Chile and Venezuela escalate conflict over alleged “Tren de Aragua” mafia

Santiago. The governments of Chile and Venezuela escalated a diplomatic dispute regarding the existence or not of the “Aragua Train”, an organized crime organization supposedly born in the Tocorón prison, in Caracas, and of which there are hundreds of members imprisoned in Chilean prisons, according to local authorities.

The controversy broke out when, the day before yesterday, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Yvan Gil, allowed himself to say 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 de the Suns (…) that were shown not to exist, to have never existed”.

He made the statement while he was in Cúcuta, Colombia – another of the countries that would have suffered the regional expansion of that mafia organization -, meeting with his counterpart, Luis Gilberto Murillo.

These statements provoked the reaction of the Chilean Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, for whom they are “an insult, not to the Government of Chile but to the people of Chile and the people of Latin America, unacceptable.”

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

The right-wing opposition to President Gabriel Boric, who harasses him daily over immigration, crime and public security issues, immediately began to capitalize on the point, capitalizing on the fact that on Wednesday night, in a Santiago neighborhood, a lieutenant of the Santiago police was murdered. police, Emanuel Sánchez Soto (27), when in civilian clothes and accompanied by his family, he repelled an assault in progress. Four Venezuelan citizens, three of whom reside here illegally, were detained in connection with the incident, one of whom had an expulsion order.

In mid-2023, Chile and Venezuela agreed on rules to facilitate the expulsion and repatriation of illegal migrants, an agreement that has not been made official by Caracas, Chilean officials say.

Boric reacted on Thursday by announcing the “call for consultations” of the Chilean ambassador in Caracas,

“The recent irresponsible statements by the Chancellor of Venezuela, which ignore the existence of the Tren de Aragua, a criminal group known for its illicit activities in Chile and throughout the South American region, are deeply worrying and constitute a serious insult to those who have been victims. of this organization and for their families, and we also take it as an insult to the States that have been victims of the Aragua Train,” he justified.

And he added that “not only does it demonstrate a lack of commitment to the necessary international security cooperation, but it also demonstrates a refusal to effectively address the transnational problems of organized crime. Denial is useless and is not tolerable.”

In statements made in 2023, the Regional Prosecutor of Tarapacá (in the north of the country, bordering Peru and Bolivia), Raúl Arancibia, the Public Ministry identified at least 350 members of the “Aragua Train” operating in Chile, of which of which 123 were imprisoned. According to the prosecutor, this criminal group commits crimes such as migrant, drug and weapons trafficking, as well as kidnappings, sexual exploitation, extortion and homicide.

Beyond the diplomatic dispute, there are many international publications that support the existence of the “Aragua Train.”

In September 2023, the AFP news agency published that “the government of Venezuela confirmed this Friday (22) the escape of the top leader of the criminal gang Tren de Aragua, three days after the authorities took over a prison controlled by this group. that operates in several Latin American countries”.

“Reward. Wanted,” reads a poster posted on social media by the Venezuelan Ministry of the Interior and Justice, including the photograph, name and identity card number of Héctor Guerrero, alias ‘El Niño’ Guerrero, who would be the maximum leader of the organization, AFP said.