Aragua Train in Bolivia: the Venezuelan mafia that sows terror on the border with Chile

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “Tren de Aragua” is a criminal gang of Venezuelan origin. This mafia has taken over the north of Chile and is dedicated to the trafficking and smuggling of women for sexual exploitation as its main source of income, even more than drug and arms trafficking. In Bolivia there is a small group that operates mainly on the border with Chile, but there are emissaries that capture the same Venezuelans and Colombians in cities such as Santa Cruz de la Sierra, La Paz, Cochabamba and Oruro. In drug trafficking they are dedicated to the business of synthetic drugs.

Last Thursday, the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) found the “house of death” in the city of Arica. In a home located near the Cerro Chuño sector, the entity found weapons, drugs and even a buried body. The Aragua Train operated there with some Chilean mafia arms. Evidence was also found of the introduction of Venezuelan women to be sexually exploited.

Read also: Check out our coverage on Bolivia

According to the Arica Prosecutor’s Office, this year there are four investigations that indicate that the members of the Aragua Train are involved in the illegal transport of migrants from Bolivia to Santiago de Chile. Most of the victims are women. This data was also corroborated by the PDI. This medium accessed a report that shows that this criminal gang settled in the town of Pisiga, a community in Oruro on the border with Chile.

“The criminal group has already settled in the Pisiga Bolívar sector, the border with Bolivia, where its businesses revolve around drug and arms trafficking and migrant trafficking. Their location is strategic and they are also on the Bolivian side, specifically in the Pisiga sector,” says the Chilean police report.

The humanitarian crisis that Chile is experiencing with the massive arrival of Venezuelan citizens has become a point of interest for this criminal gang, which has detected a business opportunity in this phenomenon. Venezuelan women are their focus. They recruit them in their country and take them to different countries offering them work. They accept due to the economic crisis that Venezuela is experiencing. In the case of Bolivia, the victims are transferred to cities such as La Paz, Oruro, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra. They are then taken to the border and from there they cross into Chile illegally. In that country they exploit them sexually.

THEY INCLUDE BOLIVIA

A witness provided information regarding the presence of members of that criminal organization on the border, in the Colchane area, on the border between Bolivia and Chile. In the case of one of the minors who was a victim of migrant smuggling by this organization, she reported thats she had been kept in the dark in a kind of shelter, where she had to keep quiet because otherwise she could be shot.

This witness -her account is in the police report and was recorded by La Tercera- confirmed that the main activity of the Aragua Train is the trafficking of Venezuelan migrant women and that arriving in northern Chile they deprive them of their freedom to commercialize them sexually. She even recounted that one victim managed to escape at the border.

“She managed to escape, but she arrived at Colchane, at the police station, with a gunshot wound. She came with a group of 21 people who had arrived with what they were wearing, and they say they had been assaulted by a group of Venezuelans who had attacked them for not wanting to pay for the border crossing,” the victim told the Chilean police.

The origin of this criminal gang is in the province of Aragua, in Venezuela. They were formed in the 2000s as a union collective in the construction of a railway in their nation. They started with bribes to get jobs on the project, but quickly escalated their crimes. That union was not normal. It was a criminal union, in which they used murder and beatings to control the labor issue.

The main headquarters of the “Tren de Aragua” is in the Tocorón prison, a penitentiary center in the Aragua region. This prison facility has amenities such as a swimming pool, gym and disco, among others. The main boss of the gang resides there, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, better known as “El Niño Guerrero”, whose criminal history began in 2005, when he attacked a police delegation and murdered the official Oswaldo González. From the prison -where they also charge to reside- they manage their operations center to the rest of Venezuela and Latin America.

The “trochero” is the person in charge of crossing the migrants to different countries. This mafia is made up of several “trocheros” in different countries. In Bolivia they are in Desaguadero and Pisiga. Now the route includes Bolivia. From Colombia or Venezuela, they take the victims to the city of Tacna, in southern Peru and on the border with Arica. From there, they avoid entry through the strict control and prefer to “turn around” arriving at Desaguadero. In this peaceful village they change the “trochero” and take them to Oruro. From there to Pisiga.

The Tarapacá Prosecutor’s Office, thanks to information provided by the Venezuelan migrants themselves, has already identified the name of the property where the headquarters or operations base of the Aragua Train in Pisiga operates.

In April, they requested, through the mechanisms of international judicial cooperation, that the Bolivian Police intervene in the place and send a legalized copy of all the evidence that is found to be used judicially by the Chilean Public Ministry in the cases that it is carrying out against the Aragua Train.

To date there is no response, according to the Tarapacá Prosecutor’s Office. And two months have passed since that request. In La Paz, a police colonel admitted that they have information on the operations of the Aragua Train at the border. “The name (of the mafia) is striking and we learned about their actions at the border. We are working to have more results”, he limited himself to responding.

The prosecutor of the Chilean commune of Puerto Montt, Marcelo Maldonado, reported in a hearing that this Venezuelan gang has its headquarters in Pisiga with the presence of “trocheros” and that they then go directly to the town of Huara, where the mafia set up a house to distribute the victims to different parts of Chile.

Pisiga and Huara are 142 kilometers apart. In these towns, the tragic destiny of the victims ends.