RunRun.es has a blockbuster piece on Tocorón Prison in Aragua State, quickly becoming the epicenter of #PranNation. Run by a business savvy “Pran” (prison gang leader) with a growth vision, Tocorón has been on a building frenzy of late, blurring the lines between vacation resort and jail. Charmingly, the jail has become the one place…
Daniel Pardo’s reporting on the “Zonas de Paz” in Barlovento for the Beeb is really amazing – even if you think you know this story, you’ll learn as you read. A taste, “En Venezuela el que está en la cárcel es porque es idiota”. Cuando arrestaron a uno de ellos hace unos meses, cuentan, sobornaron al juez…
Remember Caraemuerto? Luidig Ochoa (a.k.a. Caraemuerto) was the alleged criminal in recovery who survived fifteen shots (three in the face), created a successful web series, and the love interest of T&A slapstick comedienne Jimena Araya (a.k.a. Rosita). They dated until the day of his death, when he was shot three more times and ran out of lives to survive them.…
On Friday night, the motorcade of Sports Minister Pedro Infante was apparently attacked by criminals in the Cota 905. The minister’s eight bodyguards handled the situation, taking cover in a nearby police station until SEBIN reinforcements came to his help. And that was only the start of a bloody and brutal weekend. After a huge gunfight on…
The last few days have been really tense both inside and outside of Uribana Prison, near the city of Barquisimeto, where I live. This was where the second-worst prison riot in Venezuelan history took place, back in early 2013. The crisis started last week with the arrival of new warden Julio César Pérez, who decided to show his…
We came up with a name for the Weekend Recap column: The Week in Bullets. Even when you may end up drenched in blood with this edition, please know that it is not supposed to be a red pages section. Hopefully, next week we’ll be back to writing about chicken, payoffs, unicorns, and the like. In…
SBS, an Australian public broadcaster, is a bit of an unknown entity to me. But this report by Giovana Vitola from inside Margarita’s prison is an absolute tour de force: combining reportorial bravado with insight, humor, and the kind of seriousness too often missing from a subject that’s so often sensationalized. Hats off. The perfect…
In the end, there was no final battle between Sabaneta Prison pran-in-chief “El Mocho Edwin” and State forces. Instead, all the remaining inmates were moved out over the weekend. “El Mocho” backed down on his earlier promise to stay inside Sabaneta no matter what. He was transferred in an armored vehicle to a military aircraft,…
Sabaneta Prison remains tense, even after a large number of inmates have been transferred to other prisons. Yesterday, the major pran of Sabaneta, “El Mocho Edwin”, made an appereance on the prison’s rooftop, asking for dialogue. Hours earlier, a member of the Prisons Ministry was “allowed” in to Sabaneta to negotiate directly with the pran himself.…
For the second time in a month, a serious spasm of violence convulsed Sabaneta Prison in Maracaibo. The toll this time: 16 people dead. At the center of the violence is a major pran (prison gang boss) who’s known as “El Mocho Edwin”, who took uncontested power of the prison recently. In a garish Syrian twist,…
So, when the Sabaneta prison “pran” (I never know how to translate that…”prison gang dictator”?) and the Sabaneta prison warden disagree, who gets his way? Care to venture a guess? Las conversaciones se dieron entre “El Mocho Edwin”, y el director de la cárcel, Robert Suterlan. Este último suspendió las visitas hasta nuevo aviso. Sin embargo,…
Panfleto Negro is running a Dystopia-writing contest. Prize: 100 euros, via paypal. Great fun! Check out my entry. Then write one of your own!
Just finished Jon Lee Anderson’s (infuriatingly paywalled) New Yorker piece about the ranchification of Caracas. Anderson well justifies his reputation as a journalistic legend here: the piece really is a remarkable read. (Update: Prodavinci published an authorized Spanish version) It comes at the lawlessness angle we’ve long covered in this blog the other way around,…
All that’s left at this point – and it isn’t much, but it’s also not nothing – is to chronicle the rot. And I suppose it’s important to find comfort in the fact that some continue to do so competently: Camino al liceo en La Bombilla, Petare, donde estudia Jenniffer de 17 años, todo transcurre…
News this week that Venezuelan Silicon Starlet Rosita, a.k.a. Jimena Araya, a.k.a. the Pran Madame is to be made Regional Director of Human Rights in Aragua for the expropriated PODEMOS party had an odd effect on me today. Two months ago, the story of how a TV personality turned rent-a-girlfriend turned “prison sexual entrepreneur” had managed to…
Caracas Chronicles 