Aragua train, x-ray of a regional threat that runs through South America

The Tren de Aragua criminal gang, born in a Venezuelan prison and spread throughout Chile, Peru and Bolivia, has become a regional security threat, with a varied amalgamation of crimes in which migrants are the most affected.

When Lise Marín, 34, entered Chile from Bolivia a year ago, after a four-month odyssey from Venezuela, several men offered her a few pesos, which she needed, in exchange for her three-month-old son. She refused.

“It was the most dangerous part of the route, it was me and my three children and I had to make an effort and be brave. I had to do it because in Maracaibo my son was going to die, we had no electricity, water or gas and very little food”, he explained to EFE in Colchane, a small Chilean border town, more than 3,700 meters above sea level.

Although it is a recurring pattern in large global exoduses, the consolidation of transregional organized gangs that take advantage of the vulnerability of those who seek a better future is a disturbing novelty in South America, for which governments seem neither coordinated nor prepared.

According to the Venezuelan Association in Chile, some 700,000 Venezuelans have arrived in the country in recent years fleeing the crisis, 35% of them irregularly through dangerous unauthorized crossings.

the beginnings

Migrants are one of the main objectives of the Tren de Aragua, whose most important source of income is extortion, explained Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist specializing in organized crime.

The gang was formed in the Venezuelan prison of Tocorón, with the blackmail of inmates as its first business.

Then he designed a hierarchical structure around the leaders in the prison, which he replicated abroad.

Many of its members are victims of the same organization, people incorporated after being forced to pay a periodic fee to maintain their business or their physical integrity.

“The organization is not dedicated to a specific crime, but it is introduced to criminal business opportunities wherever it goes”, explains Rísquez, who has documented about twenty different crimes.

Expansion to Chile

The Venezuelan migration crisis was the route by which the Aragua Train entered countries such as Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Chile, establishing networks and appropriating borders thanks to corruption.

“The border between Bolivia and Chile has been the way of operating the Tren de Aragua because, controlling the border crossings, they manage the traffic of people and drugs”. They do not arrive “magically”, but through transregional corridors created by the mafias, explains the prosecutor of the Chilean region of Tarapacá (north), Raúl Arancibia

“They are territorial gangs, they are taking positions in certain places with high degrees of vulnerability, areas in which the State does not have as much presence”, he adds.

The transnational network

Francisco Artaza, a journalist for the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, highlights the diversity of nationalities of its members as the main characteristic and assures that it was the same head of the organization, currently imprisoned in Tocorón, who ordered the installation of a hierarchical arm in Chile led by a single person. , Carlos González, alias “Estrella”.

Its structure outside of Venezuela also responds to three levels: a lieutenant in direct contact with Tocorón; heads of shell companies in charge of finances and dozens of soldiers who carry out crimes.

This network is especially difficult to pursue by the police because only the members of the first and second level have legal residence; the rest, more than 95% of the structure, enter irregularly through border crossings controlled by the gang and flee along the same path, Artaza explained to EFE.

He agrees with Rísquez that most of the profits are sent to Venezuela camouflaged in hundreds of small legal remittances that expatriates send to their families, which according to the Tarapacá prosecutor makes it difficult to trace.

vulnerable victims

Women, children and adolescents are the main victims of schemes such as the Aragua Train, which offer “packages” to migrate, explains the president of the Venezuelan Association in Chile, Patricia Rojas.

“We know of cases of people whose documentation has been stolen and have been left at (their) mercy”, denounces Rojas, who warns that the business of illegal migrant smuggling is a consequence of restrictive immigration policies, which lead them to irregularity.

“We had to leave everything behind, hand over money, documents and luggage so that they would leave us alone. One has to be too strong to walk so much, stop a vehicle, put your children up, get on yourself”, laments Lisa Marín.

Source: EFE

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