Venezuela: living in a gangsta' paradise
Friday, September 3, 2010 at 12:08AM 
Simon Romero piece in NYT (I read it in International Herald Tribune coming back from Ethiopia) on how Venezuela is the murder capital of the world, which means Chavez can't even do authoritarianism well.
Turns out, as the piece argues, that citizens of Baghdad are a lot safer than those of Caracas: same population, with 4600 civilian deaths in Iraq in 2009, but 16,000 murders in Venezuela. Amazingly, even Mexico's drug war is less deadly (murders in Venezuela over the same time period are about 50% higher).
Caracas is without peer: 200 murders per 100k versus 22 in Bogota (Columbia) and 14 in Sao Paulo (Brazil), two cities usually held up as crime-ridden.
Murder rates in Venezuela have now tripled since Chavez took power ini 1998.
Sad state of affairs:
Reasons for the surge are complex and varied, experts say. While many Latin American economies are growing fast, Venezuela’s has continued to shrink. The gap between rich and poor remains wide, despite spending on anti-poverty programs, fueling resentment. Adding to that, the nation is awash in millions of illegal firearms.
Police salaries remain low, sapping motivation. And in a country with the highest inflation rate in the hemisphere, more than 30 percent a year, some officers have turned to supplementing their incomes with crimes like kidnappings.
But some crime specialists say another factor has to be considered: Mr. Chávez’s government itself. The judicial system has grown increasingly politicized, losing independent judges and aligning itself more closely with Mr. Chávez’s political movement. Many experienced state employees have had to leave public service, or even the country.
More than 90 percent of murders go unsolved, without a single arrest, Mr. Briceño-León said. But cases against Mr. Chavez’s critics — including judges, dissident generals and media executives — are increasingly common.
Haven't seen Oliver Stone's paean to Chavez, but I wonder if he covered any of this in his documentary.
Reader Comments (2)
I am an expert on homicide investigations. That is what I did. If your "clear up" rate is 10%, it means that you are not conducting investigations. The 10% that are "cleared" by arrest would have to be examined case by case. I would expect that there are killings by mentally unstable individuals who make no effort to flee or conceal their crime. Also every population has a percentage of "domestic" murders where a spouse (legal or common law) kills their partner. In the ghettos or barrios there are very few complicated domestic murders. Maria gets tired of Manuel beating her and she plunges a butcher knife into his chest. Then she sits down and has a drink while the neighbors run for the policia. These cases likely make up a good portion of the 10 percent that are solved.
I don't think anything says more about a society than the way that it deals with the taking of human life.
Sad to say, the clear up rate on homicides in the city of Chicago has dropped from 75 to 80% in my day, down to 33% currently. Most of the killings involve street gang members fighting over the control of drug sale territory. Gang members don't cooperate with the police. Witnesses do not come forward. The volume of shootings and killings has numbed the city residents to the violence. It is confined to the ghetto and so the hue and cry is limited.
Ted brings up an odd, self defeating behavior among certain ethnic groups. In many blighted primarily black, or latino areas that are poor, there is a schizophrenic attitude to the crime in the community. When a cop shoots a criminal there out of necessity, the neighborhood goes up in arms, but when a homey "nigger" or "cholo" shoots up another fellow resident, all of the sudden the neighborhood is like a family. "You DON'T TELL ME how to take care of my kids, cop!"
Now, I notice too, that this can occur in any area, but these two main groups have the market share for the time being, at least in the US.
The story about Chavez is expected, since he is destroying the entire country for his own gain.