SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazil has beat its own macabre record for homicides: 63,880 people were murdered across the country in 2017, up 3 percent from the year before, according to a new study.

That’s 175 deaths per day.

Data from the Brazilian Forum of Public Security, a research organization, shows the murder rate in the country was 30.8 per 100,000 people, up from 29.9 in 2016. For the sake of comparison, the United States had five homicides per 100,000 people in 2015 — the most recent year for which data are available — down from eight per 100,000 in 1996. Even Mexico, which is also suffering from a soaring murder rate, had less homicides per capita with 25 per 100,000 last year.

What is driving the increase in homicides?

Organized crime is one of the driving factors behind the rise.

Brazil’s murder rate has soared as rival drug gangs battle for territory in a country that shares borders with the three biggest cocaine producing countries in the world — Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Brazil is a major consumer of both cocaine and crack and a key transit point for cocaine headed to Europe and Asia.

Not surprisingly, two of the states with the highest murder rates, Acre and Ceará, are thoroughfares along the main smuggling routes.