Venezuela la crise est telle que les homicides baissent de 20% : les criminels n’ont plus les moyens de s’acheter des balles. Certains songent même à émigrer.
In Venezuela, criminals feel the pinch of an economic crisis
▻https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/venezuela-criminals-feel-pinch-economic-crisis-n1010696
A masked gangster who goes by the nickname “El Negrito” poses for a portrait with his gun inside his gang’s safe-house in the Petare slum of Caracas, Venezuela, on May 13, 2019.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
The feared street gangster El Negrito sleeps with a pistol under his pillow and says he’s lost track of his murder count. But despite his hardened demeanor, he’s quick to gripe about how Venezuela’s failing economy is cutting into his profits.
Firing a gun has become a luxury. Bullets are expensive at $1 each. And with less cash circulating on the street, he says robberies just don’t pay like they used to.
For the 24-year-old, that has all given way to a simple fact: Even for Venezuelan criminals it’s become harder to get by.
“If you empty your clip, you’re shooting off $15,” said El Negrito, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition he be identified only by his street name and photographed wearing a hoodie and face mask to avoid attracting unwelcomed attention. “You lose your pistol or the police take it and you’re throwing away $800.”
Officials of President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist administration stopped publishing statistics charting crime trends long ago.
But in something of an unexpected silver lining to the country’s all-consuming economic crunch, experts say armed assaults and killings are plummeting in one of the world’s most violent nations. At the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, a Caracas-based nonprofit group, researchers estimate homicides have plunged up to 20% over the last three years based on tallies from media clippings and sources at local morgues.
