Barrios Family Blames Venezuelan Police For Men's Murders
Eloisa Barrios and her family have paid a heavy price for living in the world's most violent region. The crime rates in Latin America have soared even as economies rise. Of 50 cities with the highest murder rates, 41 are in Latin America.
Eloisa doesn't visit their graves much. She's moved away from this village, called Guanajan. She doesn't feel safe here anymore. She doesn't rely on the police for protection, because she believes it was the police who sent most or all of her relations to these graves.
Across Latin America, some police are heroes while others are widely believed to be criminals. Venezuela's own government once estimated that police commit about 20 percent of crime. A 2006 investigation found that police killed an extraordinary number of people described as resisting arrest.
"Why do you think the police have come after your family so many times," I asked.
She answers, "My brother Benito was detained for a bar fight in the 1990s." After that, she says, he was marked as a bad man: police harassed him, beat him, and finally arrested him. He died in custody. Police were charged for the killing but never convicted.
She says other members of the family were targeted over the years.
Her brother Narciso owned a liquor store police officers frequented until he was killed after a disagreement. Again, police were charged, and two wereconvicted, but the killings continued. Nearly all the crimes are officially unsolved.
Eloisa Barrios admits she can't be sure all her relatives were killed by police. But she's convinced most, if not all, were.
The Barrios family did seek justice in Venezuelan courts. Frustrated by the results, they turned to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights. It's part of the Organization of American States, and that court ordered the government to protect the Barrios family.
Some were moved to new homes. Yet even in their new city, more relatives were killed.
In its formal defense before the human rights court, Venezuela said there is no evidence the state is deliberately "persecuting" the Barrios family, with "a view to exterminating" them.
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