Venezuela students make gruesome find

MARACAY: Rafael Toro, a student at Venezuela’s top veterinary school, suspected something was amiss when a beloved horse called Miss Congeniality didn’t greet him at the fence one recent morning along with others in the campus’ small herd.

The bright-eyed, bay-colored mare had earned her nickname for helping disabled students overcome their fear of riding horses. They say she was smart and even trotted up when you called her name.

To his shock, Toro discovered the horse’s skin and dismembered bones hidden among trees in the corner pasture of the sprawling campus in the central Venezuelan city of Maracay. Thieves overnight had hopped the fence, slaughtered the horse and made off with her meat – either to sell or to feed their hungry families.

“I burst into tears,” said Toro, who delivered the grim news to other students. “We came here, and together we all cried.”

The slaughter isn’t an isolated incident. Across Venezuela, as the once-wealthy oil nation’s economy collapses and sky-high inflation leaves residents struggling to afford scarce food, crimes of hunger and desperation are soaring.

Ranchers across the country complain their livestock herds are meet- ing the same fate. There are media reports of small groups of men caught smuggling stolen horse meat – accompanied by gory pictures of dismembered horses.

But in a new low, bandits have turned their attention to slaughtering horses and cattle vital to training the South American nation’s next generation of veterinarians.

The meat from a full-grown horse could fetch roughly US$1,400 (RM5,825) at market making it a lucrative venture in a country where a worker’s monthly minimum wage is under US$10 (RM41.60) at the widely-used black market rate.

— AP Tragic find: Toro pointing with a machete at the skeleton of a horse called Miss Congeniality, as he is accompanied by others students, in the corner pasture of the Central University of Venezuela in Maracay.