CARACAS, Venezuela — Her body, like the remains of so many lost souls here, was discarded along one of the capital's highways, notorious dumping grounds for the ever-rising toll of homicide victims.

Savvy motorists avoid certain thoroughfares after dark, when carjack gangs set up ambushes, sometimes laying down nail-embedded strips to puncture tires. Motorists speak matter-of-factly of spotting body parts along roadways.

“She had a lot of life and was a hard worker,” said 24-year-old Wisneydi Colina, recalling her late friend, Pierina Patricia Jaspe Sanchez, 26, among the latest in the roster of the slain.

For Venezuela's 29 million citizens, the collapse in oil prices and ensuing economic free fall have brought daunting hardships, including blocks-long lines for groceries, shortages of medicines and rolling blackouts. Protesters have demanded authorities allow a recall referendum on cutting short President Nicolas Maduro's term, including thousands of demonstrators who clashed with police Tuesday in Caracas.

But escalating violent crime, especially murder, is perhaps the biggest concern, distorting daily life in ways both small and profound.

While Venezuela has long been among the most crime-ridden nations, homicide statistics are a matter of heavily politicized dispute.

In February, the government rolled out its first official accounting in years, reporting that 17,778 people had been murdered in 2015, more than 80 percent by firearms, for a homicide rate of about 58 per 100,000 — down slightly from 2014.

But the Observatory of Venezuelan Violence, a think tank, reported 27,875 homicides last year, or about 90 per 100,000 people. That would put Venezuela in the company of gang-ridden Honduras and El Salvador for the distinction of being the world's most homicidal nation. (For comparison, the homicide rate in the United States is about 5 per 100,000.)

While most crime victims are poor, they also include members of the middle and upper classes and scores of police and military personnel killed each year.

Venezuelans blame corrupt law enforcement, government indifference, proliferating arms and a deteriorating economy. Many see a chilling lack of regard for human life, a symptom of a once-stable society gone badly astray.

“Before the thieves would only rob you” is a common refrain here in the capital. “Now they kill you.”

In a country where most perpetrators are never found, mobs are increasingly launching impromptu revenge attacks, often dousing suspected muggers with gasoline and setting them alight — inevitably targeting the innocent by mistake at times. There have been 74 possible lynchings this year, according to authorities.

“The increase in the perception of insecurity and the lack of confidence in (police) … lead to people wanting to defend themselves however possible,” criminologist Ana Maria Rondon told the Observatory of Venezuelan Violence.

Crime is most prevalent in Caracas' hillside shantytowns, steep expanses of cinder block homes splashed in bright hues.

Residents complain of marauding armed gangs, often in league with cops. They rattle off anecdotes of friends and relatives murdered during muggings, sometimes for as little as the equivalent of $1.

“Everyone is fed up with delinquency,” said Paula Navas, 48, a mother of seven who escorted visitors through the upper reaches of Petare.

Denizens peeked from behind barred windows. Motorbikes and battered Land Cruisers, which serve as mass transit, ferried residents toting plastic bags filled with rice, pasta and other basic goods purchased after hours in line.

“If we see someone who we don't know on our streets, we think they are criminals,” Navas said.

Precautions that would seem extraordinary elsewhere are now the norm throughout the capital.

In wealthier districts, strands of electrified wire run along the tops of residential walls. and guard dogs pacing behind locked gates growl at passers-by.

On the streets, women eschew fancy jewelry that may attract muggers.

People try their best to conceal the bags of cash they are forced to carry as a result of massive inflation that has rendered even the largest banknotes nearly worthless. Technology and a still-functional bank network have helped: Even many street markets and hole-in-the-wall shops allow customers to pay with debit or credit cards.

Caracas' once-animated night life has been muted, as if there is a curfew. Restaurants, like the subway and buses, are favored venues for group assaults in which bands of armed delinquents demand wallets, cash, jewelry and cellphones.

“The police still make their rounds, but we have been robbed three times,” said Carlos Castillo, 47, owner of a bar-restaurant in Chacaito, a mostly middle-class district in eastern Caracas.

Once open until 11 p.m. each evening, the establishment now closes at 7 p.m., a common scenario here. The few patrons are advised not to leave their cellphones on tables to avoid attracting thieves.

Inevitably, murder victims end up at the morgue, a glass fortress in the leafy, mostly middle-class Bello Monte district.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, rifle-toting soldiers guarded the entrance. They were deployed because police a day earlier shot and killed Tyahiwi Oswaldo Oropeza Guariguan, 31, a notorious gang leader known as “Lucifer” who authorities say ran robbery, assassination, kidnapping and arms trafficking enterprises. Now, his remains were inside.

There were no obvious signs of Lucifer's confederates outside the morgue, where groups of bereaved arrived every few minutes, mourning the most recent victims of the daily bloodbath.

Among the mourners were friends and relatives of Sanchez , the woman whose body had been tossed on the side of the Caracas-Guarenas highway. She had disappeared 11 days earlier in the nearby city of Los Teques, where the single mother sold clothing on the informal market.

The victim's father and brother identified the remains at the morgue. The cause of death was apparently a single bullet in the back, spurring speculation that Sanchez may have been shot while trying to escape.

“She had a lot of friends,” Colina said at the morgue. “We used to like to go to the park together, to shopping centers, to the movies.”

Soon, relatives would receive the body and take it back to Sanchez's hometown, where three children — 3, 8 and 10 — were left motherless.

patrick.mcdonnell@tribpub.com