After living my entire life in Venezuela, I have gone through a lot of things, as you must know after reading my stuff. This time I would like to write about something very important, especially for those fellows living in countries where the LEOs and similar personnel have good salaries, where the sanctions for those who don´t obey the laws are severe, and most importantly, there is an entire punitive system for the infractors.

As we have never enjoyed a true democracy, no matter what some of my Venezuelan mates would say, not like those democracies in most of the anglo-speaking sphere (as far as I know, never been to USA), consequently the morality of many members of police and other uniform institutions are, so to speak, relaxed.

A little bit of Venezuelan history

Perhaps this is occasioned by many years of civil war back in the second half of the 1850s that tanked what was left of the country after the independence wars. The population of the country decreased to ridiculous levels, while warlords were riding their horses from one place to another, free like the wind itself, killing each other, and terrifying and abusing the poor peasants. While in the USA the train rails were being built from coast to coast, with the consequent improvement in the life quality, trade, and all the progress that it brings along, these caudillos, or  chieftains, devastated our homeland, while the weakened governors struggled to keep under control the vast amount of land they had to rule. This is one of the explanations of our relative underdevelopment compared to some other countries in the same period, like Argentina, for example.