Confounding Venezuelan Government Claims to the Contrary, Bodies Build Up at the Caracas Morgue

The trouble with making bold claims is that these can quickly come unstuck at the behest of reality, as the head of Venezuela's scientific and investigative police, Cicpc, may now have reason to realize. On Monday, Commissioner Wilmer Flores Trossel, called in reporters to tell them that the number of murders across the country had fallen during the festive season by 20% compared with a year before. Flores Trossel didn't give out any actual figures to back up this claim, and went on to assert that crime in Caracas was down 15% on the same measure. But it didn't take long for under-the-counter enquiries in police circles to cast doubt on his statement.

Figures at Cicpc show there were 13,156 murders in the country during the whole of 2007. The comparable figure for the first 11 months of 2008 was not far short of that at 13,129 – and December is usually one of the worst months of the year for murders.

As to Flores Trossel's claim to have brought down crime in Caracas during December – for which there as yet no statistics, even via the back door – this may or may not have been the case. Either way, things have taken a turn for the worse with the New Year, to judge by the number of slain individuals turning up at the city morgue. Unofficial estimates on this basis are that 93 corpses ended up at the morgue as a result of violent death during the first five days of this year. These included 31 on New Year's Eve, and it appears the carnage continued throughout the long weekend. Among them was Lewis Hernández, who died in hospital at one o'clock in the morning last Sunday. He'd been shot 20 times by a gang of robbers who were out to steal equipment from a discotheque in La Laguna de Turumu in Petare, a notoriously violence-prone district of east Caracas. That he survived for so long was a surprise in itself. Ten people were slain in Petare during the three days ending last Sunday.

Cicpc meanwhile claims almost to have solved the case of Gladys Teresa Rivero, 47, the director of a women's prison who was murdered in the early hours of January 1. They say one suspect is in hospital under police guard and that they know who the others are. Two young males in their late teens also died in the attack. Just why Venezuelan men have the habit of standing around in the street drinking and chatting late at night in districts known to be dangerous remains a mystery to more cautious souls. Gabriel Antonio Márquez Angulo, 27, was killed with two gunshots as he was indulging in this perilous custom in La Vega, west Caracas. Afterwards, his friends and relatives complained about how dangerous it was to be out and about in the area.

It was not just Caracas that took it in the neck as the New Year arrived. Authorities in Zulia state, west Venezuela, report 53 murders there up to late Monday afternoon. In Lara state, the authorities admitted to 16 killings during the first weekend of 2009.