A History of ViolenceThe breakdown of Venezuela’s social order

A military tank drives across the capital of Caracas. It was used in a police raid that targeted seven insurgents. More than 500 agents were involved in the raid.

Protests during a 48-hour general strike in 2017 resulted in two deaths, dozens of detentions, and hundreds of injuries in Caracas alone.

When President Hugo Chávez died in 2013, Venezuela was already a violent country. A long history of corruption paired with a huge wealth gap had resulted in escalating rates of violence and the brutalization of disenfranchised groups. But, as the world would later realize, the worst was yet to come.

It’s common to see “hunger,” “misery,” and anti-Maduro slogans written on Caracas’ subways. Most graffiti writers protest by day and roam the subway and train tunnels by night, where they are vulnerable to police or criminal violence.

A young man tags a wall as protests erupt all over Caracas. Many people in the more affluent eastern side of Caracas participated in the strike, but those in the city’s poorer western areas did not.

Police prepare to raid a building in April 2014. Clashes with demonstrators began early in the morning and extended late into the night. Shortly after this photograph was taken, a large group of protesters arrived, and the raid was called off.

As social and economic divides grew wider, anger and frustration spread across the country. A war was brewing slowly, one without frontlines, or recognizable allies and enemies.

The nature of violence in Venezuela has changed dramatically in recent years. In 2013, most of it could be traced to organized crime, gangs, and armed civilians. Especially common were armed robberies and shootings between rival gangs or the police, and “express kidnappings”—random kidnappings that lasted for less than 48 hours and were intended to generate ransom money.

Then, in 2014, everything started to shift. That was when heightened insecurity finally prompted people to take to the streets in mass demonstrations. It was also when the heavily militarized government began to bare its teeth. The year after these protests began, Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, announced a plan to raid slums, allegedly as part of a strategy to control violence.

Selena, a transgender prostitute, walks around Caracas’ red-light district in October 2015. The city’s prostitution industry has thrived since protests began in 2014, but it has also become more dangerous. “It’s scary. People have no respect and get very violent against us at times,” Selena said.

This led to one of the bloodiest periods in Venezuelan history, resulting in an average of 91 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. The country became one of the most dangerous in the world, with a death toll higher than any country at war except for Syria.

According to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, a local NGO, police forces killed an average of 15 people per day in 2017. Over 130 people were killed during that year’s protests; hundreds more lost their lives in raids on slums. An investigation by a national news outlet estimated that over 900 people have been killed since the raids started, and with hundreds of high-profile criminals dead, members of the police and military have seized the opportunity to fill their roles.

State-led violence slowly escalated into state-mandated terror. People now are more scared of law enforcement than they are of gangs and criminals. In the last year, the Attorney General’s Office—a supposedly independent arm of government that in practice follows executive branch orders—has charged hundreds of officers involved in kidnappings, drug trafficking, and robberies. In the eyes of most Venezuelans, there is little distinction between gangsters and officers, who...