The Last Prefect

On 31 December 2001, Venezuela’s prefectures were finally abolished. The prefectures were institutions regulated by a law that was unconstitutional, unjust and immoral: the vagrancy law. This was a legal framework which authorised prefects to arrest and detain people for up to seventy-two hours, or have them interned indefinitely and without sentencing in abhorrent prison camps.

This law had been inherited from Venezuela’s last dictatorship, that of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, which had co...