Companies buy insurance against theft, kidnapping
and extortion. “The big businessman hires guards
and helicopters,” says Maria Elena Moreira, founder of
México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (Mexico United
Against Crime), a citizens’ group in Mexico composed
largely of middle class residents working with the government against crime. “People who don’t have those
resources buy locks and take a taxi at night instead
of the bus.”
At the national level, insecurity hampers economic
growth by reducing worker productivity and drains
resources from development priorities such as education and public works that could help reduce the very
inequalities often associated with crime. In most Latin
American countries, potentially productive young
men are the principal victims of homicide. Amid rising crime and violence in the Dominican Republic, for
example, males bet ween 11 and 30 represented almost
half of all homicide deaths in 2005, the World Bank
and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in
a report this year.
The joint World Bank and UN study found that
reducing the homicide rate in the Caribbean by one-third could more than double the region’s rate of per
capita economic growth. Haiti and Jamaica could each
see annual economic growth increase 5. 4 percent by
Venezuela’s Deep Silence
by Tábata Peregrín
There were, according to reliable
sources, more than 12,000 homicides in Venezuela last year.
Yet Hugo Chávez’s government does
not want to talk about them. Nor
does it want to discuss the country’s
spreading plague of robberies and
kidnappings. In fact, the government hasn’t issued crime statistics
in the last three years.
Even those within President
Chávez’s circle are irritated by the
official silence about crime. “It
reflects an attitude that does not
match the level of democratic participation that we want for Venezuela,” complains Juan José Molina,
a deputy in the National Assembly.
The result, according to Roberto
Briceño-Leon, director of the Social
Sciences Laboratory (LACSO), has
left Venezuelans similarly suffering
in silence. “Not only do victims lose
their lives,” notes Molina, “but now
they do not even have the right to be
represented in the statistics.” taken, according to Molina, who was
Venezuela’s refusal to talk about the sole congressional representa-
an issue that transcends class and tive on the commission. “It was a
political boundaries has not only af- very expensive initiative—$8 mil-
fected the country’s social fabric but lion—with almost 70,000 surveys
has paralyzed attempts to reform conducted among the entire popula-
law enforcement. In 2006, the gov- tion and within the police force,” he
ernment established the National says, adding that it is now tucked
Commission for Police Reform (CO- away in a drawer in the office of the
NAREPOL) in response to the kid- new Interior Minister.
napping and murders of the Faddoul The explanation for that, says
brothers—three adolescents aged Marcos Tarre, a member of the Civil
12, 13 and 17 who were abducted Association for a Safe Venezuela, is
along with their chauffeur in Febru- politics: “It was a measure under-
ary of that year. The commission, taken to ameliorate pressure during
led by then-Interior Minister Jesse an election year, and it remained
Chacón, included representatives just that.”
of the government, civil associa- Meanwhile, Venezuela’s crime
tions, the business community, and epidemic isn’t slowing down. Kid-
the judicial sector. It found evidence nappings have risen 300 percent,
of negligence and corruption in the according to figures collected
police investigation and proposed by various civil society organiza-
strict measures for reforming the tions. For the first time in at least
country’s 123 separate police forces. a decade, crime has become the
But so far no action has been primary concern among all groups
