How Venezuelans Are Killed

[Mosby]

A little less than fifteen minutes after Ernesto, my old high school friend, got into his car and left the house where we'd been gathering late one night, he was shot below the lower left rib while trying to escape a pair of assailing gunmen. The two men, who'd presumably wanted to steal his car, had surprised him with their own vehicle, which they had parked so as to obstruct passage through a particularly narrow bend of the road. When he noticed that one of the men was carrying a gun, he instantly drove his car onto the curb and accelerated past them, and in that second glimpsed one of them taking aim.

He stooped low and to the left of the steering wheel, in an instinctive attempt to avoid being shot in the head from the rear. At that instant he felt a sudden explosion of heat, as he put it, surging from the left side of his abdomen. Knowing the bullet had made contact but hoping it had not lodged, he fled to the nearby Clínica Metropolitana, pressing the gas pedal as far down as it would go, and was meanwhile stalked through the rearview mirror by an unrelenting pair of headlights, which chased him for most of the way. It horrifies me to notice how easily the gunmen's premeditation to rob him turned into a determination to hunt him.

snip

Last October, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released a report detailing the state of citizens' security in Venezuela. 13,156 Venezuelans were murdered in 2007, the report noted. Roberto Briceño, director of the Venezuelan Observatory on Violence, maintains that the rate of homicidal violence has tripled in the decade since President Chávez took office in late 1998. Briceño also points out that 60 percent of today's victims are between the ages of 15 and 25, and 80 percent of the victims live in shantytowns, so equivocating analysts who understand our abhorrent crime rate as merely an expression of perennial class conflict would do well to notice who the victims are.

A recent Foreign Policy piece noticed that, according to official government figures, the murder rate in Caracas––which the magazine has named the murder capital of the world––now stands at 130 per 100,000 citizens, although experts estimate the figure to be closer to 160. To give you a comparative sense of what this means, I'll remind you that the current murder rate in New Orleans is 67 per 100,000. Venezuela's nationwide murder rate is 48 per 100,000 people, compared to 25 in Brazil and 5.6 in the United States.

http://www.jewcy.com/post/how_venezuelans_are_killed

[Peace Patriot]

1. Yeah, well, Mexico has a rightwing, Bushwhack government and look at the violent

crime rate there. The Chavez government has acknowledged this failure and taken measures to address it. The Mexican government, on the other hand, is pouring gasoline on the fire, by hyper-militarizing the "war on drugs" with billions in U.S. taxpayer money, and infusing the situation with more guns, more violence, and--always--yet more drug trafficking. The high street crime rate in Venezuela is just about the only thing that the Chavez government has failed at. All other indicators are way up--education and literacy, poverty reduction, economic growth, Venezuelans' satisfaction with their democracy and the direction of their country, and good management of the economy and Venezuela's resources (such that Venezuela has $40 billion in international cash reserves, as a cushion against the Bushwhacks' Financial 9/11, and, for instance, just bailed out the investors in six countries in the Stanford bank failure).

So, what else ya got, hm?

[Mosby]

2. Mexico is fighting organized criminal gangs

Not sure what that has to do with Venezuela's crime problem.

[Peace Patriot]

4. High murder rates and street crime in both places; gangs fighting gangs

in Mexico, with ordinary people getting harmed, and high murder rate and street crime in general. In Venezuela, there is also evidence of gang warfare. In fact, a prominent rightwing student activist, who had hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away and is believed to have been involved in several organized crime activities (including illicit trade in student bus passes) appears to have murdered by a rival gang. Are you saying you don't think street crime--murder, robbery of innocent people--is not gang organized and related? This is seldom the case in any big city. If Chavez cracked down on gangs and individual street crime, the rightwing would call him a 'dictator.' Oh, hey, they call him a 'dictator' anyway! Guy can't win.

I hope you don't favor what is called "Democratic Security" in Colombia--that is, rightwing paramilitary death squads, with very close ties, very high up, in the government and military, murdering union leaders, political leftists, small peasant farmers, human rights workers, journalists and others, in the name of "law and order," and securing tightly guarded enclaves for the rich away from the riffraff, while conducting heavy duty drugs and weapons trafficking on the side. The U.S. gives them $6 BILLION in military aid for the "war on drugs," and yet, somehow, the cocaine traffic never slows down. That's what comes of militarizing a social problem, and driving the price of cocaine up even further, so everybody--police, military, politicians--wants a piece of that lucrative trade. The result is repression, more violence and murder, in a downward spiral, in which society disintegrates. Is that what you want in Venezuela--Colombia-style 'homeland security'?

I fear that this is what is happening in Mexico. I don't believe that what is happening is that Mexico "is fighting organized criminal gangs." With the infusion of billions of dollars (our tax dollars) from the Bushwhacks, Mexican politicians, police and military are getting part of the action--protecting some gangs (the ones they have deals with), and destroying competitor gangs, and pitting one gang against another, to up the carnage, to report better body counts to the U.S. Senate. I am a total skeptic on the U.S. "war on drugs." I believe it is complete bullcrap. I think it is a corrupt, murderous failed program, for strengthening the brutal fascist elements of society, and suppressing the poor, as well as independent, non-player drug lords.

This what I mean by pouring gasoline on the fire. You want that for Venezuela? Truly, the Chavez government, the mayors, the local police forces, and society as a whole need to do a better job of eliminating violent and other street crime, gang-related or otherwise. I don't know why they haven't done so, since the Chavez government has such a superb record on every other social issue--education, poverty reduction, economic growth and development, social services, keeping the government in the black (and well-cushioned with cash reserves)--you name it, they've done it right. Except for street crime. But even despite street crime, Chavez enjoys a 60% to 70% approval rating, and Venezuelans are among the most satisfied citizens in Latin America, as to approving the direction of their government and their country.

Every society has problems of one kind or another, no matter how well the government is doing, or how popular it is. That's human life. What I want to know is, why did you post this rightwing blogger on a leftist political forum, DU, four days after the Chavez government won a great victory in the referendum on term limits? Why are you aiding and abetting rightwingers, and promulgating their next "talking point"--and really their only "talking point," since all of their lies about Chavez have been thoroughly discredited--by the other leaders of South America, as well as by the plain facts--and their various coup plots have been defeated?

[killbotfactory]

3. What does this mean?

Briceño also points out that 60 percent of today's victims are between the ages of 15 and 25, and 80 percent of the victims live in shantytowns, so equivocating analysts who understand our abhorrent crime rate as merely an expression of perennial class conflict would do well to notice who the victims are.

Did the poor herd themselves into dangerous shantytowns for the fun of it?

[EFerrari]

5. Violent crime is a problem in Venezuela and this is a right wing source.

Both.