This is what the statistics tell us now. The news are so repetitive and people become numbed and nothing seems to happen. 18950 people had been murdered in Venezuela since 1 January and the most of the millions of Venezuelans who voted for Chávez didn't seem to make the connection between murder rate and the caudillo. This is no surprise: most of them would have difficulty trying to explain what "murder rate" actually means. They are still alive, even if their brothers or sons may not.
The Chávez government had activated last year its 21 programme for fighting crime but since it came to power the murder rate has more than tripled, from 19 in 1998 up to 65 murders per 100 000 inhabitants now. The murder rate was about 19 over a century ago, it dropped up to around 8-10 in the seventies and started to rise up to 19 in the nineties and became stable there until Chávez came to power.
These numbers actually include also people - mostly criminals - resisting police intervention. A Chávez official - current Guárico governor and military man Rodríguez Chacín - said those killed by the police do not count. The problem is we should have something like "human rights" and the amount of criminals getting killed in fightings with the police is huge.