Scrambling out of buses, prisoners clad in red charge through crowds of distraught women who are screaming in anger and despair. The wives, mothers and girlfriends are trying to find out if their loved ones are onboard and being evacuated to safety, or if they remain inside what has become of the El Rodeo men’s prison in Guatire, outside the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. Troops are trying to regain control of the penitentiary complex, which since June 12 has been the site of brutal prisoner rioting — and which is still in the hands of criminal inmates armed with machine guns, rifles and hand grenades. Prisoners’ families, meanwhile, complain soldiers are committing their own atrocities in order to quell the uprising.
The government says 25 people have been killed in the violence so far, but the actual death toll is thought to be much higher. “This is one of the most violent events to have occurred in a Venezuelan jail in the past 10 years,” says Carlos Nieto, a lawyer and human rights advocate. Which is why so many Venezuelans are just as troubled by President Hugo Chvez’s uncharacteristic silence on the crisis, as he languishes in a Cuba hospital bed recovering from surgery to remove a pelvic abscess. Chvez is usually omnipresent on Venezuelan television and radio. But the socialist leader’s absence has prompted public irritation, especially since spiraling violent crime — Venezuela has one of the world’s highest murder rates — is one of his Bolivarian Revolution’s most glaring failures, on top of the country’s high inflation and ongoing power outages.
Like many prisons in Venezuela, and across Latin America, El Rodeo is run by the prisoners themselves while guards simply keep the perimeter secure. Complex gang networks grow and, thanks to the corruption of prison guards and officials, are fed drugs and weapons. Heavy arms like AK-47 assault rifles are known to be circulating among El Rodeo prisoners, while YouTube videos of life inside even before June 12 show decapitations and gruesome disembowlments. Prisoners’ family members, like Betsy Oviedo, whose 20-year-old son is incarcerated in El Rodeo, are understandably terrified. “They are human beings, not animals,” Oviedo says while holding vigil just outside the cordon. “We are all here waiting for the guards to tell us if our relatives are dead or alive.”
The violence erupted June 12 with a nine-hour shootout between inmates. Last Friday, thousands of troops attempted to confiscate weapons, but that battle simply led instead to a stalemate between them and a smaller band of prisoners. Many inmates have since been evacuated from El Rodeo for their own safety, but officials have yet to publicly identify victims. One inmate who spoke to the Associated Press from inside the prison described 17 dead prisoners from the second round of violence as well as decomposing bodies yet to be taken away. If true, that death toll from the clash between soldiers and prisoners contrasts starkly with the official report, which cites only one prisoner and two National Guard troops dead.
Authorities claim to have cleared El Rodeo I, one of the complex’s two buildings, but are still working on El Rodeo II. They also say they’ve seized weapons as well as 45 kilograms of cocaine and 12 kg of marijuana.
