This week, hispanic entertainment media in US was shocked with tragic news. An international actress and former Venezuelan model, Monica Spear, was murdered with her ex-husband in what appeared to be a robbery. Their five years old daughter, who also sustained injuries during the attack, is expected to fully recover physically.
Spear, who was traveling by car with her family, on a road between two cities in the center of the country, had to pull over in the middle of the night due to a punched tire and was been helped by a towing service when they were assaulted by the carjackers, who shot them causing death to the couple and hitting the little girl.
Many questions come up from this terrible tragedy. First of all, why is the murder of a famous person more relevant than the rest of the citizens who have met the same fate, but they end up being just numbers on statistics and their names only get a few inches on a local newspaper page?
The answer to this question - and maybe is a twisted way to see the bright side- may bring forth a positive solution, because it opened up a needed debate in Venezuela about violence that, so far, government has refused to admit, much less fight.
The murder of an average Venezuelan receives little or no attention from the media but when a case like Monica Spear's (who was a famous young woman with a successful acting career) makes the headlines, it becomes an issue even more difficult to hide from the international spotlight. Does it really take the death of a celebrity to consider the possibility of making reforms?
Murder is a reprehensible act, no matter who the victim is; there shouldn't be doubt about it. Nevertheless, Venezuela is a place where random acts of violent criminal behavior occur and this episode might be just one photogram of the motion picture of a decaying country, going through what could be called, it's hardest period of social, moral, and financial decline in more than two decades.
Which leads us to the second question: how did this happen, in a country with so many resources and potential? People are simply getting used to accept wrong as normal, whether because they think nothing can be done or blame the government for creating these problems, thus relying on them to be in charge of taking the necessary actions to resolve situation (and maybe they're right).
But if the government is sweeping these problems under the rug, who is going to step up and take action? With an unstable political situation like Venezuelan, what usually happens is that people are so busy trying to put other fires out and they forget the real problem: as a result, human life suddenly loses its value. We hope, for the sake of the good people who live there, they can make it through this period of hardship and they can take the necessary steps toward being a prosperous country again, where news are about development instead of death.
