The Minister of the Interior of Chile, Carolina Toha, described this week as an “insult” unacceptable to Latin America that the Foreign Minister of Venezuela, Yvan Gil, has said that the criminal mega-gang Tren de Aragua, of Venezuelan origin, is a media “fiction” international.
“Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Latin American peoples have suffered 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. It is an insult not to the government of Chile, to the people of Chile and not only of Chile, to the people of Latin America,” she said when consulted at a press conference.
Hours earlier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, Yvan Gil, stated that the criminal organization is a “fiction” created by the international media to try to “create a label.”
“Now they invent a so-called Aragua Train, an organization that existed in Venezuela, localized and that they then tried to brand. We have seen how ridiculously videos appear and even people who say we are from the Tren de Aragua, with a Peruvian accent, a Chilean accent. It's about creating a brand,” he said on Monday at a press conference with his Colombian counterpart, Luis Gilberto Murillo.
Murillo said this Tuesday that each government has its interpretations and specified that in their territory they maintain a frontal fight against what the security forces call the Aragua Train.
The general director of the Chilean investigative police, Eduardo Cerna, assured in this regard that there is “notorious” evidence and that “meticulous and long-standing” investigative processes have been developed, with scientific evidence and georeferencing.
“I am not going to refer to comments from a political authority from another country, but I believe that one must understand the matters before issuing individual comments. There have been families who have suffered and are suffering the scourge of this dangerous organized gang, I believe that the chancellor's comments are out of context,” he reacted.
Chilean authorities link the gang to the kidnapping and subsequent murder of a former Venezuelan soldierin Santiago de Chile, in February.
According to the organization Insight Crime, a think tank dedicated to deepening the debate on organized crime and citizen security in Latin America, its expansion to countries such as Peru, Chile and Colombia occurred “at the expense of the mass exodus” of Venezuelans.
The organized crime gang has dedicated itself to criminal activities such as extortion, kidnapping, homicide, hitmen, drug sales, arms and human trafficking. It operated from the Tocorón prison, in the state of Aragua, in central Venezuela, and at the end of last year, the government of President Nicolás Maduro launched an operation to dismantle it and give it an “end”.
According to Insight Crime, despite the blow of the loss of its base of operations, the gang's leadership escaped and “its transnational cells continue to operate.”
Recently, the Attorney General of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, assured that “a myth has been built” about the Aragua Train to attack, persecute and offend Venezuelan democracy.
Saab said that the organization has been given power that “it has never had” and regretted that a matrix is being built that seeks to link factors of the Venezuelan State.
“It almost has to be said that, from Venezuela, this train that derailed and was completely destroyed by criminals, by satraps that are its members, is now on planet Earth. If, unfortunately, a Venezuelan hits any guy in the world, the news agencies immediately say “members of the Aragua Train beat up a guy,” he stressed.
Last month, a group of US lawmakers asked President Joe Biden to designate the Tren de Aragua as a transnational criminal organization, following the publication of reports suggesting the presence of members of the gang on US soil.
However, Insight Crime clarifies that, according to police sources, the isolated crimes attributed to alleged members of the organization do not appear to be related to the group as a whole or its leadership in Venezuela. Nor has a significant presence been reported.
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