Reconfigurations of urban violence in Venezuela

Abstract

This study analyzes the dynamics of urban violence in the metropolitan area of Barquisimeto, Lara state (Venezuela), and its implications for the exercise of freedoms and quality of life between the years 2018 and 2024. The research adopts a mixed approach with triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods. Quantitative data, from the Press Observatory (OP) of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence in the state of Lara, record the type of crimes, their location, the profiles of victims and perpetrators, as well as the frequency of the events. Qualitative data were obtained through ten semi-structured interviews and a focus group with community leaders from popular sectors, conducted between 2018 and 2024. The findings reveal a decrease in violent deaths since the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the involvement of minors in criminal life and an increase in thefts of essential goods, such as food bags, gas cylinders and telecommunications infrastructure. Likewise, there is evidence of an increase in institutional violence manifested forms of crime trough extrajudicial and extrajudicial executions. It is concluded that urban violence in Barquisimeto has been reconfigured towards more diffuse and everyday forms. This violence mainly affects the popular sectors, where state coercion has hardened, coexisting with an increasingly structural poverty that makes it difficult to achieve a dignified life.