With the world’s second highest murder rate, Venezuela is no stranger to such slaughter. But while Nicolas Maduro, the successor to the late Hugo Chavez, has blamed the violence on yet more US-backed plots against the country, the truth may be anything but. Far from being the work of the “gringo empire”, as he likes to call the US, or its stooges in the Venezuelan opposition, it seems that the Chavista regime is beginning to turn on itself. And at the heart of the factional infighting is the colectivos - set up to act as Mr Chavez’s “peoples’ armies”, but now accused of turning to organised crime as the country’s economic crisis bites ever harder.