The Devil's Excrement

I had no time to translate Petkoff’s Editorial this morning, but it is worth doing for those that are not  fluent in Spanish.

The Picture by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

Thus, the problem is the picture. The problem is not that of the 16,000 murders a year, 95% of which remain unpunished, the problem is not the 400 or so dead, set aside in the prisons, the problem is not the thousands of vehicles stolen each year, not hundreds of apartment assaulted by gangs of thieves, the problem is not the thousands of express kidnappings, and of the other type, which take place each year, nor are the protection money that guerrilla and paramilitary gangs force people to pay at the border and it is much less those countless purse snatches, which are no longer even reported because they have become banal. This is not the problem. The problem  is the picture published by El Nacional.

Nor is the problem of the police overwhelmed by the criminals, underpaid, poorly trained and even infiltrated by criminals, let alone is a slow judiciary, of poor quality, most of whose judges are provisional, members of Chavez party PSUV, and who live afraid of issuing decisions that do not please the mighty. None of this is the problem. The problem is the picture published by El Nacional.

The former head of the PTJ spoke to let us know that now the floors of the morgue are brand new linoleum and there are ultra modern gurneys. That picture is old. The horrifying spectacle of hundreds of bodies that now enjoy new beds and lie on a floor again, and may be even polished, is not their problem. His problem is the “morbid” picture. Not the killiings that the picture captured. The ineffable Prosecutor of the Republic has already announced actions, but not against criminals, but against El Nacional. The Commission for the Protection of Minors, or whatever its name is, also mobilized itself.

Since acted against Tal Cua forl the horrendous crime against the “privacy of a minor” which was to publishthe name of the President’s daughter, that agency had not given any signs of life. Now out of its lethargy, as “child advocacate” whose “minds may be affected by the picture.” The hundreds of children who die hit by stray bullets, the young kids and adolescents who go through the horrible experience of seeing their parents or older siblings murdered before his eyes frightened, do upset the dreams of  the people of the Defence Commission for the Protection of Minors. What matters to them is the picture.

All of the self-righteousness, hypocrisy, which permeates to the core of this regime has shone ominously in this episode of the picture of El Nacional. What worries the adulators is not that there’s violence, but that people know about it. Here we understand the publishing  of this picture as an appropriate response to laughter, not necessarily less miserable and despicable, that whippersnapper who heads Telesur, who issued a hyena laugh while at his side while a Venezuelan expert on the issue of violence was informing us about the unbearable levels of violence reached in our country. The issue of crime makes you laugh, Izarrita, you make fun of the matter, do you think it’s an invention of the opposition? Laugh, then at this picture, you little preppy.

This entry was posted on August 16, 2010 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Venezuela.