In times like these men turn to desperate measures. Can you blame them?

Tomorrow was another day. No doubt the streets would be filled with rage. Pablo would make coffee in the morning. Perhaps he would tend his small garden.

UNA TRAGEDIA DOBLE BY JARED BERBERABE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 68

The paleros had come in the night bearing shovels and spades and dressed in dark rags. They wore the rags, Pablo figured, not just to hide themselves but also to hide their shame. Shame that things had come to this.

They had come first to the Cementerio del Este on the eastern side of Caracas, and they had gone to work noiselessly. The way Pablo’s buddy Armando described it, you would think they had not been paleros, but vultures in human form, lopping up the dirt, digging and cutting their way through the hard soil. Armando’s neighbor, the elderly Señora Cruz, had woken up the next morning to see that her husband of 76 years had been dumped next to the empty hole where his coffin had been buried. He had been stripped naked and the golden ring and tooth which he had ac…