CARACAS – The cost of protecting President Hugo Chávez has come under question at the National Assembly, which is all but entirely dominated by his ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and its minor allies.
The issue was raised by loyalist Deputy Juan José Mendoza during a debate at which legislators duly rubber-stamped an “additional credit” worth BsF7.102 million to finance the presidential Honor Guard.
Mendoza wasn’t out to criticize the extra money. On the contrary, he asked what on Earth would happen to the country if anything happened to the president. “What’s at stake is the peace of the country,” he declared.
Nobody in the chamber was prepared to mount an outright challenge to the top-up, and it duly sailed through in a flurry of upraised hands.
However, the handful of anti-government legislators from Podemos – the social democratic party which once sided with Chávez but is now against him – and a lone representative of the Popular Humanist Front, Pastora Medina did take the opportunity to ask why the chamber wasn’t discussing the safety of the people.
This was a good point. Venezuela is reckoned to have one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world – around 130 per every 100,000 head of population. “The president has to be cared for, but who’s going to look after those who vote for him?” Deputy Juan José Molina demanded to know. “We should use the resources to attend to the needs of the people.”
As if to remind everybody of the ever-lurking threat posed by thugs with guns, an officer from the state security service, DISIP, who worked as a bodyguard for a presidential protection squad was slain in broad daylight last Tuesday morning.
Herickson Arcángel González León, 26, didn’t die in the line of duty. Like so many others, he met his maker after bad guys had demanded he give them his motor bike. He refused, so they plugged him with several bullets and took it anyway.
This was in Carapita, a less than salubrious district on the way to the zoo in south-east Caracas, and he became the 49th person to be killed there this year so far. The area seems to be well on the way to matching last year’s local murder toll of 70.
Within hours of picking up their dead colleague, the forces of law and order appeared to extract rapid rough justice, with 200 officers swarming into several barrios in Carapita in search of the killers.
Amid much confusion and a not inconsiderable degree of pure fright among members of the public, a squad from the scientific and investigative police, CICPC, gunned down two adolescent males, claiming they were the culprits.
Spokesmen for CICPC said the young men had been found to be in possession of credentials from DISIP, the Honor Guard, credit cards and a cellular telephone that had belonged to the dead bodyguard. As is customary, the official version of events was that there had been a shoot-out.
Not so, said the family, which is almost as usual an occurrence. They said the lads had been taken from their homes and then turned up dead at the city morgue.
One of the dead departed is said to have been 14 years old. This shouldn't raise too many eyebrows, given the way things are in parts of this city, not least among them Carapita. Not so long ago, one trainee Macho Camacho tough guy with a very large pistol turned out to be only 12 years old.
The cops claim the youths belonged to a gang called Los Clavellinos (the meaning of which is unclear, and that's not unusual, either). But then it emerged that the police hadn't heard of this lot until then.
The district has been plagued in recent years by two bunches of bad guys who've become all too well known as Los Guajiros (named after a race of Indians who live in Zulia state) and Los Sayones. Both gangs make a speciality of stealing motorbikes from riders at gunpoint, running the local drugs and protection rackets, and fighting each other in order to see who does.
Local bus drivers claim that when the two gangs aren't at each others' throats, they're responsible between them for an average of seven armed assaults on buses a week. That's one way of saying on average one every day.
Residents of Carapita say that the moment the cops had left in search of a third youth, the gangs came back and took over as usual. Within hours, the sounds of yet more gunfire were to be heard.
In Las Minas in Baruta down in the south of the city, Joseth Besilassabat Efran's life as an immigrant local businessman of Syrian origin came to an end at 77 years of age on Thursday,or maybe a little earlier.
He hadn't been seen that day, so police and the local fire brigade broke into his shop. There, they found his dead body tied to a chair with signs of having been beaten on the head several times.
The day's takings were gone. Police reckon this was the work of a local gang, who prey on small firms. Some members of this gang, too, are thought to be males not yet old enough to be shaving every day.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=344938&CategoryId=10717
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