Gustavo Coronel has a haunting essay about the terror that stalks the Venezuelan countryside, with cattle-rustlers, marauders, professional killers, paramilitaries, mercenaries, narcoterrorists and Chavista death squads. No one is safe at night – or even at day. Payoffs to different kinds of criminals to prevent them from murdering and pillaging is a way of life now. People live on a razor’s edge. That is the climate of fear that rural Venezuelans must suffer as the Chavez dictatorship takes them ever further toward oblivion.

Not one word about this from the mainstream media!

But I have heard these stories from my farmer friends in Venezuela, I have heard them for a year and I think they are quite real. Sadly, Gustavo himself had to abandon his beloved country house for this reason, too. He writes sadly of the experience, too.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Something serious this weekend – an opponent of the regime who represented a farmers group in Barinas state has been assassinated. Chavez has begun picking off his opponents with death squads now.