Tren de Aragua

If, as an academic exercise, anyone wished to identify the social conditions that might most contribute to a crime wave, looking at Venezuela over the last decade might be a good place to start. In terms of GDP, the economy has suffered a truly world-leading collapse. Between 2014 and 2021 GDP dropped by 75-80% according to reliable estimates. A fragile recovery has been seen across the last four years, but the economy remains little more than one quarter of its size ten years ago.