BOGOTÁ.– The United States amazed the world with its second major military operation in Venezuela. On this occasion, the objective was not the Chavista dictatorship, but the “Warrior Boy”mythical leader of the Aragua Train, transnational mafia emerged in the Tocorón prison, two hours from Caracas.
From its facilities, converted into the general command of the terrorist groupwith a nightclub, restaurants, swimming pool, bank offices and even a zoo, the “soldiers” by Hector Rusthenford Guerrero They were distributed throughout the AmericasThey even crossed the ocean to reach Spainhidden among the diaspora thanks to the connivance of the Chavista revolution.
In Tocorón no one called Flores by his name again. The “Warrior Boy”, with a reward estimated at five million dollarsbecame a mysterious leader capable of weaving a thick spider web where almost everything could fit: micro-drug trafficking, gold smuggling, extortion, human trafficking, prostitution, arms sales, hitmen and kidnappings. At his side, Johan Petrica and Giovanny San Vicente, lieutenants of the great leader, valued by Washington at four million dollars each.
The glorious decade of the Aragua Train, with several thousand members, elevated the Niño Guerrero group to the altars of continental crimein competition with Mexican cartels, Colombian guerrillas and Central American gangs.
While the presence ofThe Aragua Train in the United States has been relevant above all for the White House’s story to persecute emigrantsthe criminal activity of the branches of the transnational gang in Chile and Peru ha elevated like never before before the insecurity indexes of the two Andean countries.
The highlight for the Chilean Prosecutor’s Office is the investigation into the kidnapping, torture, execution and illegal burial of Venezuelan rebel lieutenant Ronald Ojeda in Santiago de Chile, which occurred in Santiago de Chile in 2024. The prosecutor himself pointed directly to Diosdado HairMinister of the Interior of Delcy Rodríguez and head of the repressive apparatus, if hired the Tren de Aragua to carry out the criminal operation more than 7000 kilometers from Caracas.
In Peruthe misdeeds of the Aragua Train and groups close to them, such as Los Gallegos, turned the fight against crime and Citizen insecurity in one of the main issues of the presidential campaigneven the tough hand against crime as the main banner of the populist Keiko Fujimori, who caresses Pizarro’s Chair after three consecutive defeats.
One of the main unknowns of the operation carried out in the wild area of the south of the Orinoco is how it can affect such a large structure.
“The death of Niño Guerrero represents a hard blow for the Aragua Train. This individual was the criminal brain of that organization. He was the one planned criminal actions and the getting money diversifying criminal actions, as well as international expansion of the band” criminologist Luis Izquiel, one of the great experts on the Venezuelan criminal universe, told LA NACION.
“After his death, for these reasons, it will be difficult for it to happen like in other criminal organizations, in which if the leader is killed, he is replaced with some ease by one of the lieutenants. That will be difficult for it to happen in the Tren de Aragua due to the personal characteristics that alias Niño Guerrero had,” he added.
Who was going to tell him who seemed like a small-time thug in his native Maracay (capital of Aragua), a crazy young man who killed a police officer in 2005, when Venezuela was devoured by the greatest urban violence on the planet, capable of murdering every 20 minutes. After a first escape from Tocorón, he returned to his favorite prison, sentenced to 17 years for homicide and trafficking in weapons of war, to become the head of a group that began to sound in the media like the first great Venezuelan banduntil that moment characterized by the existence of small groups that disputed the different territories.
A characteristic ultimately inherited, grouped and transferred to the countries of the region, which opens a window of salvation for the local leaders of the Aragua Train.
“With the cells operating in Latin America and in other parts of the world it may be a little different, because they have obtained a some degree of independence that can do them less vulnerable to the death of Niño Guerrero. But it remains to be seen,” Izquiel predicted.
The second question that the operation in the state of Bolívar opens is whether the Colombian narco-guerrilla can move just as calmly in the Venezuelan sanctuary that Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro provided them. Doubts that multiply with the possible arrival of Abelardo de la Espriella to the Colombian presidency, since he currently leads the polls.
“What happens is part of a much broader geopolitical reconfiguration. The Monroe Doctrine 2.0 announced by Washington has decided to regain strategic control of the hemisphere and eliminate those actors that it considers threats to its security,” said political analyst Walter Molina Galdi.
“The Aragua Train was one of them. That is why the neutralization of its main leader was not simply an operation against a criminal gang; it was a message addressed to multiple recipients inside and outside Venezuela”he added.
He National Liberation Army (ELN), which has even had the support of Caracas in its territorial dispute with the FARC dissidents, and Segunda Marquetalia, accused of being behind the murder of Senator Miguel Uribe, have put their soaked guerrilla beards.
The first even has a presence in the gold mining area, the closest thing to the Far West from the north but without any iota of romanticism. The “elenos” have also participated in the Venezuelan border states with Colombia in the social control strategy of Chavismoeven in their time they distributed the famous CLAP boxes of subsidized meals.
