In Tocorón, the prison controlled by the Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that has most extended its tentacles internationally to other countries in the region, there are swimming pools, a nightclub and sports facilities that any Caribbean resort would envy.
In this penitentiary center, the one who decides what is done is the Train —involved in human trafficking, migrant smuggling, drug trafficking, extortion, kidnappings and murders in Chile, Peru and Colombia—. As in other Venezuelan prisons, the exterior is guarded by the National Guard, but inside the walls it is the mafia who controls how people live and the resources of the endless illicit businesses that take place inside these prisons are allocated.
In Tocorón, the prison controlled by the Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that has most extended its tentacles internationally to other countries in the region, there are swimming pools, a nightclub and sports facilities that any Caribbean resort would envy.
In this penitentiary center, the one who decides what is done is the Train —involved in human trafficking, migrant smuggling, drug trafficking, extortion, kidnappings and murders in Chile, Peru and Colombia—. As in other Venezuelan prisons, the exterior is guarded by the National Guard, but inside the walls it is the mafia who controls how people live and the resources of the endless illicit businesses that take place inside these prisons are allocated.
For de Runrunes and seven Venezuelan prisons that are controlled by mafia bosses (pranes) were studied and it was found that more than a dozen crimes or activities that generate millions of dollars for these organized crime structures are planned and controlled from their facilities.
According to visits to prisons carried out for this report, interviews with relatives and prisoners, and reports from civil society organizations, it deals with illicit businesses such as drug trafficking, mining, kidnapping, scams, extortion, contract killings, arms trafficking, human trafficking and human trafficking. of migrants, among others.
One of the most bizarre cases is that of Tocuyito, a prison located two hours from Caracas. There are businesses such as pig farming, sporting events, and one day a week they have their own version of the movie The Purge, in which prisoners close to the pran are allowed to go outside the prison to rob.
The brain of this criminal structure is Néstor Richardi Sequera Campos, alias “Richardi” or “Papa”, who was . He should have been free since May 2018, but like other pranes, he decided to stay and live in prison.
The one on the street, where women line up from the night before the day of the visit to get one of the 150 free places to enter. The rest of the visitors, by order of the pran, must pay five dollars.
Richardi has imposed a variety of arbitrary fees on prisoners and their families. Only in the collection of tickets, at least 37,000 dollars could be made, if the nearly 4,000 people who enter weekly to visit inmates are added.
The CONNECTAS team managed to enter Tocuyito easily after paying five dollars. No name was asked, no identity card was requested and the journalist was not checked.
A tour of the prison revealed that the interior is like a small neighborhood, full of informal businesses. “These positions belong to the prisoners, but they have to pay the pran as rent,” says José, a prisoner from Tocuyito interviewed for this work. The best positions are for the pranes and their families.
Large pigs can also be seen inside the courtyards, which move freely in the prison, another of the pran’s businesses.
In the place stands out a larger local, brick, with glass doors and air conditioning. “That’s Richardi’s delicatessen. You can get everything there: ham, chorizo, meat,” says José, adding that visitors are prohibited from bringing these products. You can only buy that there.
Trader-minded prisoners
Part of this food comes from the internal pig and chicken farms, which are controlled by pranes. But, according to police officials interviewed for , criminal groups also steal trucks, obtain the merchandise through agreements with officials, or through extortion against food companies.
In addition, relatives of inmates denounced that the pranes, in complicity with officials, confiscate the food that the visitors bring, and then resell it to the prisoners themselves.
The business is such that between 2016 and 2019, the years of greatest scarcity in Venezuela, many people went to detention centers to buy food that was not available in supermarkets.
Prison leaders have also set up shops outside. “We are no longer concerned with screwing people over. We have another mentality. Now each one (the three pranes) has their external businesses, but more as merchants,” Edicson González, one of the pranes of the Vista Hermosa prison, told Runrunes.
He arrived in prison in 2010 and has already served his sentence, but, like Richardi, he preferred to stay. “Outside they apply it to you (they abuse) the police. They want to be ‘vaccinating’ us (extorting money). We are safer here,” said González and Giovanny Navas, another pran from Vista Hermosa, to justify their decision.
“Cause”, luxuries and sports
The cause is a kind of tax that prisoners must pay weekly to the pran to be able to move around the prison facilities and use the common areas. The prisoner who does not pay the cause is demoted and confined to uninhabitable areas.
In 2013, when Vista Hermosa was under the domain of alias Wilmito, he earned three million dollars a year from the collection of the case and other illegal activities.
Regarding the current functioning of the prison, Edicson González declared for this report: “We don’t like to say that there are rules. We prefer to talk about respect, about codes. Whoever breaks any of these codes we take them to church to meditate. And if he does the same thing again, the prison routine applies.”
The mother of a former prisoner explained that this “prison routine” consists of inflicting physical punishment on prisoners who do not comply with the rules of the pranes or who do not pay the case. “They shoot them in the hands and feet, beat them up and kill them.”
The pranes also charge tickets to allow you to stay in jail for the weekend or to access activities and recreational areas. There are prisons that have or baseball stadiums, like Tocorón and Tocuyito. In some sports events such as boxing nights or baseball games are held.
A pran linked to this type of event is Alvaro Enrique Montilla Briceño, alias “El Loro”, who commands the Trujillo Judicial Detention Center. This Creole “Don King” created his own company to promote professional boxers and has one, Loro Boxing Round, which works in prison.
But sport is not the only activity that occupies Montilla’s attention. To access a report prepared in December 2021, by the Criminal Investigations Division of Kidnapping of the Corps of Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations (CICPC) of Venezuela, which identified El Loro as the leader of a gang responsible for a network of scams through Marketplace.
According to the document, the criminal organization, made up of 43 people, publishes false advertisements for the sale of vehicles on Facebook Marketplace, and summons interested parties to sparsely populated areas. There they steal their money or kidnap them if they don’t have it with them.
About 30 people have died in the last three years when they go to buy cars from Marketplace, according to press reports.
Terror on different levels
In March of this year, the Chilean authorities indicated that the Aragua Train operates with . She has also recently been accused of being in Bogotá and of being responsible for 23 murders in which the bodies were found bagged in various parts of that same city.
But the prisoners themselves and the communities near the prisons are often the first to be affected by the presence of these groups. Merchants, businessmen and even residents are charged “vaccines” (extortion), to let them live in peace.
And the terror they sow can go further. In Tocuyito, the prisoners who are part of the pran environment are allowed to carry large-caliber weapons and to leave the compound once a week. That day they can commit crimes in the street. Everything they get – money from kidnappings and robberies – is for them, they shouldn’t report it to the boss, explained prisoner José, before saying goodbye. A Venezuelan dystopia.
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