Caracas Chronicles

Once in a while, the bizarro-meter in Venezuela reaches such elevated heights, you have to catch your breath.

Case in point: this short Globovisión news item on the death of a nurse.

The nurse in question apparently saw two patients at the maternity hospital where she worked purposefully damaging an elevator. When she tried to stop them and went to Security, they beat her up.

She subsequently died from her injuries, leaving behind three children. The women who beat her up – who, mind you, had been patients at the maternity hospital for a month and a half – were released on bail.

So much flies out of this one, like for example

1. What kind of sociopath beats up a nurse at a hospital?
2. Why were these women tinkering with the hospital elevator?
3. Why were they given probation when they clearly represent a danger to society?
4. What kind of illness requires a 45-day stint … at a maternity hospital?
5. If they’re sick enough to be hospitalized, how can they have the strength to beat up a nurse?
6. Who paid for these ladies’ hospital bill?

Final footnote: the ladies were apparently members of a chavista Colectivo, one of the many irregular urban paramilitary groups the government has promoted under the apparently harmless guise of “social participation.”

I had to gasp at this one. The degradation, she is intense.