ARICA, Chile — The Venezuelan gang members wrote out even their most minute purchases in blue pen: $15 for a drug trafficker’s Uber; $9 for fast espresso throughout a lookout shift; $34 for provides to scrub what investigators discovered have been torture chambers.
The meticulous spreadsheets seized throughout police raids in Chile’s northern city of Arica, and shared with The Related Press, recommend the accounting construction of a multinational.
They quantity to probably the most complete documentation to this point of the inside workings of Tren de Aragua, Latin America’s infamous legal group designated by President Donald Trump as a foreign terrorist group.
An investigation constructed over years by Chilean prosecutors in Arica, which resulted in hefty sentences for 34 individuals in March — and impressed different instances which, earlier this month, despatched a dozen Tren de Aragua leaders to jail for a complete of 300 years — contrasts with Trump’s mass deportations of suspected gang members.
Whereas Trump’s supporters cheer the expulsions, investigators see missed alternatives to assemble proof aimed toward uprooting the legal community that has gained momentum throughout the area as migration from Venezuela surges and international cocaine demand spreads.
“With the U.S. snatching guys off the streets, they’re taking out the tip of the iceberg,” mentioned Daniel Brunner, president of Brunner Sierra Group safety agency and a former FBI agent. “They are not taking a look at how the group operates.”
Transnational mafias have fueled a unprecedented crime wave in once-peaceful nations like Chile and consolidated energy in nations like Honduras and Peru, infiltrating state bureaucracies, crippling the capacities of regulation enforcement and jeopardizing regional stability.
The brand new developments are testing democracies throughout Latin America.
“This isn’t your typical corruption involving money in envelopes,” mentioned former Peruvian Inside Minister Ruben Vargas of the impunity in his nation. “It’s having legal operators wield energy within the political system.”
Chile, lengthy thought-about considered one of Latin America’s most secure and wealthiest nations, can be amongst its least corrupt, in response to watchdog Transparency Worldwide, giving authorities an edge in warding off this type of organized crime.
However with no expertise, the nation was caught unprepared as abductions, dismemberments and different grisly crimes reshaped society.
Now, three years later, consultants maintain out Arica as a case examine in wider efforts to fight the gang.
Whereas some see El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’scrackdown on criminal gangs as a mannequin, critics see an authoritarian police state that has run roughshod over due process.
“Felony prosecution, monetary intelligence, witness safety and cooperation with different nations, that’s what it takes to disrupt legal networks,” mentioned Pablo Zeballos, a Chilean safety advisor and former intelligence officer.
Utilizing Tren de Aragua paperwork first recovered in 2022, Chilean prosecutor Bruno Hernández and his unit introduced an unprecedented variety of gang members to trial final 12 months, dismantling the gang’s northern Chile offshoot, referred to as Los Gallegos.
“It marked a milestone,” prosecutor Mario Carrera mentioned final month from Arica’s shantytown of Cerro Chuño, a Los Gallegos stronghold. “Till then, they have been performing with impunity.”
Tren de Aragua slipped into northern Chile in 2021, after the pandemic shut borders and inspired Venezuelans to show to smugglers as they fled their nations’ crises and headed to Peru, Colombia and Chile.
Héctor Guerrero Flores — a Tren de Aragua chief nicknamed “Niño Guerrero” — dispatched managers to take over networks of “coyotes” shepherding human cargo throughout Chile’s desert borders.
“It was virgin territory from their perspective,” mentioned Ronna Rísquez, the creator of a e-book concerning the group.
Tren de Aragua put down roots in Cerro Chuño, a former poisonous waste dump exterior Arica the place Venezuelan migrants squeeze into boxlike houses.
Residents mentioned gangsters extracted “safety” charges from store house owners and unleashed violence on those that would not pay.
“We stay in concern of them,” mentioned 38-year-old Saida Huanca, recalling how Los Gallegos extorted her minimarket colleague and despatched a knife-wielding man to gather street tolls. “I didn’t depart the home.”
The gang terrorized rivals and turncoats.
Court docket paperwork describe members tying up defectors and filming as they administered shocks and slashed fingers in clandestine torture chambers.
Intercepted calls from March 2022, obtained by AP, present a rival panicking about Tren de Aragua’s arrival. “The place am I purported to run, dude?” Chilean kingpin Marco Iguazo will be heard asking.
Our bodies have been discovered, shot or dismembered and stuffed into suitcases. Many have been buried alive beneath cement.
“It was whole psychosis,” mentioned Carrera, who reported Arica homicides surging 215% from 2019 to 2022.
Final month at Arica’s investigative police headquarters, AP noticed Hernández try to influence 23-year-old Wilmer López to speak. The alleged Los Gallegos hitman saved silent, eyes mounted on his Nikes.
As a rule, members do not collaborate with investigations. With out testimony final 12 months, Hernández’s important recourse was bookkeeping information. They revealed a inflexible paperwork with centralized management that granted native cells autonomy.
“We needed to show not solely that they dedicated crimes, however that there was a construction and sample,” mentioned paralegal Esperanza Amor, on Hernández’s group. “In any other case they might’ve been tried as frequent criminals.”
Paperwork confirmed migrant smuggling and intercourse trafficking because the gang’s main supply of earnings.
Whereas the per-client worth for intercourse varies by metropolis — $60 in Arica, over $100 within the capital of Santiago — every cell replicated the identical construction. The gang confiscated half of girls’s earnings, then deducted hire and meals in a type of debt bondage.
Wage spreadsheets confirmed regional coordinators incomes as much as $1,200 month-to-month. Hitmen might earn $1,000 per job, plus safety for kinfolk in Venezuela. Most operatives acquired $200 Christmas bonuses.
Investigators cross-checked messages amongst gang members with drone surveillance to decrypt their use of emojis.
Some have been self-explanatory — a snake signifying a traitor. Others much less so: A bone meant debt, a pineapple was a safehouse, a raincloud warned of a raid.
With the defendants in custody, the bloodshed abated: Arica’s murder charge plunged from 17 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022 to 9.9 homicides per 100,000 final 12 months.
After the group secured 34 convictions on costs together with aggravated murder, human trafficking and sexual exploitation of minors, authorities paid extra consideration.
Comparable investigations proliferated nationwide. Carrera traveled to Washington to share intelligence with the FBI.
“The unit did one thing that had by no means been completed in Chile, and achieved outcomes,” mentioned Ignacio Castillo, director of organized crime at Chile’s public prosecutor’s workplace.
Different nations have largely struggled to prosecute Tren de Aragua.
The Trump administration has used the gang to justify deporting migrants, with some arrested for little more than tattoos.
Specialists say the Justice Division is simply too distracted by mass expulsions to conduct thorough investigations.
“These type of yearslong investigations are usually not taking place,” mentioned Brunner. “I see the present deportation techniques as working in favor of organized crime.”
The following problem for Hernández’s unit is monitoring Los Gallegos as they regroup behind bars. Some Cerro Chuño companies mentioned they nonetheless obtain extortion threats — from jail telephones.
“Organized crime will at all times adapt,” Hernández mentioned. “We have to get forward.”
Regardless of the nationwide murder charge declining, enthusiasm for a extra ruthless strategy is spreading as leftist President Gabriel Boric, a former pupil protest chief, battles for his legacy forward of November presidential elections. Polls present safety as voters’ high concern.
The present favourite is far-right candidate José Antonio Kast, who attracts inspiration from Bukele and Trump. He vows to construct a border barrier and deport undocumented migrants “regardless of the price.”
Watching her grandchildren play exterior a church in Arica, Maria Peña Gonzalez, 70, mentioned Kast had her vote.
“You possibly can’t stroll at evening like you would earlier than,” she mentioned. “Chile has modified since several types of individuals began arriving.”