Venezuelans now need to worry about their
hair. Women in the city of Maracaibo in Venezuela
should be careful when wearing their hair
down. According to local news sources, a
group known as “piranhas” are now stealing
women’s hair — and they prefer it straight. The robbers will hold women at gunpoint in
malls and tell them to tie their hair into a
ponytail so that they can then cut it off and
sell it to beauty salons as hair extensions,
according to Venezuelan digital newspaper
Informe 21. Jhonatan Morales, a hair stylist in Venezuela,
told Globovision news that the use of hair
extensions has gone up by 30%, but that his
salon “doesn’t buy from street vendors
because we don’t know where that hair comes
from.” The mayor of Maracaibo, Eveling de Rosales,
addressed the issue saying “men and women
were being placed to guard and avoid this
happening again.” Venezuela’s soaring crime rates have been an
issue in recent years. Caracas, the country’s
capital, is the third most violent city in the
world, according to a study by the Citizen
Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice. The murder rate in the South American
country has soared since Hugo Chavez took
office in 1999. In 2012 it was at 73 per
100,000 inhabitants, almost 15 times the U.S.
rate, according to the Los Angeles Times.
