This article aims to carry out a semi-systematic review of the academic literature that studies violence in Tamaulipas from 2008 to 2019. It is argued that violence in that state is studied primarily from a broad perspective. However, regardless of the study perspective, there is a close relationship between violence, organized crime, and drug trafficking. Two lines of research little explored in the literature are proposed: the first studies risks associated with the analysis of violence(s) in each context; the second analyzes violence(s) from a gender perspective. The main limitation of this semi-systematic review is that the results presented are descriptive and only classify the literature to find gaps in it.