7 Reasons for Describing Venezuela as a ‘Mafia State’
Venezuela does not have a long tradition of organized crime. Indeed, until very recently it was the Colombian mafias who controlled much of the drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping, and these were largely confined to the border states.
Today crime is rampant, and Venezuela is likely the kidnap capital of Latin America, although there is no hard data to support this claim. For decades Colombia exported conflict and criminality to Venezuela, as that country’s civil conflict spilled over the frontier. Colombian drug trafficking organizations and warring factions set up shop, turning Venezuela into a logistics base, safe haven and one of the principal transit nations for Colombian cocaine.
