Caracas Chronicles

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.

Rosita, featured in the pic above (or at least a part of her), has quite a record of her own. She started off as a model for TV channel RCTV (one of Chavez’s communicational hegemony first casualties), and more recently one of the silicone-clad stars of “A que te ríes” a booby-joke comedy show in Venevision.

Rosita embodies the call girl aesthetics made popular in Venezuela by funky TV shows, beauty pageants, and the doings of an evil leprechaun soaked in glitter. Although she may be the sad epitome of the successful Venezuelan entertainer, somewhere along the lines she got involved with some very serious characters in the Venezuelan underworld. Weirdly enough, her exploits as a pran-lady have been celebrated and commented upon as much (or even more) as her career as an actress/comedian/veddette. In 2012 she was briefly detained for her alleged involvement in the escape of Hector Gabriel Guerrero a.k.a. El niño guerrero (Warchild) from Tocorón prison. Warchild was the pran-capo of Tocorón and, back then, Rosita’s better half.

But Rosita was not just Warchild’s old lady, at the time she was said to be the manager of a prostitution ring that operated out of Tokio, the prison’s nightclub. (Yes, one of Venezuela’s most dangerous prisons has a pretty groovy nightclub within its entrails. But this is old news.)

After she got out of her brief residency (this time) in jail, she was named Regional Human Rights Director for the pro-government rump PODEMOS party in Aragua (now in politics!). Then she went under the radar for a while until she resurfaced after Caraemuerto’s death.

In recent days her name hit the tabloids again, when her new alleged boyfriend, Carlos Galíndez (a.k.a Carlitos Breaker), was found dismembered on the side of a road in the outskirts of Caracas. Breaker was one of the leaders of the Aragua Train, a dangerous gang that lurks the surroundings of Rosita’s hometown of Maracay. Talk about a black widow. It makes you think that this woman must be at the center of it. Or is it possible that it is sheer bad luck mixed with some shockingly poor choices? Or is it the country and its culture of violence?

A few weeks ago a friend in the US asked me: “Where do all the guns come from? Why doesn’t the government keep track of them? Why do they keep making bullets? If they disappear all the weapons from the streets the violence ends, right?” And a bunch other obvious questions that we aren’t even asking anymore.

What can the government do? Well, nothing, it seems. As per the Buenandro Doctrine (that which establishes that there are no bad people, just misunderstood people) the Venezuelan government tried to make a truce with criminals and mediate peace between the gangs. In the end, it succeeded in  the latter. The most important gangs of Caracas came to the realization that it made no sense to keep fighting each other when they actually had a common enemy: The Police. Hell ensued.

According to FUNDEPRO (their numbers are based on what they can gather from the news because there is no official data) in the past 6 months at least 120 police officers have been killed by people looking to steal their guns. Also, at least 35 national guardsmen and 21 private bodyguards (the murder of bodyguards of prominent political figures deserves a post of its own) have been killed for the same reasons. This means, ball park figure, -approximately- 200 more guns in the streets. Two hundred and something guns to arm two hundred and something thugs, which, by the way, would be but a small faction of  the deadly army-like Picure Gang.

As long as there is a gun within the territory it will find its way to a finger willing to pull its trigger. And we haven’t even mentioned the age old business of gun running.

In this fracked up ecosystem that has teenagers graduating into criminal organizations by murdering in cold blood, it should be no surprise that not just Rosita, but also Breaker, Warchild, and Caraemuerto, have become household names.