a report An article published by the BBC on Wednesday says that the transnational criminal organization Torren de Aragua has “learned from the mistakes” of other gangs such as El Salvador's MS-13 and 18th Street, an unusual move across the hemisphere, including the United States. detailed how they achieved rapid expansion.
BBC Mundo, the British broadcaster's Spanish-speaking arm, spoke to several regional experts to find out how Torren de Aragua is using the Venezuelan migrant crisis to spread across Latin America and reach the United States. At the same time, he explained how it has evolved and expanded in an “unprecedented” way. .
Former FBI special agent Daniel Brunner told BBC Mundo that he believes Torren de Aragua is currently present in “at least” 20 US states, but that the gang has no specific expansionist project. He said he had doubts about the organizational structure. Brunner, who has investigated MS-13 throughout his 20-year tenure with the FBI, maintained that he did not believe there was a “master plan” to send cells to one state or another.
“It spread naturally after the Venezuelan immigration, because in the same way MS-13 moved into New Jersey, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Boston, where there are Salvadoran communities, that's the population it exploits. Because they are extortion people,” Brunner said.
A former FBI agent said that Torren de Aragua is a “much faster learner” than Salvadoran gangs, and that his experience with both MS-13, 18th Street, and the Dominican Trinitario allows them to “learn from their mistakes and improve their They accumulate experience and use it for their own crimes.”
The BBC also said that Pablo Zeballos, a former member of the Chilean Carabineros Gendarmerie who has been investigating Torren de Aragua since 2015, also believes that criminal organizations use the experience of other gangs to strengthen their own illegal activities. He gave a similar assessment of the actions of transnational criminal organizations and said he agreed with the actions of transnational criminal organizations. Criminal organizations are experiencing “unusually rapid” expansion.
“If the P.C.C. [Brazil’s First Capital Command] It took 30 years for Torren de Aragua to become what it is now, but it has been at most 10 years since Torren de Aragua has become what it is now,” Zeballos said. “When you think about it from the time you’re born, you’re like a young man who’s already acting like an adult.”
Mr Zeballos highlighted how the gang has a distinctively diverse criminal portfolio and how it exploits “illicit economic opportunities” in certain sectors.
“If an area decides to exploit motorcycle delivery, it is likely that they will own all the vehicles and charge a fee, but in addition, the delivery people will have to steal mobile phones for the organization in their spare time. “It has to be,” Zeballos explained. “It's hard to imagine an organization like the Medellin Cartel focusing on stealing wallets as a side hustle, but Torren de Aragua was.”
“They can engage in drug trafficking, especially Tusi“Often mixed with ketamine, MDMA and fentanyl, they make money on immigration and own several gold mines in Venezuela, but they also steal handbags and cell phones,” he continued.
Luis Izquiel, a professor of criminology at the Central University of Venezuela, told the BBC that the organization was born “about 12, 14 years ago” in a trade union managing the construction of a railway across Venezuela's Aragua state. did. The place now has an infamous name for extorting contractors and selling them jobs on railroad construction sites.
Izquiel said some of these people went to Tocolon prison, where Torren de Aragua leader Hector “The Child” Guerrero was incarcerated, and from there “they started to gain strength.” did.
Mr. Guerrero has been missing since September 2023, after the inauguration of Venezuela's socialist government.attacked” and emptied Tokoron, the gang's stronghold. It's mainly I believed Guerrero said he negotiated with Maduro's regime before the attack, allowing him and his top officials to safely escape at some point before the prison was emptied.
The BBC said in a report that investigators suggested that Torren de Aragua's regional expansion could only have been possible through the collusion of “acts or omissions” by Venezuelan state officials, while others investigators said in their report. claimed The gang claimed to be a “state-sponsored” organization with ties to the Maduro regime.
The report further details that the first public evidence that Torren de Aragua has spread across Latin America was documented in Peru in 2018, but Venezuelan journalist Lona Riskos “It may have started earlier,” according to the report, adding that the gang “realized what they were capable of.” Business began to benefit from the money earned from immigration. ”
“The Torren de Aragua train regulates illegal immigration and exploits it in the countries it passes through. In this way, it also learns from the realities of other crimes,” Zeballos told the BBC. . “It's the perfect economy. Perverse but perfect.”
Experts interviewed by BBC Mundo acknowledged that the expansion of Aragua trains in the US is “only a matter of time”. Joseph Humia, executive director of the Center for Safe and Free Societies, said Torren de Aragua's presence in the United States began to be detected in several police reports in 2021, with more reports expected in 2022. He explained that there will be more reports in 2023. It exploded in 2024.
“To understand what the real risks are, we still don't know what exactly they're doing in the U.S., what their objectives are, and whether they actually have expansion plans,” Riskes said. he told BBC Mundo.
Christian K. Caruso is a Venezuelan writer who chronicles life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
