By Kejal Vyas | Photography by Gaby Oráa for WSJ
CARACAS, Venezuela -- This city was once so dangerous that drivers ran red lights to avoid carjackings. A decade ago, three Venezuelans were killed an hour every day, on average. Bars and parks emptied as nighttime street kidnappings soared.
Now, families and fitness buffs fill up well-lit public plazas at night. Pedestrians who once panicked at approaching motorcycles -- worried their phones would be snatched -- walk without fear. Residents are running guided tours through slums once controlled by gang leaders.
"This could be Madrid, or Paris," quipped Cesar Peña, happy to be giving roadside haircuts on the main street of what had been a crime-ridden sector of the capital. "It got a lot calmer here."
Violent crime in Caracas and other major Venezuelan cities is falling to the lowest levels seen in decades, giving the country a boost as it prepares to welcome more potential foreign investment following the U.S. capture of leader Nicolás Maduro and President Trump's push to rejuvenate the oil industry here.
In 2016, Venezuela had 28,479 homicides -- a rate of 92 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants -- then the second highest in Latin America, according to the Venezuelan Observatory on Violence, a Caracas policy group. By 2023, the last year for which data is available, that rate had fallen 70% to 26.8 per 100,000, fewer than 7,000 killings.
The Trump administration, which recently reopened the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, has taken note. Its latest travel advisory dropped warnings about wrongful detention and unrest. Americans are no longer advised to prepare a will before visiting Venezuela.
The change is noticeable in Caracas, which for years had been dubbed the "Murder Capital of the World" by several crime-tracking organizations.
In the downtown neighborhood of San Agustín, bar owner Eliezer Díaz, who recounted fending off thugs trying to rob him of his cash, is seeing the nightlife return, with crowds on weekends gathering to dance salsa, drink rum and buy street food.
Andy Chelini once had a booming business as a hostage-release negotiator, fielding calls every week or two from desperate families and companies seeking his help to free kidnapped loved ones. But demand has fallen hard for his niche talent of calmly engaging with gangsters. More than a year has gone by since his last case.
"It's the change in crime dynamics," said Chelini, 74 years old. "That's the main reason why I can't find work."
Chelini's dilemma is remarkable in a country scarred by decades of urban violence and, more recently, Maduro's use of police and paramilitary forces to impose social control.
Homicides surged under Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chávez, as cocaine trafficking through Venezuela expanded and roving gangs preyed on civilians, brandishing handguns and riding cheap Chinese motorcycles. The crisis prompted authorities to stop issuing homicide data. Media outlets were punished for publishing gory photos of bodies stacked up at city morgues.
But as the economy collapsed and Maduro tightened his authoritarian grip on the country, kidnapping and homicide rates fell significantly, a stunning turnaround that crime experts say is partly explained by mass migration. More than eight million Venezuelans fled over the last 12 years, including many criminals whose profits from robberies, kidnappings and extortion had dried up, security analysts said.
Over the years, the arrival of some Venezuelan criminals in New York, Bogotá, Colombia and Santiago, Chile, led to a spate of street crime, police in those cities said. In Chile, José Antonio Kast won the presidency in part by tapping in to fear of crime linked to Venezuelan gang members.
The government of Delcy Rodríguez -- whom President Trump backed to replace Maduro -- says the homicide rate in 2025 fell to 3 per 100,000, lower than the U.S., a figure widely met with skepticism by criminologists. The security situation in Venezuela remains delicate, security consultants say, but broadly in line with -- if still somewhat worse than -- other Latin American countries that struggle with violence, like Mexico and Colombia.
But the public perception of crime has notably changed. About 59% of Venezuelans said they felt safe walking alone at night -- just behind Italy's 60% -- on Gallup's Global Safety report for 2025, compared with 17% in 2018, when Venezuela ranked below war-torn Afghanistan on the annual index.
"There is a sense that the worst period of Venezuelan crime is a thing of the past," said criminologist Luis Izquiel. "It's like when you're still sick, but you're feeling a lot better."
Crime hasn't disappeared in Venezuela. The remote south and west near Colombia, where gold- and drug-trafficking organizations thrive, remain among the most dangerous.
And Venezuelans are still grappling with the legacy of the crime wave -- as well as the state's heavy-handed response.
To try to bring crime under control, Maduro's regime used police sweeps -- a campaign dubbed Operation People's Liberation -- that resulted in thousands of alleged extrajudicial killings in the capital's sprawling barrios, according to human rights organizations and former Venezuelan prosecutors.
Lina Rivera of Caracas paid a heavy price: five men in her family, including a brother and a son, were gunned down by police between 2017 and 2019. She said authorities wrongly labeled them as gang members, known here as malandros.
"In Venezuela, the malandros are the police," Rivera said, accusing the government of using fear tactics to impose a false sense of security.
In the coming weeks, streams of investment scouts are expected to travel to Venezuela to shop for business opportunities, but many executives aren't taking chances on the security and are spending on armored cars and bodyguards. With oil workers returning to the country, there has been a jump in requests for bulletproof vehicles and a waiting list for rentals, said Reiner Peraza, who runs a company that outfits cars with ballistic glass and protective panels.
Chelini, the hostage negotiator, said he has been getting calls from investors and old security contacts about the risks on the ground. He advises caution, citing Venezuela's weak courts and visa hurdles for foreigners.
But Chelini -- who chartered tankers for the state oil firm before working as a hostage negotiator for the country's intelligence service -- sees his old line of work returning if criminals are drawn back to Venezuela.
"What do you think is going to happen when these people come back?" he said. "I can assure you that they're not going to become shoemakers. They're going to go back to what they've always done."
Write to Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 24, 2026 11:50 ET (15:50 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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