HomeNewsViolence Against Women Regular Tactic for Venezuela Criminal Groups
NEWS

Violence Against Women Regular Tactic for Venezuela Criminal Groups

GENDER AND CRIME / 6 FEB 2023 BY VENEZUELA INVESTIGATIVE UNIT EN

The latest figures on femicides in Venezuela show organized crime is one of the main drivers of violence against women, with community leaders, family members of criminals, and workers in illicit economies particularly vulnerable.

During 2022, the Venezuelan non-governmental organization Utopix registered 236 femicides in the country, and 68 femicides of Venezuelan women outside the country. Just four states -- Miranda, Carabobo, Zulia, and Bolívar -- accounted for nearly half of the recorded femicides in Venezuela.

While a majority of the murders were perpetrated by current or former partners, violence related to organized crime is the second biggest driver of femicides in Venezuela and abroad.

SEE ALSO: Mass Graves in Venezuela Connected to Disappearances in Illegal Mining Hub

In 2022, 30 murders were linked to criminal groups in the country, most of them in Miranda, Carabobo, Táchira, and Zulia. In Colombia and Peru, where most of the femicides outside the country were registered, at least four were directly linked to organized crime.

Although femicides were codified as a distinct crime in a 2014 law typified as, “The right of women to a life free from violence,” there are no official reports on the number of women that are killed by violence in the country. This leaves groups such as Utopix reliant on press reports. Femicides that are not reported by media outlets may be excluded, making the true number of deaths likely higher, according to Aimee Zambrano, the coordinator of the unit in Utopix that monitors femicides.

InSight Crime Analysis

Organized crime contributes to femicides in various ways.

To begin with, criminal groups often threaten or harm women because of their relationships with members of rival gangs or security forces, targeting romantic partners and family members as a way to send messages to their enemies. 

"What we see is that women's bodies end up being the spoils of the wars between gangs," said Zambrano.

There were several cases over the last year that fit this pattern. In September, the wife of an alleged extortionist in La Cañada de Urdaneta, a town in Zulia, was killed by hitmen in her home. Months earlier, in May, the mother of a criminal leader known as “El Rayao” in Morón, Carabobo was killed by her son’s enemies. It seems neither woman was directly involved in the criminal activities of their families.

SEE ALSO: Femicides in Tibú, Colombia: Cocaine, Gunmen, and a Never-Ending War

Other times, territorial disputes between criminal groups leave women who are community leaders vulnerable, as they are targeted by groups looking to spread fear and assert their social control. In Miranda, for example, a woman who was a member of the local subsidized food distribution committee was killed after she was accused of providing information to the police, according to local media reports.

"They commit these crimes precisely as a way of intimidating women who are doing community work," said Zambrano. “It is a form of intimidating everything that makes up the social fabric.”

Finally, there are attacks on women who are those participating in illicit economies, which accounted for the highest percentage of organized crime-connected femicides chronicled by Utopix. In the state of Amazonas, for instance, one woman who worked at an illegal mining camp, according to press reports, was among the five people killed in a massacre near the Brazilian border.

In the Colombia-Venezuela border, women working as carretilleras, a term used for those carrying goods across illegal crossing points, were also targeted by armed groups. In April, the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN) was accused of kidnapping and murdering a Venezuelan woman on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, for failing to pay an extortion fee to the group, and in December, a woman who worked as a carretillera was found dead at an illegal crossing point.

Venezuelan women working for organized crime groups in Colombia are also at high risk. A Venezuelan woman linked with microtrafficking was murdered in the city of Bucaramanga, Santander, and another was killed by hitmen in Soledad, Atlántico, as she was allegedly collecting extortion money for the Rastrojos Costeños group.

Sex workers are also common victims of organized crime groups. In Perú, Venezuelan sex workers are routinely targeted by Los Gallegos, a cell of the Tren de Aragua. One woman was murdered and another one was injured during an attack police claim was related to a turf war between Los Gallegos and a Peruvian gang, while another sex worker was killed for allegedly refusing to pay an extortion fee to an unnamed criminal group.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

BRAZIL / 31 DEC 2021

Prediction of the criminal dynamics for 2022 is even harder than most years, as it involves predicting the march of…

ELITES AND CRIME / 27 JUL 2023

Venezuelan ranchers are getting their cattle stolen or killed by gangs supported by the very officials meant to supervise the…

PRISONS / 17 MAR 2022

The families of Venezuelan detainees have complained that prisoners are being extorted by guards and officials in order to simply…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…