Chile: it is an “insult” that Venezuela denies the existence of the Aragua Train

The Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, said this Tuesday that it is a “insult” that Venezuela denies the existence of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang and says that it is an invention of the international media.

“It is an insult, not to the Government of Chile but to the people of Chile and the people of Latin America. Unacceptable“, indicated Tohá in statements to the press.

The minister also regretted that Venezuela “claims to be a Bolivarian country” while “Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and other Latin American peoples suffer greatly from the scourge of this criminal gang.”

“People have lost their families, they have lost the tranquility of their neighborhoods, they have lost their businesses because of it.”he added.

The Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Yvan Gil, assured on Monday in a meeting in Cúcuta (Colombia) with his Colombian counterpart, Luis Gilberto Murillo, that “The Aragua Train is a fiction created by the international media to try to create a non-existent label, as they did at the time with the Cartel of the Suns.”

“We have seen, for example, how ridiculously videos appear even of people saying ‘we are from the Aragua Train’, with a Peruvian accent, with a Chilean accent.”he added.

The Aragua Train is a transnational criminal organization originating from Venezuela, considered the most powerful gang in the country and dedicated to carrying out murders, extortion, kidnappings, human trafficking and trafficking, among other crimes.

Since 2018, the group has expanded rapidly across the American continent along the route taken by Venezuelan migrants and is known to operate in cities in Colombia, PeruChile and other countries.

Chile has been experiencing an increase in crime for some years, which has led the homicide rate to grow from 4.5 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 6.7 in 2022, and which is largely attributed to the arrival of gangs such as the Aragua Train.