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We're here in Bolivar Square in the middle of central Caracas,
as you might be able to tell
[RYAN DUFFY VBS.TV] from the cathedral behind me.
Venezuela is, like most Latin American countries,
predominantly Catholic.
Now, the interesting bit here, is there's a good bit of Santería and spiritism in the mix as well,
and we've recently found a particular group of saints that fascinates us.
They're called the Santos Malandros, translated roughly as the Holy Thugs.
Now, it's either kind of perfect, or really troubling
that in Caracas, widely regarded as the world's most violent city,
the Venezuelan people are worshipping at the feet of tiny statues
of now dead armed criminals.
[THE HOLY THUGS OF VENEZUELA]
Over 14,000 people were killed in Venezuela last year,
and Caracas has the highest *** rate per capita in the world.
Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian revolution may have reduced poverty in this oil-rich country,
but he's yet to bring any sense of safety or security to the streets.
It's in the middle of all this violence
that the cult of the Holy Thugs was born.
The Holy Thugs are part of a very unique mix
of Catholicism and Spiritism,
so we first visited
[TULIO HERNANDEZ SOCIOLOGIST] with sociologist, Tulio Hernandez
to try to get our heads around it.
Venezuela is a country that has created its own heaven,
and its own national religiosity.
It's a peculiar mix of indigenous values,
African spirituality,
and a very loose interpretation of the official religion.
And what's interesting about this religion is it mostly attracts
the poorest sectors of the population.
He explained that the main goddess of Venezuela spiritism
is María Lionza,
who is represented, of course,
as a naked lady riding what looks to be an antipode.
María Lionza,
essentially the queen of all saints.
Below her, there's a whole bunch of other saints grouped into courts.
There's the court of doctors,
Indians,
Africans,
Vikings and even of revolutionaries.
The newest court, and the one that best represents what's going on in Caracas today,
is the Calé Court, or the Court of Thugs.
This is the latest court to appear, during the last 10 or 15 years
in this world of the Venezuelan spirits.
Every court has a leader,
and the leader of the Court de Malandra, or the Court of the Thugs,
is Ismael Sanchez.
So, it's mid-afternoon and we just got to the cemetery here in Caracas,
and right over here is where Ismael Sanchez is buried
along with the other members of the Holy Thugs.
This is where everyone comes
to pay their respects.
He was like all of us.
But because of all the miracles that he has performed here on earth,
people have made him into what he is today.
He helps people who are in prison a lot.
People often ask him to help get someone out of jail,
to undo their chains so that they can be free.
But it also depends on what they did.
Many were caught for ***, so it really depends on their sin.
You summon him, pray to him and ask him for help,
and he lets you know if they will come out or if they will be punished.
In the Venezuelan popular religion,
it is believed that the dead don't ever fully go away.
Somehow they stay to take care of us here on Earth.
You ask the dead for help, you ask them for protection.
At the cemetery, we met Omar,
the unofficial caretaker of Ismael's shrine,
and his buddies, Johan
and Vumande,
who both seem to be spiritism priests of some sort.
Ismael Sanchez was a great man. He helped the poor a lot.
That's why I always carry him,
as you can see here.
People say he used to steal,
but if he ever stole it was only for his people, for his neighborhood.
So that everyone could eat.
He was like a Robin Hood.
He stole to give to the poor.
Of course, you can't say that's good, because a crime is a crime,
but we're not here to judge anyone.
And well, in his struggle,
after being a criminal for so long,
sadly he was killed.
He was shot to death.
He was shot in the back. He was killed by a cop who shot him in the back.
He died in the '50s or '60s.
We talked a lot about Ismael.
There are another few saints
in a similar fashion
who are part of this group.
Can you tell us about some of the others? Who is that right there?
This is Malandro Pelón. Miguelito, "The Baldy."
He used to rob people too.
He didn't really do anything good for humanity.
Over there, that's Isabelita.
Her name is Malandra Isabel.
This is Freddy, "The Turkey."
And here are the others.
That one is called "The Mouse."
That one is "Crude Oil." He was black, you know?
And that one is Malandra Elizabeth.
Everyone has their own way to worship them.
People bring flowers, some bring them drugs too, of course.
People bring white and blue candles, too,
but what he really liked the most was anisette and cigarettes.
This is how you do it.
You cross your heart,
and then you give him the cigarette like this, so that he can smoke it.
Cigarettes were his obsession.
About how many people are coming through each day
to pay respects or celebrate or whatever they're doing,
and how long are they staying?
A lot of people come here everyday.
They give him his tobacco, they have a drink with Ismael and with all of us.
We have a good time.
But a lot of people also come and cry.
They come here because a family member is sick or in jail, so they cry.
A lot of people come and ask for someone to be killed.
"Please kill that person for me, because he killed my son."
The murderer she's asking to be killed is a worse person than the one he killed.
Do you understand?
Here we don't worship evil, we worship the good.
But at the same time,
if someone in my family is killed, I have to seek revenge.
You can't just come and ask for bad things...
But,
if it's in self defense,
and you need help with some things, then that's up to you.
We live in a world where
we could say that 99.9% of people have evil thoughts in their heads.
They're always thinking of hurting someone else because of envy, greed, etc.
At some point, we saw a funeral procession drive by
and we were told that it was a kid murdered in the nearby slums that weekend.
Soon after, we heard a few rounds of automatic weapon fire
and decided it was time to leave.
When burials take place,
the number of shots that people fire up to the sky
are a sign of how fierce their vengeance will be.
Leaving the cemetery just now,
we drove by this shop
and noticed they have a bunch of the Holy Thugs displayed in front.
We're going to pop in and check them out
and see if we can meet the folks who run the place.
We met the shop owner,
a spiritist named Clara,
who said she could only talk to us with Ismael's permission,
so she went back to her altar to ask him.
That's my boy, Ismael,
the leader of the pack,
and the rest of the pack as well.
This is Antonio.
He's got a pretty serious scar.
It's right there above his eye
from a knife fight that Antonio got into.
Fresh out of the Thunderbird,
it's the one Holy Thug who came from Jersey,
Jonny.
Tomasito is...that's a serious dude.
He also has the Nike hat.
He is, perhaps, a little more devious than the rest.
He's somewhat concealing his weapon.
Clara eventually invited us back,
where she actually offered to channel Ismael himself, for us.
This is an altar that belongs to Melandro Ismael.
He helps with healing and can even perform open heart surgeries,
but it has to be through mediums who can channel him properly.
If you have drug addiction problems,
he could help you get out of it.
He also helps a lot of people who have strayed into the wrong path.
He helps delinquents get out of that life, if they have true faith.
If you believe in something strongly enough, even a glass of water could cure you.
But if you don't have faith, nothing anyone could do will help you.
I can see that there's a Hindu spirit that protects you.
Do you particularly like Egyptian and Hindu things?
Yeah, I'm very interested by them, certainly.
You should actually visit the Great Pyramids.
You are a person with good light,
and one of your great grandfathers is always with you.
You can see that just by looking at me?
I am a clairaudient medium.
What I just told you is what Ismael asked me to tell you.
It's a very complex science, and one has to know how to use it.
We said goodbye to Clara,
picked up some statues,
and got on our way.
Human beings need to believe in something...
in something, to be able to focus our thoughts.
When you think about it, there has to be something spiritual,
something higher than us.
For many Venezuelans,
living in poverty and amidst all of this violence,
believing in the pure and perfect Catholic saints
is a bit more of a stretch
than believing in the more familiar and flawed figureheads like Ismael.
No religion can profess absolute truth. None of them.
Nobody is going to tell me there's something totally good or totally evil.
That's a lie.
There's nothing 100% good and there's nothing 100% bad.
The Holy Thugs are basically the way,
that people who are directly or indirectly involved
with this tragic moment that Venezuela is going through
of very high homicide rates,
where those who die are mostly the poor,
and within the poor, the young, and within the young, the men.
They are a way to heal this deep wound
caused by the loss of so many young people.