PUN­TA DE ARAYA, Venezuela–

So the skin­ny 17-year-old and the oth­er Mar­val men ran to grab the guns they'd sol­dered to­geth­er from kitchen pipes, smoked an acrid-smelling drug to boost their en­er­gy, and went out in­to the night to pa­trol the sandy vil­lage streets.

"We just have to kill these thugs, and then we can go back to fish­ing like we al­ways did," Fla­co said.

Pi­rates are ter­ror­is­ing the coastal state of Su­cre, once home to the world's fourth-largest tu­na fleet and a thriv­ing fish­ing in­dus­try.

That trade has col­lapsed, along with vir­tu­al­ly every in­dus­try across Venezuela. Gangs of out-of-work fish­er­men prey up­on those who still ven­ture out in­to the open sea, steal­ing their catch and their mo­tors, ty­ing them up, throw­ing them over­board, and some­times shoot­ing them. The rob­beries have tak­en place dai­ly this year, and dozens of fish­er­men have died.

"Peo­ple can't make a liv­ing fish­ing any­more, so they're us­ing their boats for the op­tions that are left: smug­gling gas, run­ning drugs, and pira­cy," said Jose An­to­nio Gar­cia, leader of the state's largest union.

The warm Caribbean sea is in­creas­ing­ly be­com­ing a grim free-for-all. Sev­en mem­bers of the Mar­val clan were prepar­ing to re­turn home one night in Sep­tem­ber when they heard shots.

"There's no way to run when you're stopped dead in the wa­ter, so I just start­ed pray­ing, 'God, let them leave with­out hurt­ing us,'" 42-year-old Ede­cio Mar­val said.

In­stead, af­ter steal­ing the boat's mo­tor and the night's catch, the men shot dead Ede­cio's old­est child, who had kept the group laugh­ing all night with cheesy jokes, and two oth­ers.

As they pre­pared to kill Ede­cio's teenage nephew, one pi­rate shout­ed for the oth­ers to stop. "No, that's my friend," he said. They had fished to­geth­er un­til last year.

So the group sped off, leav­ing the sur­viv­ing Mar­vals to send flash­es of light in­to the dark­ness. They wept as the bod­ies of their loved ones grew cold be­side them.

Back home in the vil­lage of Pun­ta de Araya, they told po­lice that they'd rec­og­nized the pi­rates' leader: It was El Be­ta, a 19-year-old killer with 40 men at his com­mand who lived a half mile down the road.

El Be­ta be­gan call­ing Fla­co Mar­val, threat­en­ing to come back and wipe out the whole clan.

"Your broth­er cried like a lit­tle bitch when I killed him. Now I'm com­ing for all of you snitch­es," he said in a taunt­ing voice mes­sage the fam­i­ly turned over to the po­lice.

The Mar­vals hun­kered down. Along with their neigh­bours, they gave up go­ing to the state-run hos­pi­tal up the hill be­cause that area was con­trolled by El Be­ta. They stopped send­ing their kids to school. And they start­ed night­ly pa­trols.

"It's not safe to leave the house," said Tibisay Mar­val, whose son was killed.

On the night they pre­pared to face down El Be­ta, Fla­co spot­ted a sol­dier dart­ing be­neath a street­light with his Kalash­nikov ri­fle drawn. Soon, the streets were filled with vil­lagers hop­ing the coast guard had caught a group of pi­rates.