The insistent assertion by former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that Venezuela is safer than the United States is a “half-truth” with electoral undertones, according to specialists in the South American country.
Trump, who governed the United States between 2016 and 2020 and aspires to return to office in the election on November 5, has insisted that the Venezuelan crime rate has not only been reduced, but is even better than that of the United States.
The leader of the Republican Party, the main opponent of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the race for the White House, has accused the government of Nicolás Maduro of allegedly sending criminals to US territory.
In September, during his only televised debate with Harris, Trump attacked the Democratic candidate over the immigration policies of Joe Biden’s administration and said that the United States would end up being “Venezuela on steroids.”
In July, as in several subsequent rallies, Trump said that crime in Venezuela has decreased by 72% and that several of its cities, such as its capital, Caracas, are safer than several locations in the United States.
His statements do not fit perfectly into a crime situation that is complex and multifactorial, according to reports and experts in public policies, justice and human rights consulted by the Voice of America.
Official opacity, evolution of crime
In an unusual revelation by Maduro government officials about crime, then-Interior Minister Remigio Ceballos stated last March that crime had fallen by 23% during the first quarter of the year, compared to the same period in 2023.
However, part of the difficulty in understanding the levels of insecurity in Venezuela is precisely that there has been no official “hard data” for a decade, according to professor and researcher at the Catholic University, Andrés Bello Carlos Lusverti.
“No official figures are published on the matter and that leaves the organizations that work on these issues with their hands somewhat tied and collecting data through statistical models, but it is information from an NGO, it is not official data,” he told the VOA.
According to Lusverti, there is a “political decision” by the government not to publish figures on matters that may be perceived negatively.
The Venezuelan Observatory against Violence, a non-governmental organization that has processed data on interpersonal violence in the country since 2005, recorded in its latest report a 25% decrease in violent deaths, which include homicides due to crime, deaths during police interventions and deaths still under investigation.
According to their reports, there were at least 6,973 violent deaths in 2023, while in 2021 and 2022 there were 9,447 and 9,367, respectively. In 2023, there was an average of 581 deaths from violent deaths per month, 134 per week and 19 each day, according to their research.
The Observatory observed “a significant reduction” of 8.5% in the number of violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (26.8), after adjusting the rate to an estimated population of 26 million people.
The reduction in cases of insecurity is due to multiple factors such as migration, Lusverti emphasizes, but he also mentions issues such as state censorship of the editorial lines of the press, the absence of official figures, the fear of reprisals for speaking about critical issues, and the economic crisis, which “affects the possibility of crime developing.”
About 8 of the 30 million Venezuelans have emigrated, the majority during the last decade, which is why many analysts, researchers and study centers in the country tend to contextualize their evaluations in that context.
Another reason is the increase in what he calls “the monopoly of violence,” referring to the rise of organized crime and its control over “spontaneous” crime, says Lusverti, a human rights expert.
“What the former president says is false,” assesses sociologist and doctor in contemporary political processes Juan Manuel Trak, for his part.
In his opinion, Trump uses “the falsification of reality” in the absence of transparency in State policies and auditable public information in Venezuela for his campaign purposes.
“There is an exploitation of this absence of verifiable information in Venezuela to make political propaganda and exploit what is happening in the country for partisan and electoral purposes,” he says. Trump “uses the lie” about Venezuela to stir up polarization” in the US, he estimates.
Doubts, speculation and electoral interest
However, some Venezuelan cities stand out among independent rankings of the most dangerous and unsafe cities in the world.
In August, the publication Forbes stated that Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, was the most threatening city for tourists, taking into account factors such as crime, personal security, access to health, infrastructure, response capacity to natural disasters and digital security. .
In January, Caracas appeared as the third city with the most homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the World Population Review classification, only surpassed by the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Acapulco. The ranking also included the Venezuelans Barquisimeto, Maturín and Valencia.
Numbeo, a digital database on countries, places Caracas as the third most unsafe city in the world, behind the South African cities Pietermaritzburg and Pretoria.
Laura Louza Scognamiglio, lawyer and general director of the Venezuelan NGO Acceso a la Justicia, flatly rules out that Venezuela is a safer country than the United States.
“The numbers (of insecurity) continue to be high” in Venezuela, he comments to the VOA. “They have gone down, but unfortunately the reasons are not an efficient state policy,” he says.
Louza Scognamiglio, author of publications on justice, law and democracy, assures that part of the crime not only migrated beyond national borders, but also by sector: “it was organized into gangs, it is more interested in drug trafficking and illegal mining.” .
Impunity also contributes to the “flourishing” of crime, he points out.
Trump’s statements about security levels in Venezuela and the United States can be classified as “a half-truth, a half-lie” typical of the electoral campaign, believes Venezuelan political scientist Nicmer Evans, specialized in social psychology.
He agrees that Venezuelan crime has decreased due to several factors, such as national economic depreciation and the migration of part of internal crime.
Evans, also a university professor, considers it “difficult” to be able to say that there are better security conditions in Venezuela than in the United States without walking on grounds of “doubts and speculation”, within the framework of the rhetoric of electoral candidates.
“There are no comparative studies that can validate this statement by the candidate. Trying to attribute the increase in crime in the United States to Venezuelan migration may be disproportionate,” he warns.
In his opinion, Trump’s statements are part of “an electoral escalation” that seeks to promote “anti-immigration” sentiments on the part of American society, criticizing the policies of Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
“It puts Venezuela on the table in terms of the campaign in the United States, because it is a global interest as a result of migration, the political crisis and the electoral fraud of July 28,” he said in reference to the controversial results of the last vote. presidential election, which Maduro officially won and that have been refuted by their opponentss.
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