It would be great to be able to look forward to a better 2017. Unfortunately, in Venezuela as in the rest of the world, it is in 2017 that 2016’s tragic legacy will actually take hold. Not only did 2016 see an excruciating economic contraction leading to scarcities of food and medicines, lootings and unnecessary hunger and death, it was also the year that Venezuela moved from electoral authoritarianism to unhyphenated authoritarianism. This means that 2017 will see more of the same but with even less hope for positive change because of the lack of a credible electoral solution. This is not to say the situation is stable. To the contrary, it is fragile, combustible and could spin out of control at any time--perhaps for better but more likely for worse.
Thinking about Venezuela in 2017, then, invites more questions than predictions.
1. Will there be a transition? Will it be democratic? Venezuela currently has an unpopular government with ever less support, but which holds the most important levers of power: four out of five branches of government, the state oil company, and the armed forces. They have used these levers to: neutralize the one branch of government they do not control, postpone a referendum they would have surely lost, and control the street protests and lootings that continually threaten their grip. In postponing the referendum has the government spent its democratic credentials meaning it will have to pull back and hold elections for governors and mayors in 2017 and for president in 2018? Or is this the beginning of a headlong slide into totalitarianism? Just asking whether Venezuela is a democracy or dictatorship is not all that useful. Instead we will be looking at constellations of power, endogenous and exogenous impacts that could change them, and the spaces of movement that will frame their dynamics. The government-opposition dialogue is still the most important space of political confrontation at this point and we will be following it closely.
2. Will the opposition get its act together? Beating up on the opposition is easy and we have done our fair share of it on this blog over the past year, unrepentantly so. But we’ve also tried to highlight some of their progress. They put together a valiant effort at a recall referendum, and some major street mobilizations. The AN itself showed some important legislative achievements which should be considered as such despite having been killed by the Supreme Court. At the same time, these efforts were frequently dogged by disorganization and a lack of agreement, both of which result in a lack of strategic thinking. One can’t help but imagine what they could accomplish if they: had a unified leadership, really reached out to all Venezuelans, and put together a solid platform. There seems to be some movement on this front already this year.
3. Who will stick with Chavismo as it falls into decadence? Chavismo has held surprisingly strong and Nicolas Maduro’s popularity is still close to 20%. Most leaders in Chavismo have stuck together, if for no other reason than survival instinct. How long can it last? It is unlikely any expressions of dissent will occur from ministries, which are under the direct control of the executive. But will there come a time when a popularly-elected Chavista leader such as Francisco Arias Cardenas or Jorge Rodriguez says “no more?” Or could other public powers with a degree of institutional autonomy—such as the military, the CNE, or the judiciary—get to the point where they decide to defend their institutions’ integrity over the government’s permanence in power?
4. Can the international community have any influence over the course of events in Venezuela? Hugo Chávez built a regional coalition that was a significant source of strength for his political project. Through Petrocaribe and other forms of economic exchange Venezuela was able to secure the votes it needed to deflect OAS initiatives. At the same time he helped construct UNASUR and CELAC and consolidate Venezuela’s position in the UN. With the decline of the Bolivarian project and a significant shift to the right in the region, this strength has dissipated. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro invoked the OAS Democratic Charter last May, and Mercosur recently marginalized Venezuela from full membership. What is yet to be seen is whether Unasur can have any serious impact on the Maduro government, and whether Almagro shot his wad with Venezuela, invoking the Charter too soon, and thereby making it difficult to take Venezuela up again. The Vatican is perhaps the most interesting actor with the most potential in the current situation. Could the UN name a special envoy?
5. Will the Trump Administration be isolationist or aggressive with respect to Venezuela? At WOLA we have argued against the US taking aggressive unilateral action with respect to Venezuela. After conceding for about four months to anti-Castro’s legislators’ efforts to make Venezuela into the new Cuba—where sanctions and the reactions they generate in the region have arguably facilitated the Castro’s hold on power for over 50 years—the Obama Administration effectively stepped back from such policies in April 2015, engaged Venezuela diplomatically, and supported multilateral efforts to address the crisis. We originally speculated that a Trump administration would take a hands off approach to Venezuela, given its warming with Vladimir Putin and Trump’s apparent admiration for strongman governments. But the naming of former ExxonMobile CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State suggests there could be a more aggressive stance towards Venezuela.
6. What can we know about the corruption that stands behind the Venezuelan crisis? Chavismo has promoted a Leninist fusion of party, state and economy that systematically undermined transparency, accountability and the separation of powers. The result was a recipe for corruption at a dramatic scale. Corruption is hard to get information on, but we will have a post on it in the coming weeks, looking at some of the latest information.
7. Will Venezuela run out of money? Economics is not our focus on this blog, but it is such a central part of the story that it cannot be ignored. We try to digest the work of those who know more and make debt, currency chaos, scarcities and inflation understandable. Venezuela has such vast resources that the Maduro government’s mortgaging of them could go on for some time. But just when unsustainable economic situations collapse is unpredictable and only happens when it happens.
8. What is the reality of daily life in Venezuela? The governance debacle that Chavismo has presided over has its cruelest effects at the level of individuals and families who cannot put food on the table, get the medicines and care they need, or walk out their doors after dark. But sifting through available information can be difficult. On the one hand, the fact that this leftist-governing project has pompously, often obnoxiously, portrayed itself as an alternative to the global status-quo, makes its melt-down ripe for disaster journalism, social media hyperbole and even video games. On the other hand, given that Chavismo is guided by Marxist precepts that assume that international capital controls the media for its own benefit, it is to be expected that the Maduro government and its national and international supporters will seek to explain away the crisis as media hype and manipulation—often with their own ample media resources. We will do what we can to separate the wheat from the chaff and provide contextualized information. Our goal is to treat people as ends in themselves, not nodes in political or social positioning. Doing so requires portraying them, and the situations they face in all of their complex multidimensionality.
9. Will the Barlovento massacre be the beginning of the end for the Operación Liberación del Pueblo (OLP)? We certainly hope so. It took almost a year and a half, but finally the terrible violence of the OLP generated social outrage instead of applause, when 13 young men were found to have been tortured and massacred in a rural Afro-Venezuelan area east of Caracas. Despite the fact that 10-15 young men have been routinely killed in these operations since they began in July 2015, this one struck a chord. But it is not clear whether this will be a turning point or a mere blip on the screen of public opinion. We will post a briefing on this in the coming weeks.
10. Will violence continue to get more organized? Will the citizen security apparatus continue to get less organized? That is actually two questions, but they are two sides of the same coin. Our starting point is that violence is the result not of a lack of values, family breakdown, or biographical trauma, but dysfunctional public policy and atomized social structure. Some of the 2008-14 police reform still exists. But it has been superceded by militarized, episodic initiatives such as the OLP. The result has been an increased organization of crime which may or may not increase levels of violence. Rebecca Hanson and I are working with colleagues on a couple of different initiatives to provide scholarly inputs to understanding violence in Venezuela. When possible we will bring our ongoing analyses to this blog.
“Discriminatory Legalism” in Latin America: Better Justice Systems or Democratic Erosion
By: Felipe Deidan; Fall 2020 Citizen Security Intern
(The CROOK Act is designed to empower anti-corruption reformers, such as the CICIG in Guatemala. JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Democratic governance and the independence of judicial systems in Latin America are increasingly being put at risk by autocratic catalysts. The use of discriminatory legalism, the deliberate targeting of a specific group or individual for political gain, has reached new levels as empowered leaders target former presidents and independent institutions on the basis of corruption, fraud, and criminal transgressions. These challenges are further muddled by the threat of hegemonic presidents in Latin America, who claim to strengthen democratic governance but in reality, entrench their competitive authoritarian rule. The implications are dire. In Ecuador, the electoral commissions banned former president Rafael Correa under conspicuous corruption charges. Guatemala’s institutions face further erosion as the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) was allowed to expire and judicial structures are currently threatened by corrupt special interests.
The impact of the charges placed on Rafael Correa is obvious; their intentions, however, are unclear. President Lenin Moreno surprised the global community by turning against his predecessor in 2017, barring the former president from “taking the fatherland back” in 2021. In April 2020, Correa was sentenced to 8 years in prison on bribery and corruption charges, including charges based on fund allocation of political activities. The timing of these charges, however, comes at a critical moment as Lenin faces a debt structuring deal with the IMF, which would likely be reversed under a renewed Correa administration. Additionally, a referendum passed in 2018 also limited the reelection of former presidents after their second term, forcing Correa to participate as a vice-presidential candidate in the 2021 election. Incidentally, a congressional seat for Rafael Correa would provide him parliamentary immunity from these charges.
While the National Court of Justice calls the ruling against Correa “a victory for the Ecuadorian people”, the implications for democracy are troubling. The Lenin administration initially called for a delay of the presidential election when it appeared unlikely that they would be able to sentence Correa before the nomination period; however, these concerns were quickly subdued when the ruling fell in their favor. While the corruption charges against Correa should be considered, Lenin’s efforts to disrupt the electoral process through the judiciary system introduces a dangerous precedent for future legalist exploitation.
In addition, the use of discriminatory legalism also disrupts institutions seen as a threat to the political elite. The CICIG, a UN-backed independent body set up to help fight corruption and impunity in Guatemala, was allowed to expire last year. For 12 years, the CICIG made great progress in helping dismantle illicit networks , eventually causing members of Guatemala’s political and business elite to begin “seeking ways to push back against the CICIG after many were implicated in multimillion-dollar corruption probes starting in 2015”. Its expiration also came at a time in which about one in five members of Guatemala’s Congress was under investigation for corruption. While President Jimmy Morales claims that his decision was based on the commission being “unconstitutional and a risk to national security”, Morales also faced allegations of illegal campaign donations in an investigation supported by the CICIG.
The removal of the independent agency has made it easier for the Guatemalan Congress to meddle in the county’s courts by committing discriminatory lawfare against the Constitutional Court. Earlier this year, a candidate to the Courts of Appeals filed a motion asking the Supreme Court to remove the judicial immunity of four Constitutional Court magistrates because the magistrates acted outside the limits of the Constitutional Court’s authority in their ruling on the judicial election process, a process that has been mired by conflicts of interest. These illicit links were revealed earlier this year through the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI) report on the “parallel commissions 2020” case, which centered on Gustavo Alejos’s attempt to influence the selection process. As the constitutionally-mandated Congress wages lawfare against its judicial system, Guatemala’s judicial integrity remains in peril.
The hijacking of democratic structures in Ecuador and Guatemala demonstrates a degradation of weak institutions. Autocratic catalysts have worked to erode democratic governance as a means of power abuse and influence peddling. In Ecuador and Guatemala, the manipulation of electoral proceedings and judicial and anti-corruption bodies are disguised under the constructs of democracy. These regressions threaten democratic institutions and promote self-empowerment while simultaneously decaying the state in the process. If the region does not adapt to discriminatory legalism tactics, the future of democracy will remain illusory.
IDB Commends CSJP and Ministry for Reintegration Programme
New Post has been published on http://goodnewsjamaica.com/news/idb-commends-csjp-and-ministry-for-reintegration-programme/
IDB Commends CSJP and Ministry for Reintegration Programme
The Citizen Security and Justice Programme (CSJP) III and its parent Ministry, National Security, have received commendations from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for its implementation of a reintegration programme that targets youth who have been in conflict with the law.
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Modernisation of the State Specialist with the IDB, Camila Mejia Giraldo, addressing a recent media event to highlight the initiative, which is done through collaboration with the Department of Correctional Services (DCS), said it is important that the agencies are working together to implement effective crime prevention and reintegration policies.
“We are convinced this will translate into significant improvements in crime and violence prevention in Jamaica,” she said.
Mrs. Mejia Giraldo said the experience of implementing similar programmes in other countries and regions demonstrate the effectiveness of such comprehensive rehabilitation and reintegration policies as critical crime-reducing instruments.
Over the past two years, the CSJP III has engaged 44 youngsters, referred by the DCS. Ten additional persons are currently in the programme.
Following an assessment, the participants received psychosocial services, vocational skills training in areas such as auto mechanics and general construction, remedial education, as well as counselling and consistent monitoring and follow-up by CSJP III case management officers.
The youth also benefited from the Jamaica Defence Force Internship Programme, aimed at improving employability and social skills of participants, as well as the relationship between young men and the security forces.
The IDB representative said the CSJP III has been improving its targeting mechanism by identifying youth with medium to high risk of getting involved in crime. She described the model being used as an innovative and comprehensive approach, which is based on the key pillars of risk assessment and case management.
“Through the partnership between the DCS and the CSJP III, over 40 youngsters have a new chance and the tools to build a new life,” she said.
She further commended the risk-needs-responsivity model that CSJP III is implementing, as it assesses the risk factors of youngsters, addresses criminogenic needs and deliver intervention to treat with these needs at the individual, family and community levels.
Mrs. Mejia Giraldo delivered her address on behalf of the Global Affairs Canada and the Department for International Development (DFID) out of the United Kingdom. The three development partners fund the CSJP III, in partnership with the Jamaican Government.
Prepared for the Innovation in Citizen Services Division by Jennifer Peirce This paper presents updated information about crime and violence in Belize, and about current and recent initiatives that address these issues, with an emphasis on youth and on Southside Belize City. The findings complement the 2013 IDB Technical Note on citizen security in Belize and the analysis of the completed…
From Theory to Practice: Piloting New CVE Programs in Bangladesh
Democracy International partner Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) hosts a radio talk show on countering the threat of violent extremism in the country’s rural communities.
Dhaka, Bangladesh – Recent extremist terror attacks have altered Bangladesh’s security landscape, creating new concerns for the country’s 163 million inhabitants. In response, Democracy International is working with local civil society organizations to pilot and examine the effectiveness of different approaches to counter the threat of violent extremism through our partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. The project provides a challenging, but exciting, opportunity to move from theory to practice in the countering violence extremism (CVE) field and a way to effectively advance evidence-based programming in the sector.
While government leaders, civil society representatives, and counterterrorism experts often disagree on the drivers of radicalization and extremism, there is a general consensus that addressing extremism requires a broad political strategy that looks beyond the security sector. While the police and military have a critical role to play, successfully countering violent extremism requires us to engage local authorities, communities, and family members to prevent, control, and ultimately assist in the rehabilitation of those who espouse and promote dangerous ideologies. Despite the broad agreement on certain CVE tenants, turning theories into functional practice at the local level is always complex. Approaches that have yielded success in one context may be poorly adapted for another.
Hoping to build on various theories of CVE, while recognizing the challenges, we are seeking programmatic evidence for success in countering extremism through eight pilot schemes conducted in collaboration with local organizations in Bangladesh. “We’re ready to take risks. We wanted to be creative and try things out, to see what works and anticipate that we may learn as much from our failures as from our successes,” notes Colin McIlreavy, DI Senior Associate for Peace and Reconciliation, who advises our CVE program team in Dhaka.
There is considerable diversity among the pilot civil society projects. A handful are designed to facilitate social change and community engagement at the grassroots level through dialogue and messages about extremism owned and delivered by community members. One group, the Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication, for example, is creating talk shows and public information campaigns for radio, which remains the most effective means to reach a mass audience in the most rural areas of Bangladesh.
As elsewhere, Bangladeshi youth are considered a key at-risk group for extremist messaging and several pilot projects focus on messages development by youth for youth as well as for parents, teachers, and university lecturers. Current DI grantee Dnet is working with teachers and parents to identify behavioral changes in students and provide them with resources to better support students at home and in the classroom. In addition, Dnet has also trained parents on strategies to foster an open and inclusive environment where students feel free to express themselves.
DI supports other approaches that harness our partnerships with local universities and technological innovations in Bangladesh’s rapidly modernizing society. PrenuerLab, for example, is digitally mapping incidents of extremism nationwide and developing tools to monitor extremist content online (including a recent hackathon). An additional initiative by the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute aims to build a nationwide networking platform for civil society organizations to share and exchange ideas on CVE.
There are many challenges to the work: these are complex, demanding, and sensitive issues. Programmatic interventions challenge existing roles, particularly concerning the responsibilities of the family and the state. The role of civil society in CVE is evolving and often uncertain. Other obstacles are more tangible, including the challenge of assembling and mobilizing communities in rural areas as well as inserting relevant CVE content into school and university agendas, already filled for students and teachers alike.
These pilot projects are still in progress with evaluations scheduled to conclude in the coming months. Despite the associated challenges of monitoring, evaluating, and implementing each project, the evidence suggests some organizations have successfully bridged the gap between theory and practice,and all benefit from an admirable level of engagement, energy, and ownership that augurs well for future CVE learning and programming in Bangladesh.
Venezuela’s Violent Death Rate is Probably 20% Lower than Estimated
David Smilde
The single most quoted estimate for Venezuela’s 2015 violent death rate has been the Venezuelan Violence Observatory’s astronomical figure of 90 per 100,000. However, political scientist Dorothy Kronick, using data from Venezuela’s Ministry of Health and from the CICPC, Venezuela’s investigative police, and confirming with Venezuelan colleagues, has come up with an estimate of 70 (see her piece today on the Caracas Chronicles blog. Read it in Spanish on Prodavinci.).
The difference can be explained by two aspects of OVV’s methodology. First, as Kronick pointed out two years ago, OVV is not actually providing an estimate based on new data points. Rather it is projecting from data from previous years. That actually is understandable, given the tardiness or outright lack of official data. However it has the danger of not detecting turning points in trends. And some ways of doing it are better than others (for example triangulating with other data that tends to vary directly with the statistic of interest. See Kronick’s current post on how CICPC figures can be used to extrapolate the slower Ministry of Health figures).
But secondly, and what is new here, the OVV’s all important 2013 data point appears to be incorrect. OVV takes the number of confirmed homicides and adds to them constants that will reflect police killings and “deaths under investigation” (deaths where the cause has not yet been determined). That is legitimate. But in 2013 it used as its base number an estimate from a journalist that already included these kinds of deaths. Put differently, they added their constants to include 2 important sources of violent deaths to a figure that already included them.
The rub is that while for OVV the violent death rate has skyrocketed since 2012, in Kronick’s analysis the trend has significantly flattened since then. Of course the difference between 70 and 90 deaths per 100,000 is like the difference between terrible and horrendous. But trajectories are important as they lead to quite different assessments of what is happening and what needs to be done. This has led Francisco Toro to suggest that OVV should publicly retract its estimate.
[The following is a translated and edited version of a presentation I gave to an ad hoc, off-the-record discussion group last week in Caracas. The first 650 words or so are rather academic. If you want more Venezuela-specific analysis, jump down to the break following the asterisks]
Let me begin with the idea, not particularly new, but important as a foundation for my analysis, that violence is a form of social interaction in which a person or group seeks to dominate an other through physical aggession or direct threat of physical agression. Violence is a way to order or reorder social relations and is most common when these social relations are in play, in other words in conditions of relative equality. Hierarchical, unequal relations, are generally pretty stable and peaceful. Violence is most likely to occur when the question “who’s in charge?” does not have a clear response, or when the existing social equilibrium is unstable and can easily be challenged.
Work in process by Josefina Bruni Celli of IESA shows how, over the course of forty-two years there is an extraordinary correlation and direct relationship between oil revenue and violence. The higher Venezuela’s oil revenue, the more the state invests in its citizens, the more poverty and inequality decline, and….the more violence there is.
From a common sense point of view this is paradoxical—this is why we called the conference Veronica Zubillaga and Rebecca Hanson and I organized at Tulane last October “The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela.” Our natural tendency is to think people are more happy and less prone to violence if they are equal and there is less poverty. They may indeed be more happy, but violence really has little to do with whether people are contented or not. Rather it has to do with their efforts to gain control over their social context.
Violence can be emotional and passionate, of course. And this is the principal way in which people tend to think about violence—a person who is frustrated or has repressed emotions explodes. However this is probably the least important type of violence for understanding what is going on in Venezuela. Much more important is that violence can be instrumental. It is a form of interaction that seeks to order or reorder social relationships, conslidate nascent relationships or reinforce weak or threatened relationships.
However, it should be pointed out that the distinction between emotional and instrumental violence is tenuous because, as many scholars of violence have argued, developing a reputation for the exercise of arbitrary, disproportionate or “irrational” violence can itself be very rational. What looks emotional and disproportionate can actually help an indivdiual or group consolidate its reputation.
We can go further and suggest that violence, like any social interaction, has a concrete element that is restricted to the interaction itself, and a ritualistic element that aims at public dramatization and definition of specific social relations--most often the social location of the victimizer, and the social location of the victim.
So the question I have been asked to address is whether we are seeing an increasing level of organization in crime in Venezuela. I believe we are, because of the type of violence we are seeing. Although I should say that I see factors that are working to organize and factors that are working to disorganize.
We can speak of three types of social organization that happens in the process of iterated criminal activity. First, at the most basic level we can speak of the organization of criminal actors. Instead of the solitary criminal or the pair of thugs on a motorcycle, criminal actors can develop networks and groups of five, ten or hundreds of people to take on more complex crimes. Second is organization between criminal networks. Gangs, groups, and mafias can coexist in relative peace when they develop agreements amongst themselves regarding territories or markets. Third, criminal groups can reach agreements with state authorities. The police can agree to allow crime to exist in exchange for kickbacks and, usually, the following of certain norms.
Each one of these types of organization can be completely peaceful. In fact, in general terms, crime is less violent when it is more organized in these three ways. But of course that does not mean it is violence-free. Indeed, when crime is organized it often engages in large scale instrumental-dramatic violence that seeks to establish or reestablish levels of organization and equilibriums.
There are a couple of tendencies in Venezuela that suggest to me that we are seeing an evolution in violence that indicates higher degrees of criminal organization.
First, we are seeing more massacres in which numbers of people in or near criminal groups are savagely murdered. This type of spectacular violence has the purpose of intimidating and demonstrating the dominance of the network of perpetrators over the network of victims. This type of violence is typical of battles between criminal networks, but also in the consolidation of a networks hegemony over a specific territory or market. Just this month (March) we have had two important cases of this.
On February 4 at least seventeen and possibly twenty-eight people were executed near an illegal gold mine near Tumeremo in Bolivar. This apparently was not a battle between criminal networks but the use of spectacular violence by the local leader of the gold mafia, alias “El Topo,” to reinforce his local hegemony. In this area illegal mines are controlled by by local criminal gangs who essentially extort the miners of 20-30% of their production in exchange for protection and for keeping the peace. They essentially work as a sort of parallel government in an area in which the government presence is weak and corrupted (if you can get past the dramatic music, this Discovery Max documentary actually does a good job portraying how Venezuela’s gold mafias work.)
We also had a massacre of ten people in El Valle in a case in which three criminal gangs joined forces to eliminate the gang of “Franklin the Minor.” This was a typical case of a battle between criminal groups for hegemony over territory or markets.
As well we are seeing spectacular attacks on police. Keymer Avila has done some great research refuting that there has been a tremendous increase in attacks on police and that they are motivated by robbery of their firearms. He shows that in seventy percent of cases police that are killed are not on duty and not in uniform.
Nevertheless, we have seen more spectacular attacks on police—not cases in which they are caught in a shoot-out because they confronted people committing criminal acts. Rather we have seen attacks or ambushes by criminal gangs. In March we had an officer of the Caracas Police and his son ambushed and killed in the barrio called Los Sin Techo in El Cementerio. It was not in the line of action nor was it a simple robbery. Rather, he was identified by the local criminal network and they activated to ambush him. And in the past year we have had numerous cases in which police stations, patrol cars or road blocks have been attacked with heavy weapons, including grenades. Attacks on this scale indicate efforts in which the relationship between the police and criminal networks is changing. Either the police are trying to crackdown on the gangs, or more likely, they are trying to dominate or compete with criminal gangs.
What is the causal explanation of these symptoms of increased levels of organization of crime in Venezuela?
First is the decadence of the state and its legitimate monopoly of power. The very admirable effort at police reform and gun control that ran from 2008 to 2014 is dead, or at least has been put on hold. What was to be a civilian model of policing is now controlled from top to bottom by military officers and has returned to Venezuela’s traditional military forms of policing. The latter have been proven ineffective time and again but have strong public support.
We can add to this an inflationary crisis which makes police salaries laughable and mean that the only way police officers can get by is through involvement in illicit activities—either being involved in crime itself or, more commonly, receiving payment to let it occur. The result is an overall lack of effectiveness in carrying out the law and obliging the citizenry to fulfill it. This is giving over space to illicit markets not only for drugs but crimes such as kidnapping, contraband, and extortion of multiple types.
Second, we have an increasing use of military plans. The Operación Liberación del Pueblo (OLP) is only the most recent of the militarized plans aimed at reducing crime. In 2010 we had the Bicentennial Security Effort (DIBISE). In 2013 President Maduro began the Secure Fatherland Plan (PPS). But the OLP has distinguished itself as the most violent and destructive of all of the plans. All of these plans work in a military idiom, carrying out what are essential invasions of barrios reportedly dominated by criminal networks, violating numerous human rights in the process. They work without warrants, without vigilance and effectively have license to carryout capital punishment.
What can be said is that the soldiers used in these operations are not locals and have little historical relationship with local networks. These operations without a doubt are able to kill or arrest members of criminal networks and thereby alter the existing equilibrium within criminal groups, between them, and between them and the authorities. When the OLP withdraws after a day or two, an often violent process begins whereby criminal networks seek to reestablish control, organization and agreements. After an OLP incursion criminal groups also begin to organize in order to confront the threat posed by security forces, by whom they feel betrayed.
Finally, economic crisis can have contradictory impacts on crime. Often times, in Venezuela and elsewhere, crime and violence actually decline with economic downturns. But it can also lead to an increase in organization in the short term. An excess of people dedicated to crime and a reduction of available resources means greater consolidation of networks and greater organization to extract scarce resources.
And the actual character of the economic crisis matters. It is not just a crisis of declining oil revenues but a crisis of pricing—the price of foreign currency, of gasoline, of electricity and basic consumer goods. All of this ends up leading to a robust parallel economy with larger-than-usual opportunities for organized crime.
In sum, the root causes of the increasing organization of crime in Venezuela is the increasing deterioration of the state and economy. “Anomie” has become a favorite term of Venezuelan commentators, but misses the mark. Anomie refers to an absence of social structure, a vacuum of social relations that leads to a war of all against all. We are indeed in the presence of an absence of desireable and effective state action and a well-functioning economic structure. But the state is actually quite large, there are more police and soldiers than ever, they kill and incarcerate more people than ever before, and considerable revenues are still flowing into Venezuela. It is not so much absence as dysfunctional presence that is at play.
It is an important distinction because using the idea of “anomie” underestimates the problem of reform, and thinks that simply pushing forward a “tough-on-crime” crackdown will suddenly provide structure to chaos. In reality, any reform will confront the fact that criminal activity that is in fact highly structured, has articulated interests and considerable resources, and will resist violently.
Projecting, Estimating and Whispering about Venezuela’s Homicide Rate
David Smilde
Venezuela's Attorney General is getting some deserved applause for actually providing the AN with homicide statistics for 2015, something that has not happened in years. She said there had been 17,788 murders in 2015 putting the homicide rate at 58 per 100,000. That is bad as it is, however, her numbers are being criticized as low, in part because she did not include "deaths under investigation" and those killed in the context of “resistance to arrest.”
In January, the Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia (OVV) put out some projections for 2015, saying Venezuela had suffered 28,000 murders, putting the murder rate at 91 per 100,000.
However, I do not think the OVV’s numbers should be included in the same category as estimates based on 2015 data. Their projection is based on 2013 and 2014 data and assumes continuity. But the whole idea of collecting data is to allow it to mark breaks in continuity and judge if things are getting better, worse or staying the same as before. Simply projecting from past data precludes that possibility. It is a justifiable exercise given the dearth of official numbers. But it should be remembered that it does not represent new data that can be used to discuss the evolution of crime in Venezuela. Rather it repeats what we know from previous years.
The Mexican Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal- CCSPJP) recently named Caracas the most violent city in the region. However this was based on one article in which a Venezuelan journalist cited unnamed CICPC sources. The latter suggested there had been 22,748 murders in 2015 for a rate of 75 per 100,000. But this also does not include “deaths under investigation.” It also likely does not include deaths in the context of resistance to arrest.
The last year we have figures that breakdown homicides, deaths under investigation, and resistance to arrest was in 2013. The figures for 2013 and previous years show that these latter two categories add approximately 50% to the total (see page 439, of PROVEA’s 2013 annual report). If 50% were added to the total of of the unofficial data from the CICPC that would actually give us a number of 34,122, pointing to an astronomical murder rate over 110 per 100,000 and surpassing OVV’s estimate.
If we do the same operation with the Attorney General’s numbers, adding another 50% to include resistance to authority and deaths under investigation. We would get 26,682 for a murder rate of 88 per 100,000 persons. This is ironically close to OVV’s projections, as Dorothy Kronick suggested in the Insight Crime article (I was actually off in that article when I suggested the CCSPJP figure was probably closest. At the moment of the interview I didn’t realize the figure didn’t include deaths under investigation and resistance to arrest.)
It should be noted, however, that simply including these two categories is going to overestimate the murder rate by an unknown percentage. Certainly some “resistance to authority” deaths are justifiable and should not be considered homicide, and certainly not all “death under investigations” are actually homicides.
In the coming weeks there will be some scholarly estimates of the murder rate, including the first release of data of the 2015 Victims Survey led by Luis Gerardo Gabaldón. When that happens I will revisit this issue.
