With Murder Rate Rising, How Do Venezuelans Survive?

As if coping with constant food and medicine shortages were not enough for crisis-weary Venezuelans, many live in constant fear in a country where three people die violently every hour.

Caracas, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Nov, 2018 ) :As if coping with constant food and medicine shortages were not enough for crisis-weary Venezuelans, many live in constant fear in a country where three people die violently every hour.

The South American nation registered 26,000 homicides last year, 89 per 100,000 inhabitants and a figure 15 times the global average, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, a non-governmental group.

How do ordinary Venezuelans try to survive in one of the world's most dangerous countries? "Venezuelans take precautions every day to try to protect themselves. But adapting to insecurity means they are losing their freedom," the group's director Roberto Briceno told AFP.

Teacher Yamileth Marcano's younger brother Willis was stabbed to death for his smartphone as he left work.

"Was that what his life was worth, a mobile phone? Every time I hear of another home in mourning, the bad memories come back," she told AFP.

Marcano, 46, lives in a house with barred windows and doors in eastern Caracas. Her son emigrated to Italy. The tipping point came when two youths on a motorbike put a gun to his head and told him to hand over his cellphone as he drove through Caracas.

"I was screaming like crazy: 'give it to him!'" Marcano, who was in the car, said. "I was thinking of my brother." "Young and old are being killed. Everyone's exposed to it. They rob you in the street, on the beach, in the market, at the hospital... it's terrible to live like this." Like her, almost everyone in Venezuela uses an older cellphone in public, keeping their smartphone out of sight.

The murder of former Miss Venezuela Monica Spear and her husband -- shot dead by two youths in a roadside robbery in 2014 after their car broke down -- is etched in the nation's collective memory.

Since then, an application called "Pana" -- a slang word for friend -- was created to help ensure people could feel more secure on the road.

Recently, bikers with high-visibility vests, dark glasses and radios sped to the rescue of a young medical student in distress on the highway.

It took eight minutes for the rescue squad to reach Carmen Garcia after she had activated the "Pana" panic button on her mobile phone after her car broke down.

"We provide a service that's fast, reliable and simple -- not everyone can have security escorts or bullet-proof their car," said Pana's chief, Domingo Coronil.