Al-Jazeera : Venezuela has a murder rate of about 67 per 100,000 inhabitants. Neighbouring Colombia, in contrast, has a murder rate of 38 per 100,000 while Mexico - where some regions are gripped by deadly drug violence - has a rate of about 15 per 100,000

.

"Venezuela is now described as "upper middle income" by the World Bank, but it has a far worse murder rate than Haiti -the poorest country in the western hemisphere."

My explanation : Chavez never created Real Productive Jobs, he has only distributed the Oil Revenues of the Nation, the clique that controls Venezuela probably grabs for their pockets a lot of those billions of dollars in oil exports.

Venezuela is a mono-exporter and one of the least diversified in Latin America and the World. In contrast to Colombia, the "sister" neighbor that is very diversified in exports including Industrial Products and Agribusiness.

Venezuela is a Santa Claus Economy where the Government gives gifts to buy support. So the elimination of poverty may be illusory. Those people have no productive jobs.

Wait for a decrease in Oil Prices and you will see the Smoke and Mirrors.

Al-Jazeera
Venezuela crime soars amid declining poverty
Analysts say President Chavez must re-examine idea that decreasing inequality will lead to less violence.
By Chris Arsenault 23 Oct 2012

Venezuela crime soars amid declining poverty


Some excerpts :

"Crime is supported by the government," Augustin Reyes, a 63-year-old carpenter living in a "barrio" or slum in Caracas told Al Jazeera, in an allegation frequently made by Chavez opponents. If the situation keeps getting worse, the government must be behind it, they believe.

Abductions increased 20-fold between 1999 and 2011 to 1,105, according to official figures cited by InsightCrime, a security website.

Sources close to Chavez and his socialist party told Al Jazeera that senior government planners generally assumed - like leftists the world over - that crime is caused primarily by poverty and inequality. Address the root causes, they reasoned, and crime will decrease. But the data hasn't borne out those conclusions, leaving many scratching their heads.

Poverty dropped from 50.4 per cent in 1998 when Chavez was first elected to 28.5 per cent in 2009, according to the World Bank, an impressive decrease by any standard. Government supporters credit the redistribution of oil wealth - Venezuela has the world's largest petroleum reserves - for reducing poverty.

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