The spiral of violence that envelopes Venezuelan society does not stop to extend, covering wider sectors of the community in ever bloodier ways. The numbers -even the most conservative figures- are hard to assimilate because the peaks, year after year, increase the heights. There is an undeclared war, being fought in ever-changing battlefields, and whose opposing sides remain unknown.
The situation is real and sometimes we don't need to refer to those many figures, data tables or graphics to know that this scourge (that is not from today and does not have its causes only in the actual government) is devouring the life of Venezuelan society and its youth. And that even if the government does not give real and reliable numbers or manipulates them and the opposition very often, taking profit of the victim's pain, use those numbers as a merely political tool, the tragedy is there and it is impossible to hide it.
Behind those red figures there are thousands of destroyed families that this project intends to give back their human face and their own voice, sons without fathers and mothers without sons, survivors with the body and the soul covered by scars. Citizens from all social classes, all ages and politic affiliations that today carry on their shoulders years of pain and desperation. I know their anguish, as Venezuelan i have felt it too while living in the corners invaded by "crack", while visiting the jails, those cemeteries for living beings, where guards sell the same fire-arms used in the massacres. I have been patient in those hospitals overflowed by victims of this senseless violence. Because of that, as photographer, i want to avoid those stories to be forgotten and repeated, capturing images that go beyond the neighborhoods and tell the communities and their inhabitants about the importance of take the lead in the reorganization of this chaos. Is necessary, is possible and is undelayable.
