Rivas smokes a cigarette while changing at a casket store in Caracas
Oswaldo Rivas smokes a cigarette while changing at a casket store in Caracas November 21, 2012. A perpetually edgy city, Caracas' murder rate has shot up in recent years to become one of the world's worst. Both Venezuela's official national rate of 39 deaths a year per 100,000 people and an NGO tally of double that make the country an international leader in homicides, vying with gang-plagued nations such as Honduras and El Salvador. Some 100 undertakers' businesses, legal and illegal, have sprung up around Caracas in recent years. Nor is there a lack of demand for tomb-chisellers, flower-sellers, permit-handlers and a plethora of other mini-businesses purveying to death. Picture taken November 21, 2012. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins (VENEZUELA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST CRIME LAW SOCIETY)
ATTENTION EDITORS: PICTURE 19 OF 34 FOR PACKAGE 'IN CARACAS - THE BUSINESS OF DEATH'. TO FIND ALL IMAGES SEARCH 'DEATH CARLOS'