see private guards everywhere, much more than uniformed police or army troops.

According to U.N. figures, there are at least five times more private security guards than police forces in Honduras and Guatemala.

What is going on, I asked Honduran President Porfirio Lobo in an interview. Lobo, who was democratically elected after a constitutional crisis triggered by a 2009 civilian-military coup, told me that growing numbers of Mexican drug lords are moving south to Central America because of the Mexican government’s military crackdown on the cartels.

“The cartels are coming our way,” Lobo said. “The growing crime rates are affecting us a lot, in many ways. Among other things, they scare away investments.”

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