Venezuela has become a slaughter house: the country is now one of the most dangerous regions on Earth whereas it was just an "average dangerous Latin American country" 10 years ago, when Chavismo came to power. The increase in the murder rate is unprecedented. Not even Mexico with all its horrible drug problems and murdered women at the border, not even Colombia with its civil war show such murder rates and such general trends for so many years in a row. In fact, in cases such as Colombia we see falling rates, in most other countries in Latin America but for small ones like Jamaica we see stable rates for many years now.
Here you can see the updated numbers of murdered people in Carabobo, my state since I have them, since 2004. It is a pity I do not have the rates for before, but in general terms, the big hike happened from the moment Chávez started "governing". Caracas is even worse, but I am using the statistics of Carabobo because I know that state particularly well.
As usual, the Venezuelan regime blames it on "past government", "social injustice" (sure there is social injustice, in the year 9 of Chavismo more than ever). and "Bush". Chavista officials, starting with the Comandante himself, claim time after time the numbers are "going down" because they compare one isolated week or month in a region to another one that suits them or just like that, without bothering to use any senseless pseudo-statistics.
And when something big hits the news and there is a new outcry, they claim the opposition is "manipulating the suffering of the people, oh, how vile they can be". What is one supposed to do with such development? In 9 years Chávez has changed the minister of "Justice" ten times, in 2002 the Venezuelan government stopped sending the number of murdered people to United Nation's body on crime research when the trend became so clear: they had lost control of crime.
It did not help they have tried to redefine what a murder is. No, it is not they are taking out violent deaths that do not belong to murder, like car crash victims. No, it is they try to redefine each case when the perpetrators are not completely evident, have been caught or the like.
It is a pity Venezuelan media does not know what to do with such numbers. They tell of the total number of murdered people per day, per week, per month, but always in an isolated fashion, without reference to previous years, without reference to the outside world.
Chávez's officials have avoided all the time to debate the issue on a public debate. Such are the levels where Chavismo is.
The main reference I use here for Carabobo is Notitarde, which uses official numbers from the police. They go into gruesome details about the murders, the names of the victims and so on, it is not a "lie of the imperialist press". If you doubt, you just need to go to Venezuela's mortuaries.