Here are Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.
In Venezuelan prisons, punishment is dispensed by order of the Pranes, powerful prisoners who rise above their peers through violence and death. Anything can be seen as an offense; a word, accidental physical contact, snitching, theft or failing to honor debts; and every offense exacts a steep price. According to the research conducted by David Placer for his book "The Dictator and his Demons," the most common reprisal that an inmate may suffer following a perceived transgression are point-blank shots to the feet or hands, but there are worse fates, such as hanging, dismemberment and even being cannibalized. Lacking anything remotely resembling proper medical care, inmates must mend their non-life threatening wounds with fire, alcohol and superglue, which can easily lead to nasty infections but is still better than bleeding to death. Although sexual assault may also be used as a means of control, homosexuality is seriously frowned upon in most prisons, so assaulting other inmates may be dangerous for the perpetrator as well; however, if the Pran or the Luceros fancy an inmate's mother, wife or daughter, they may demand sex for protection or to clear a previous offense.
Security forces don't openly engage in these activities but they have other forms of punishment and degrading treatment reserved for the new recruits as part of their dehumanizing training, such as forcing them to eat their food mixed up with their drink in a nauseating gruel, spending hours under cold rain or scorching sun, or being put at the vanguard of an operation as cannon fodder, so that they can develop the cold blood and moral flexibility required for the job. The real tortures are reserved for political prisoners, who are forced to sing chavista mottos, beaten, sexually assaulted, electrocuted, hung from ceilings by their cuffed hands, prevented from sleeping, seeing or talking to their relatives and held in isolation. To me, the worst ordeal described in the book is the so-called "White Torture," which consists of holding a person in absolute silence and solitude in a white room, with the air conditioner in full swing and halogen lights always on. This procedure is taken from the Cuban handbook and probably has Soviet sources, and its goal is to break the prisoner's psyche, to induce delirium and hallucinations. Typically, these methods are used to extract a confession for fake crimes, but they can also be used just to inspire anguish and fear in other dissidents.
Additionally, it's not uncommon for regime lackeys to infiltrate opposition demonstrations and planning sessions to identify important individuals and mark them for kidnapping or arrest. Sometimes, if the person is relatively unknown and has shown signs of being troublesome, they're just killed with impunity. This can also happen with regime loyalists who have become too critical, the country's recent history is plagued with incidents where former chavista leaders are imprisoned, pushed into exile or found dead in their homes or on public roads. The dead are then exalted as heroes of the revolution for a time, the opposition and the United States are blamed for their demise and no formal investigation uncovers what really happened. With a drug-trafficking cartel at the helm, truth is lethal and opacity is protection.
Aside from this, the regime is responsible for the destruction of pretty much every system in the country through mismanaged resources, negligence and lack of maintenance. The electric system is so battered that last week we had yet another nationwide blackout that was promptly blamed on the same culprits as always. Water supply is also deeply dysfunctional and there are large areas of territory that simply lack the service altogether. Telephone lines and internet connection are also quite poor, affecting the ability of people to communicate and report on their situation. Most hospitals are derelict, incapable of handling the increasing demands of an ailing population. Even the funeral industry is in shambles and there have been cases of people having to bury their relatives in informal, unmarked graves at their own homes. The list goes on and on, and no reliable reports exist to grasp the full impact of these troubles.
Combine all of these terrors with dark witchcraft and religious delusions, and you get a catastrophe of cyclopean proportions, affecting the country at all levels. I've seen many people abroad trying to make sense of what's happening here, basing their research on the scant and frequently inaccurate information presented by foreign news outlets, but this is an impossible task. Only the people who live here may hope to get some form of understanding of the situation in Venezuela and that mostly shallowly. So if you want to know more about this topic and how it might relate to your own countries, you'd have to ask several of my countrymen and countrywomen, to form a single portrait from many distinct viewpoints. Please don't assume that you understand what's going on in here, or anywhere else for that matter. Our world is a complex place and knowledge is often elusive for those on the outside.