The footage shows a group of young men breaking into a residential building in Aurora, Colorado. They hid their faces under baseball caps and hoods, and some of them carried pistols and assault rifles, as they tried to force their way into an apartment. On TikTok, where the video had millions of views, members of the Venezuelan mega-gang El Tren de Aragua were credited with the attack, claiming that The Edge At Lowry Apartments complex had been taken over by the criminals.
Aurora police, who are investigating the situation, said they found no evidence of criminal activity at the complex, much less that it had been taken over, although several of its alleged members have been arrested in Colorado in recent days. However, Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebertone of the most vocal spokespeople for the arms race and phobia against migrants, accused the media of covering up criminal activity to favor a policy of open borders and sanctuary cities defended by Democrats.
Meanwhile in X, Elon Musk, one of Donald Trump’s main allies, added fuel to the fire by sharing the Recording of the call to the 911 emergency number where a woman denounced the alleged takeover of a building in Chicago by 32 armed Venezuelan migrants. Upon visiting the site, the Chicago police found nothing to report. It was a hoax, but Musk’s post received 12 million views and spread to another far-right account where it went viral with 15 million more views.
In another post on the Shred News accounta young white man claimed that there was nothing improvised about the attack by the 32 Venezuelans, but that it was part of a deliberate invasion strategy. He did not hesitate to blame Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for doing nothing while “our cities and homes” were taken by people “who do not respect what we have built here, for our laws and our values.” The boy called on patriots like him to buy more ammunition to defend the country from those who want to destroy it. This video also received thousands of views.
The Tren de Aragua is indeed a dangerous gang. It originated in the Tocorón prison in Venezuela more than a decade ago and is known for a criminal portfolio that ranges from extortion and drug trafficking to murder and human trafficking. The Venezuelan diaspora dispersed it throughout the Americas. Today it is active in several countries on the continent and in a handful of cities in the United States. Its impact has been so harmful that in countries like Chile it has generated a negative perception of Venezuelan migrants.
All of this is true. What is not true is that the country is plagued by one of the most dangerous gangs in the world. Nor is it true that Biden and Harris have turned a blind eye. On the contrary, their government designated the Tren de Aragua as a transnational criminal organization in July and is offering $12 million for the capture of its leaders.
The narrative being built around this gang is a far-right propaganda operation with the rather obvious aim of spreading fear and hatred at the moment when they can provide the greatest political gain. The networks, starting with X, are the beachhead of this disinformation campaign.
But going beyond the campaign, why this obsession with the Aragua Train? In reality, we are witnessing “the invention of an enemy,” in the sense that the philosopher and humanist Umberto Eco gave to the expression. “The epitome of difference is the foreigner, who speaks the language poorly and, therefore, does not know how to think.” Often this immigrant is a person in miserable conditions who behaves differently and has not yet assimilated the way of life of the place where he has arrived, as is the case with many of the thousands of Venezuelan migrants.
With Trump, Republicans have further tied their political identity to repudiating the other, the foreigner. When Trump says that Mexicans are rapists or that the country is experiencing an invasion of criminals, he is using demagogic discourse without basis in fact to appeal to the most irrational side of the voter. And, according to philosopher Jason Stanley, author of How propaganda worksWhen this happens, political beliefs become fossilized, making people even more susceptible to propaganda.
This can be seen directly in the Trumpist maxim “Make America Great Again!” and its 2024 variation: “Make America Greater Than Ever.” According to Trump’s central campaign promises, making America great means purifying it. This can only be achieved by closing the borders and deporting millions of migrants to cleanse the country of invaders who contaminate “American blood” or, in other words, the value system defended by the young white man in Shred News.
Venezuelans are stigmatized because they are the most recent wave of migrants, arriving in droves fleeing the political, economic and human horror of their country. Before, it was the Chinese, the Japanese, the Italians, the Salvadorans. For thousands of years, the most effective way to create an internal enemy is to transfer the characteristics of a few to an entire group. For example, judging all Venezuelans for the crimes of a handful of criminals. But the participation of Venezuelans in crimes and violent crimes is 0.1%, practically zero, and well below the national average, 0.39% of the general population. Venezuelan criminals form a tiny fraction that does not reach 300 individuals of the at least 545,000 Venezuelans in the United States. according to recent calculations of the Civil Association of Information Technologies of Venezuelans in Exile.
The millions of undocumented immigrants are not the real enemy of America’s greatness. On September 4, as millions of young people returned to school after the summer break and misinformation about the Aragua Train spread like an epidemic on the networks, Colt Gray, a 14-year-old boy, murdered two classmates of the same age and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia, leaving nine other people injured. The weapon he used was a light semi-automatic rifle. That was just one of at least 36 episodes of shootings in educational centers and hundreds of mass shootings that have occurred in the United States in 2024. Research of different types agree that there are more weapons in circulation in the country than people, with a conservative estimate of 378 million of guns for 333 million people. Research also shows that more guns in circulation means more deaths.
Mentions of the Aragua Train are accompanied by a call to MAGA patriots to take up arms to defend the values and principles of the country. And I wonder who is the true internal enemy of the greatness of this country: the migrants who come to continue building the American dream or the unhinged arms race that leaves thousands of victims year after year?
Boris Muñoz is a Venezuelan journalist and editor. He is the curator of IDEAS on the BOOM platform and a columnist for EL PAÍS. He was the founder and opinion director of The New York Times in Spanish.
#Myths #realities #Aragua #Train #United #States
