Thousands of members of the Bolivarian National Guard of Venezuela, police and soldiers participated this Wednesday in an operation to take control of the Tocorón prison and “dismantle and put an end to organized crime gangs and other criminal networks” that operated in that penitentiary. in the northern state of Aragua.
For years, it was suspected that the prison was the center of operations of the feared criminal organization known as the Aragua Train, although the authorities did not mention it as a direct objective of their operation.
Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero”, leader of this organized crime group, the largest in Venezuela and one of the most important in Latin America, was held in Tocorón.
Despite the raid on the penitentiary, analysts do not believe that it means the disappearance of the Aragua Train, whose complex criminal structure extends throughout Latin America.
Venezuelan journalist and researcher Ronna Rísquez, author of the book “El Tren de Aragua. The gang that revolutionized organized crime in Latin America”, believes that other leaders of the organization and cells that are outside Venezuela can continue operating.
It is known that the mega-gang was born in the state of Aragua, in northern Venezuela, more than a decade ago, but there is no consensus among experts on how it directed the activities of its members from prison or exactly their magnitude.
origins
According to Luis Izquiel, professor of Criminology at the Central University of Venezuela, the gang was born “about 12 or 14 years ago” in a union that controlled a section of train that would cross the state of Aragua.
“The union members extorted contractors, sold jobs on construction sites and became known as ‘those from the Aragua train’.” says the organized crime expert in an interview with BBC Mundo.
“Some of these individuals ended up imprisoned in a local prison known as the Tocorón prison and from there they began to gain strength as a criminal organization,” he continues.
Izquiel explains that, from prison, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero began to group together former members of the union and other common prisoners and little by little put together the organization that we know today.
First they expanded outside the prison to other sectors of the Aragua state.
“Today they control the San Vicente neighborhood in Aragua state, which has become their epicenter of control outside the Tocorón prison,” he adds.
Then they expanded to the rest of the country: “It is known that they are in the state of Sucre, controlling drug trafficking routes, and they participate in illegal mining in the state of Bolívar.”
Leadership
According to organized crime expert Ronna Rísquez, the first time people began to hear about the Tren de Aragua as an already established criminal gang was in 2013, months after the escape from the Tocorón prison of “Niño Guerrero.” , who was recaptured almost a year later.
“Before that there were several organizations, some associated with the Tocorón prison and others that operated outside the prison in the state of Aragua and who were linked to the railway that was under construction in that area,” the researcher told the BBC. World.
“That’s where the name Tren de Aragua comes from.”
Ríquez assures that Guerrero Flores is the official leader, but adds that the group could have at least two more leaders, and that it is suspected that one could be in a Venezuelan mining state and the other abroad.
Criminology professor Luis Izquiel explains that the “Niño Guerrero” was capable of controlling the Aragua Train from prison because for several years some prisoners had “taken over” control of some prisons in Venezuela through the leadership of prison gangs.
“Everything that happens inside these penitentiaries is managed by these criminals, who have more power than the directors of the prisons or the military who guard them,” he says.
Criminal leaders in Venezuela are known as the “pranes” and Héctor Guerrero Flores is perhaps the most important in the entire country.
According to Izquiel, this occurs with the complicity of many State officials, whether by “action or omission.”
International expantion
Ronna Rísquez affirms that she has identified the presence of the Aragua Train in eleven states of Venezuela, but its activity is currently not limited to the borders of the Caribbean country.
He points out that although the first public evidence of the group’s foreign expansion was recorded in Peru in 2018, its international operations may have begun earlier.
On August 3, 2022, the Robbery Investigation Division of the Peruvian police arrested five members of a gang they identified as “Los Malditos del Tren de Aragua.” They seized three firearms, a truck, a pineapple-type grenade and a balaclava.
One of the detainees, the Venezuelan Edison Agustín Barrera, alias “Catire”, admitted to having committed six homicides in Peru under the modality of hitmen.
Since then the band has expanded in that country. On July 19 of that year, local police arrested four Venezuelan suspects on the tenth floor of a building in Lima, the country’s capital.
In neighboring Brazil, authorities have identified links between the Tren de Aragua and the First Capital Command (PCC), the most important criminal organization in the country – and which was also born in a penitentiary – in the state of Roraima, which shares a border with Venezuela.
The group’s activities have also been recorded in Colombia.
“In Colombia, it began operating in the border area with Venezuela, between Táchira and Norte de Santander, where they now control the border crossing on the Colombian side. It then expanded to other Colombian regions including Bogotá, more recently,” says Rísquez.
At the beginning of July 2022, a video in which two subjects can be seen beating, torturing and suffocating a migrant to the point of taking his life served as evidence for the Bogotá police to capture alias Alfredito and the Capi, two alleged members of the Aragua Train.
According to Colombian authorities, the criminal group has been fighting since 2021 with other Colombian gangs for control of the drug business in the Colombian capital.
“His hallmark is to cause fear”
Three weeks before the police operation in Bogotá, much further south of the continent, the head of the Anti-Narcotics and Organized Crime North Prefecture of the Chilean police, Rodrigo Fuentes, offered details of how the mega-gang operates in Chile.
“They obey a leader, they have people linked to the management of weapons, others who are concerned with collecting money, known as vaccines, extortion, and hitmen,” the official explained to Chilean media.
“They kill according to an order, here the figure of the normal hitman that we know does not occur, where there is a reward or a promise of remuneration. Here there is an order from a leader who orders the killing of a person who does not pay for the vaccine, when it is extorted,” he added.
According to Fuentes, much of the money obtained illicitly is sent to Venezuela.
“The organization itself has leadership that is in Venezuela and these leadership become operational arms in different countries.”
Mario Carrera, who is regional prosecutor for Arica and Parinacota, a region near Chile’s borders with Peru and Bolivia, called it “a fairly brutal organization in the way it acts.”
“Normally a criminal organization seeks to act with stealth so as not to arouse further suspicion. Not these people, their hallmark is to cause fear and to do so they use the techniques that we have seen, homicides and torture,” he said last week during an intervention at the Radio Cooperativa de Chile.
The Aragua Train has also been accused in Chile and other countries of trafficking in women for sexual exploitation and migrant smuggling.
Thousands of members
Ronna Rísquez explains that although its presence has been verified in countries such as Colombia and Peru, it is presumed that the Aragua Train operates in many other countries.
“By operating on the border between Chile and Bolivia, they are presumed to be in Bolivia. By operating on the border of Chile and Argentina, they are also presumed to be operating in Argentina. They are also believed to be in Costa Rica and Panama,” the statement continues. expert in organized crime.
For his part, Luis Izquiel assures that the gang has a presence in Ecuador, sometimes controlling the border crossing with Colombia.
According to the specialized site Insight Crime, the Aragua Train has become a “transnational criminal threat.”
“It has followed the trajectory of the exodus of Venezuelan migrants and has found a way to establish permanent operations in several countries,” he points out.
Calculating the number of members of the Aragua Train is complicated, but Izquiel estimates that it could be between 2,500 and 3,000 individuals, while Ronna Risquez’s estimate goes up to 5,000.
Rísquez considers it important to highlight that this is a group that is not dedicated to a single criminal activity, which gives it an “advantage” over other gangs.
“The Aragua Train has a great capacity to adapt. It is not a group that is exclusively dedicated to drug trafficking or smuggling or kidnapping. It looks for niches and gaps to get into and precisely one of the niches that it has taken advantage of is Venezuelan migration,” points out.
“Venezuelan migrants may have become the main victims of the Train. They are extorted, used for migrant or human trafficking, for trafficking and sexual exploitation.”
“They do not have the weapons of the Mexican cartels nor the knowledge of managing illegal businesses that the FARC dissidents have or their experience, but they know how to move and adapt.”
*This is an update of the article by Norberto Paredes published in BBC News Mundo on August 1, 2022.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/crg4yl8g3n0o, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-09-21 14:20:06
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