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LATIN AMERICA |
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Chavez
Bodyguard Shot as Venezuela Presidential
Security Increased
By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff
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.
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