Venezuela’s Murder Epidemic Rages on Amid State of Emergency
http://time.com/4341450/venezuela-state-of-emergency-murder-caracas/
Meeting the killers of Caracas as opposition to President Nicolas Maduro brings Venezuela to the brink
At the Bello Monte morgue in Caracas, the smell of death reeks out from the buildings to the surrounding streets and to the dozens of people waiting on the sidewalks to collect the corpses of their loved ones. The odor of the rotting bodies is so strong because of power cuts hitting the air conditioning and the sheer number of cadavers. Every half hour or so, ambulances arrive with new corpses, the vast majority of them homicide victims. The morgue serves the whole of Caracas, which has become one of the most murderous cities on the planet.
“The violence has got worse and worse. It is a devastating situation. There are killers everywhere,” said Jose Medina, a 51-year-old musician, who was sat outside the morgue, waiting to collect the body of his cousin. Gunmen had shot his cousin dead in a taxi he drove in an apparent robbery, Medina said. “It has got dangerous to just be on the street. Many of us stay indoors at night, imposing a curfew on ourselves.”
The country’s runaway murder rate is just one of the factors driving opposition to President Nicolas Maduro in a country where shortages of food and basic goods are chronic, inflation is running rampant and the government is jailing political prisoners. But it serves as a bloody illustration of just how close to outright societal collapse Venezuela has come since the end of the 20th century, as gangs, guerrillas and militia defend their turfs and traditional authority structures fall by the wayside.
The murder rate is essentially the reason why so many Venezuelans who are middle-class and above are leaving the country. Even if they're leaving and starting from scratch in another country, it's still better to go through those difficulties than to live in a country where physical security is almost null.
Venezuela has a higher murder rate than Syria. Let that sink in.
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