The Republic of Victims: Crime and Citizenship in Venezuela

• In Event: The Subject of Wrongs: The Politics of Victimhood in Latin America, Part 1

Abstract

Thousands of people are murdered in Venezuela every year, but not all of them are treated equally as victims of violence. In death, as in life, some citizens are valued over others. The following article examines the articulation of citizenship and victimhood through journalistic accounts of violent crime. Based on ethnographic fieldwork alongside reporters on the Caracas crime beat, it focuses on the binary opposition sano/malandro. The term sano translates as “healthy,” “wholesome,” or “clean.” In the context of crime news, “sanos” are innocent victims, and they stand in stark contrast to “malandros”—shady, ne’er-do-wells who inhabit the fringes of the moral order. If the death of an innocent sano demands a response, then the death of a malandro is usually passed over in silence. This binary is reproduced through the medium of crime news, and it closely resembles the structural patterns described by Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger (1966). I argue that this discourse is critical for understanding the formation of citizen-victims and, by extension, the politics of urban security in Venezuela.

Author

• Robert Samet, Union College