Opinions

Chavez killing Venezuela

In print | April 24, 2008

The recent official report released by the Venezuelan Scientific Police indicates a 14 percent increase in the number of homicides reported (emphasis on the word “reported”) in Caracas during the first three months of this year. The households that bear the emotional weight of this depressing reality reside in the vast and impenetrable barriadas, or shantytowns, that surround the nation’s capital. The months of January, February and March in the year 2007 left a balance of 621 homicides. This year’s somber figures show an additional 89 homicides, bringing the total to 710. In other words, on average, eight people are murdered per day in Caracas alone. The numbers seem to predict that a total of 2,920 Caraqueños will perish at the hands of urban crime by the end of this year. That is a little more than 0.07 percent of the city’s population.

For perspective, if Americans died at the hands of crime at this rate, it would equal around 212,723 people per year. According to the U.S. Census, the current homicide rate in the United States is about 0.000057.

In case these numbers are not alarming enough to the reader, perhaps the horrific reality of Caracas’ morgues will put them into context. The Chavez administration’s pathetic management of public hospitals and health centers in general has lead, among other things, to the collapse of the most important morgues in the city. Vultures circle relentlessly above the morgues, indisputably proving the extent of the macabre situation that our country faces. Anonymous sources from the morgue have declared that, due to a dysfunctional ventilation system, the stench of decomposing bodies that filters into the pipelines of neighboring buildings and houses have attracted the scavenging birds.

As Maria Isoliett Iglesias reports in El Universal, there have been days where up to 84 cadavers reside in the 14 functioning freezers of the morgue in Bello Monte. Each freezer is designed to hold up to two corpses. In the past months the vehicles allocated to transporting cadavers have consistently broken down. Due to a lack of resources, the forensic doctors have taken to repairing the vehicles themselves, and employ a cargo truck to transport bodies from the morgue to “La Peste” in the southern cemetery. What Caraqueños refer to as “La Peste” is nothing other than a mass grave.

Meanwhile, the headlines of the national press proclaim the fact that Venezuela is currently the number one military spender in Latin America. As Chavez prepares the country for a future, hypothetical, and illusory invasion from the “empire” (i.e. the USA), there is not a single mention in his prophetic discourse of the fact that Venezuelans are killing each other at an unprecedented rate.

I have chosen to write about this horrific and depressing subject because this type of information does not seem to reach the international community. In fact, it seldom reaches Venezuelans, since politics and corruption scandals take up the front pages of our newspapers. The socialist maxim that Chavez utters at every public event, “¡Patria, Socialismo o Muerte!” (Motherland, Socialism, or Death!) is, ironically, extremely relevant to the subject at hand. Whether by choice or not, Venezuelans have apparently opted for the third option.

When will we hear our president glorify life, democracy and freedom? When will Chavez act as a humanitarian leader without associating himself with a terrorist guerilla group in the jungles of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador? When will he call for social reconciliation between the politically polarized sectors of our population? Too many questions of this nature remain chronically unanswered. What a beautiful and glorious revolution is underway in the Motherland!