Is Táchira a safe state? An OVV report reveals lights and shadows of the region
The NGO Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV, Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia), Táchira chapter, reported that this border state presented a rate of 11.3 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants throughout 2023, which is well below the annual average of 26.8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. and becomes the entity with the fewest homicide cases in the entire country.
Anggy Polanco / Correspondent lapatilla.com
According to press monitoring carried out by the aforementioned NGO, Táchira presented the lowest rate of violent deaths in all of Venezuela, although in this border region there is great official information opacity, and the figures of deaths that occur in the informal trails and paths that link Colombia and Venezuela are difficult to obtain.
Yensy Meneses, coordinator of the observatory, explained that compared to 2022, in the year that just ended, the rate of violent deaths was reduced by 32.42%, which means that the decrease has been year after year, which It is due to several factors such as the migration of people in Táchira and the presence of irregular groups that impose their rule and whim in the border municipalities.
“In Táchira State there are certain areas where there is total rule by irregular armed groups, which exercise the role of the State where it does not exist, the role of judge, the role of police, the regulatory role. So, in many areas where the irregular armed groups are located and from where they operate, well, the inhabitants say that they have more security than with the State itself,” Meneses stressed.
The municipality with the most homicides in the region was San Cristóbal with 9 cases, most of which were generated by fights or personal problems. The second municipality with the highest number of homicide cases is Pedro María Ureña with 5 cases.
It is worth mentioning that in Ureña during the first five months there were several violent events with grenade attacks, Meneses said.
Thefts increased
She pointed out that there are a large number of deaths under investigation, but it is not clear if these were homicides or suicides. In San Cristóbal there were 9 cases of deaths under investigation, in Ureña there were 9, and in Bolívar 5.
She also mentioned that the violence was mostly distributed between attempted homicides and homicides, which accounted for 33% of the cases. But during 2023 robberies increased by 19%, a fact that is related to the opening of the border and the migration of criminals, who used to work on the trails (trochas), and now operate in urban areas to commit their misdeeds.
It should be noted that the OVV investigates 11 types of violence or crimes that are published in local Táchira media and are cross-referenced with the scarce official data to which they have access. This allows them to interpret data on the criminal panorama of the region.
As for the victims, 56% are male and 44% are female (of these they have been victims of sexual assault, sexual crimes or physical assault). 42% of crime victims in 2023 were children and adolescents.
The second state with the highest number of suicides
Ximena Biaggini, OVV researcher, explained that they are also concerned about the high rate of suicides that have been occurring in Táchira, ranking second in Venezuela with the highest number of self-inflicted deaths, as they recorded 78 cases that were published in the media.
Biaggini made it clear that the media does not report all cases of suicide, so the figure could be much higher.
The municipalities where the highest number of suicides were observed are Bolívar, Junín and San Cristóbal, and the majority of the victims are young men and adolescents.
They have also been noticing a greater number of road events that cause deaths.
Likewise, in the monitoring they carry out, they observe a high number of disappearances of people whose fate is unknown, nor is it known what status these investigations, if any, are in.
Regarding sexual crimes against boys and girls, she highlighted that the bulk of the victims are between 5 and 7 years old. In many cases the aggressor is usually a close family member, and it is striking that there is usually complicity or silence on the part of the people who should be there to protect them, such as their mothers or grandmothers.
In relation to human trafficking, she pointed out that this year there has been less publication in the regional press about this type of information, which does not mean that this crime is not happening, since cases of human trafficking, with Venezuelan citizens as victims, are commonly reported by international media.
The researcher emphasized that the deaths that occur on the border cannot be counted because of the bodies are found in Venezuelan territory, even if the victims turn out to be Venezuelan, are murders that are not being included in the statistics, since there is no accurate information on these cases, so, like the cases of missing people, a high number of victims of violent events are being left out of the figures as a result of the official censorship suffered by the state’s media and its journalists, which affects data collection by the OVV.
