The Suit Magazine

In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez has managed to hide the anguish of this nightmare under the shadow of repression. Recently, just one photograph has been able to break through the wall of silence, coinciding with the recent national assembly elections which his party won hands down.

The grisly images – naked and half-naked bloodied bodies piled on tables and on the floor of a facility – depict just a tiny fraction of the calamity. In 2009, Venezuela suffered a homicide rate of 56 per 100,000 people in 2009 – far higher than the 14 per 100,000 last year in Mexico. The city of Caracas is unrivaled among the Americas’ largest cities for its yearly murder rate, currently around 200 per 100,000 inhabitants. According to sociologist Roberto Briceño-León of Venezuela’s Central University and who serves as director of its Violence Observatory, more than 16,000 homicides were committed last year in a nation of 28 million people – up from less than 6,000 in 1999, when Chavez first took office.

It has gotten to the point that Venezuelan officials have hidden behind stone walls and hired security experts to advise them. Rich and poor alike are resigned to living with a problem that remains low on the list of government priorities. Over 90% of the murders in Caracas remained unsolved. “We are registering the highest impunity rate towards violence ever,” explained Venezuelan Commissioner and former Director of the Miranda State Police Department Elisio Guzmán. “Just in homicides, this rate reaches 93%,” he added. The cost of these crimes is enormous, especially in a country like Venezuela, with low resources, whose economy depends on its primary work force.

It is estimated that Venezuela has lost 12.98 million bolivars due to the 14,584 homicides committed in 2008. At the time, one U.S. dollar could be exchanged for approximately 4,300 bolivars.

Sociologist and professor at Andrés Bello Catholic University Luis Cedeño explained that the cost of a homicide is figured differently, depending upon the wealth of a country.  “Interpersonal violence represents a high cost to society, but in countries with medium or low resources it tends to be underestimated,” Cedeno said.

“For instance,” he elaborated, “a homicide in the United States could be estimated to cost 2,000,000 dollars, while in Venezuela it could be estimated at around 400 dollars per homicide.” According to the professor, this is because Venezuela’s government has never invested in the security of its citizenship; its investment has never surpassed 5% of the entire national budget. But the insecurity of the population does take its economic toll.

“The State never assesses the impact of the insecurity as a loss,” says Cedeño. In the future, “the government must take into consideration how expensive crime is, as it could represent [a significant percentage] of local budgets,” he added. 
Using the age of victims, the number of lost productive years due to violence and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, Cedeño concluded that Venezuela lost 13% of its GDP in 2008 as a consequence of the violence. From 2001 to 2007, the country stopped producing the equivalent of 31 million bolivars. “The rise of the cost has not had any consequence on national budgets, even though it is a clear message to governments,” he said. “The adverse impact on security will have a greater effect on GDP´s growth than those solutions aimed at increasing just the GPD.”
Needless to say, the impact on the National Health System has been devastating, as violence has caused 298,000 injuries in the past decade. “Sixty percent of the health budget – 4% of the GDP – is used to treat victims of violence,” reported Public Health expert Iris Medina to El Nacional, one of the few remaining independent Venezuelan daily newspapers in the Americas.

A dire lack of physicians and forensic professionals contributes to the sense of chaos. Even in 2004, when the number of murders was far less, the number of forensic workers was around 13.  Now that figure has dropped to 5. “Those who remain have a miserable salary,” Commissioner Guzmán said.
Nurse Gladys Perez said she is overwhelmed by the steady stream of people with gunshot wounds, as they are ferried to the emergency room where she works. “We've had up to 60 wounded people in a weekend,” explained Perez, adding that in her three decades as a nurse she has never seen so much bloodshed. “There's an undeclared war here. I don't know what else to call it.”
The morgue in Bello Monte, where the photo was taken, has been a barometer of the changing levels of violence in Caracas. Eighty to 120 corpses are brought to this morgue every week, mostly with gunshot wounds. Too much work for a venue forgotten by the government. “The bodies are piled up on the ground floor, and we [have been] demanding a solution for 20 years. Bello Monte was designed in the 1970´s, but now the explosion of violence makes it unsustainable,” Guzmán said.

In fact, Bello Monte was always thought of as a temporary facility, says Ronna Marquez, a journalist from El Nacional. “In the early 90´s, a new building started to be built, but it never was completed and now it’s abandoned. The government has announced several times its intention to renew it, but we are still waiting,” Marquez said before adding, “more than half of the 24 morgues in Caracas are improvised venues, annexed to hospitals and with no proper spaces.”

“Criminality has grown 134% in the recent decade,” added Commissioner Guzmán. “There are not enough spaces to keep the corpses.”
Even before Chavez took power, other countries, like Spain, had been concerned with the rising violence in Venezuela. They even suggested offering loans to the country in order to better equip the police department. “New devices were bought, but as the change of administration took place right after, some of them were abandoned at the piers. The equipment remains there, although those [which were] more attractive – such as new vehicles – were collected rapidly,” Guzman said.

In his more than eleven years in office, President Chavez has failed to take significant action on crime. After the release of the abovementioned photograph, instead of giving any public explanations, he ordered the newspaper to stop publishing images of violence and dismissed the implied criticism in a televised speech. “They want to attribute the violence to me,” said the President. “Violence is one of the visible and terrible effects of the social injustice of capitalism, of the model the bourgeoisie imposed upon us,” he added.

The rising cost of murder leaves the poorest families having to pay for the burials of their relatives with no financial help from the government. That sense of abandonment has had its effect. “It is not only rising poverty (levels), but also anger against the Chavez administration,” Guzmán explained.
President Chavez has moved, slowly but surely, to control all aspects of life in Venezuela –expropriating private property and censoring or persecuting those who dare to criticize him. He has nationalized a large percentage of industry, and he has taken control of congress, the judiciary and the national electoral council, effectively stripping his opponents of power, even denying their property rights. His failure to even attempt to control rampant violence continue to be revealed to the public by El Nacional. 

In effect, his administration has been virtually hiding the reality of rampant bloodshed while promoting social programs. “Chavez cannot afford to let Venezuelans find out that violent crime has gone up from 4,550 a year in 1998, to 19,113 in 2009, making Caracas the most violent city in the world,” said Guzmán.

Even without Chavez having total control in Venezuela, “this situation can only change very slowly. We would have to work together to design and launch strategies and plans that focus on fighting crime, making a [significant monetary] investment,” said journalist Ronna Marquez, who foresees increased censorship and repression in the wake of the September 26th elections. “The government, according to its actions, has publicly shown over and over again that security and crime are not one of its priorities,” Marquez added.  And it is the people of Venezuela who suffer.

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