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 copied it, almost to the letter, from another enforced in Spain under the dictatorship of Franco. Under its terms, anyone with no known occupation could be considered a vagrant, and so be subject to sanction by the prefects. Homosexuals were also placed in this category.

Inexplicably, even though the judicial and ethical underpinnings of the law bordered on the absurd, it remained in full force, and the civil servants working within its remit had no authority to refuse to enforce it. As long as it remained in operation, prefects were required to respect it, comply with it, and ensure the public’s compliance.

As luck – or misfortune – would have it, I was one of the last of those prefects. These are my memories of some of the most surprising cases I had to contend with.