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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://resumen-english.org/2025/03/el-tren-de-aragua-the-defunct-venezuelan-band-turned-international-narrative-weapon/">resumen-english.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">El Tren de Aragua: the Defunct Venezuelan Band turned International Narrative Weapon</h1>
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<p>March 25, 2025</p>
<p><img src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-26-tren-800x445-1.jpg?resize=300%2C167&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="167"><br></p><p>Until
the designation as a “transnational criminal organization” by the US in
2024, the course of the now-disbanded group was narrated by a network
of US think tanks, media and funds that constructed a discourse against
the Bolivarian Revolution. This construction currently serves to justify
sanctions, carry out mass deportations and feed the false idea of a
failed state in Venezuela.<span id="gmail-more-29878"></span></p>
<p>In July 2024, when the US Treasury Department included Tren de Aragua
on its list of transnational criminal organizations, it equated it with
cartels such as Sinaloa or Jalisco Nueva Generación, which have a
presence in more than 100 countries and have more than 45,000 members,
associates and facilitators.</p>
<p>Among the arguments of the US office, this Venezuelan prison gang —
already dismantled — was described as the head of an international
network. However, these arguments were less related to the group’s
criminal reality than to a sophisticated narrative construction machine,
financed from Washington and amplified by international media.</p>
<p>El Tren de Aragua, which emerged in the 2010s as a criminal structure
within Tocorón prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, expanded its
radius of action. Described as a multi-criminal gang, this group was
involved in various crimes: extortion, internal control of the prison
and some drug trafficking.</p>
<p>In view of the existence and expansion of this criminal group, in
2019 the Venezuelan authorities launched investigations into the Aragua
Train, which initially operated in Aragua state and then expanded to
other regions of the country.</p>
<p>Since then, the Venezuelan state has carried out a two-phase attack
against this gang: the first phase involved locating its leaders and
dismantling the organization, resulting in the arrest of 28 members and
the issuance of arrest warrants for another 46 individuals; and the
second phase, triggered after the capture of the Tocorón prison in the
Cacique Guaicaipuro Liberation Operation, focused on dismantling the
gang’s financial network and was repeated in other prisons such as
Yaracuy and Trujillo, as well as Tocuyito.</p>
<p>In the latter operation, raids were carried out, vehicles and
property were seized, and 16 people involved were arrested, with 14 in
judicial proceedings. In total, there are 44 detainees and 102 with
arrest warrants for their involvement with the Aragua Train.</p>
<p>However, by then the international narrative had already turned the
Aragua Train into an alleged transnational group, with operational cells
in different countries around the world in charge of an alleged
trafficking network that stretched from Chile to the United States,
transforming it into a “threat” to the great American power.</p>
<p>These claims, however, lack any real basis: they are mere
speculations turned into “facts” through a web of financing and
narrative and media development linked to the State Department.</p>
<p>Documents and traces of financing show how think tanks, NGOs and
media aligned with US foreign policy wove the legend of an organization
capable of controlling migratory routes from Chile to the US.</p>
<p>The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization funded by
the US Congress, allocated some 2.3 million dollars between 2020 and
2024 to projects on “organized crime in Venezuela,” according to its
public reports. Among the beneficiaries was the Victims Monitor, a media
coalition that includes El Pitazo, RunRun.es, and Tal Cual. This
coalition drove much of the initial coverage of the Aragua Train.</p>
<p>In this ecosystem, certain journalists became go-to sources. Ronna
Rísquez, author of the book Tren de Aragua (2023), trained at Columbia
University and a declared opponent, was awarded a grant by the Gabo
Foundation — associated with USAID — and her investigations were cited
by the US Treasury to justify sanctions.</p>
<p>Today, although she herself recognizes that there is no evidence that
the group operates in the US, her work continues to be referenced in
the international media. Similar cases are those of César Batiz and
Joseph Poliszuk, Venezuelan journalists in Miami whose reports — funded
by the NED — are amplified by CNN Español and El Nuevo Herald.</p>
<p>For its part, USAID financed InSight Crime, a specialized media
outlet that published at least 17 articles in 2023 linking the group to
the government of Nicolás Maduro, without presenting conclusive
evidence. This version was denied even by US intelligence agencies such
as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security
Agency (NSA), which agreed that the Aragua Train operates independently,
with no links to the Venezuelan government. Only the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) partially disagreed, based on information considered
unreliable by other agencies.</p>
<p>Open Society Foundations, meanwhile, supported workshops for
journalists in Colombia and Peru where the idea of a “regional
expansion” of the Aragua Train was promoted.</p>
<p>The modus operandi of this machinery follows a recognizable pattern:
think tanks produce reports with alarmist language (“The Aragua Train is
the new MS-13”); local media financed by the same NGOs disseminate them
and win awards from related foundations; major international media
outlets republish the content without independent verification; and
finally, US officials use it to justify policy measures.</p>
<p>A specific example occurred in October 2023, when InSight Crime
claimed that the Aragua Train “controlled the smuggling of migrants
across the southern US border.” Days later, Republican senators used the
report to call for additional sanctions against Venezuela. The
connection between media production and political action is direct: one
only has to recognize the mechanism to see its causal relationship.</p>
<p>This operation was denounced by the Venezuelan president, who even
pointed out that the very creation and deployment of criminal gangs such
as the now defunct Tren de Aragua are promoted and organized by the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) from Colombia, to carry out terrorist activities in
Venezuela.</p>
<p>Today, the narrative of the “Aragua Train” feeds the kidnapping and
deportation — to maximum security prisons suspected of being torture
centers — of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants in the US.</p>
<p>While in 2024 the US deported 1,200 people on the grounds of “links
to organized crime,” so far this year there have been mass deportations
to Guantanamo and the Salvadoran CECOT, without due process and, in most
cases, against Venezuelans with no criminal record.</p>
<p>In turn, in countries such as Chile, Peru and Ecuador, governments
passed more restrictive immigration laws citing the “threat of the
Aragua Train”. The national media insists on blaming this group – now
defunct – for the growing crime rate, triggered by the levels of
inequality typical of neoliberal regimes. Thus, in addition to
criminalization, there is a stigmatization of the Venezuelan population,
which is exposed to discriminatory acts.</p>
<p>The unanswered question is why an already defunct gang is being
treated as an internationally deployed structure, as if it were one of
the few global criminal organizations. The answer seems to lie less in
regional security and more in the need to justify sanctions and
interventions and to perpetuate the false image of Venezuela as a failed
state.</p>
<p>The real winners are the think tanks that secure funding, the media
that harvest clicks and the politicians — Republicans and Democrats —
who feed their anti-migrant rhetoric. The losers: Venezuelan migrants,
doubly victimized: first by sanctions against their country, then by a
narrative that criminalizes them.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://cubaenresumen.org/2025/03/25/el-tren-de-aragua-la-banda-venezolana-extinta-convertida-en-arma-narrativa-internacional/">Cuba en Resumen</a></p>
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