A Venezuelan soldier takes cover behind an armored vehicle. For 48 hours he has ducked flying bullets.
By AFP/ Translation in English by France24
He is not on a battlefield but rather in a suburb of Caracas, the capital of violence-ridden Venezuela which in his own words is “a country at war.””
The scene played out this month in the slum of Cota 905, which shares a name with the gang that runs it with impunity.
It is one of several Caracas suburbs — all of them poor — lorded over by criminals who terrorize locals largely unhindered in a country in dire economic and political straits.
Amid the turmoil, the gangs have created parallel empires funded by drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping.
In Caracas, a city of some two million inhabitants, they run the slums with a heavy hand from their comparatively fancy houses in the wealthier, higher parts of the hilly neighborhoods.
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