In 1992 Venezuela was the richest country in the Western Hemisphere., due to its massive oil reserves, drilled by American oil companies.
Below, an extract from the BBC obituary of Chavez, 5 March 2013
Father’ Fidel
Cuba says Hugo Chavez was like a “true son” to Fidel Castro
With his fiery revolutionary rhetoric, Mr Chavez was in many ways the ideological heir of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, taking on the mantle of left-wing opposition to US influence in Latin America.
The veteran Cuban revolutionary, 28 years his senior, became a close ally and mentor – perhaps even a father figure.
Cheap oil from Venezuela rescued Cuba’s struggling socialist economy.
In return, Cuba sent thousands of health workers to Venezuela to support President Chavez’s social project for the poor.
Havana also sent security advisers and intelligence agents as maintaining the Venezuelan alliance became critical to the survival of the Cuban revolution.
Whether the cheap Venezuelan oil continues to flow now Mr Chavez has died will be a vital consideration for Cuba, as well as for other poor Caribbean nations that benefitted from his generosity.
Mr Chavez also helped set up new regional bodies to provide an alternative structure to the Organisation of American States, which excluded Cuba and – in his view – was dominated by Washington.
The Union of South American Nations (Unasur), the Boliviarian Alliance for the Americas (Alba) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) were all founded as part of the drive for regional integration.
A year before Chavez died, Bernie Sanders was reputed to say “Venezuelans are living the American Dream better than Americans.”
Yet 5 years earlier, Chavez had ordered American oil companies out of his country. He will have known that would trigger anger in America.
Looking back to the Chavez rule:
July 2001, Chavez wins elections
The government of former paratrooper Hugo Chávez Frías, comfortably endorsed by 59 percent of the vote in general elections held on July 30, failed to mount an effective response to Venezuela’s deep-seated human rights problems, in particular the ingrained abusiveness of its police forces and appalling prison conditions. The government introduced ambitious plans for prison reform, but attention to overcrowding in Venezuela’s prisons did not result in a significant decline in inmate violence. Police killings of criminal suspects increased from 1999, and some measures authorities proposed to combat violent crime raised serious human rights concerns.
Introduced in December 1999, the constitution included forty-two articles protecting human rights, including some of the most advanced in the hemisphere. However, it also greatly expanded the power of the presidency and enhances the political role of the armed forces.
Prison conditions were a problem when Chavez came to power and maybe new, more human rights oriented prisons should have been built early on. The laws which placed people in such incarceration probably should have been investigated, and an understanding of brutality and degradation affecting human behaviour detrimentally maybe should have been addressed.
All countries, including the UK, who do not address inapproprate prison conditions for inmates will be aware of the psychological damage done to all who have to live there, including prison guards.
After 12 years since Chavez died of cancer, another cancer has grown in the prisons of Aragua state of Venezuela. The gang culture of now transnational Tren de Aragua.
Tren de Aragua, Venezuela’s most powerful and far-reaching criminal organization. The organization emerged in the early 2010s as a prison gang in the Tocorón penitentiary in the Venezuelan state of Aragua but grew into a transnational organization with operations across South America. Its expansion followed the routes of Venezuelan migration, allowing the group to establish criminal cells in countries such as Colombia, Peru, and Chile. From within Tocorón, the gang maintained control over these external cells and profited from a wide range of illicit activities. In September 2023 the Venezuelan police and military raided the Tocorón prison to reassert state control, but the organization’s leadership escaped, and its transnational operations remain active. In response to growing concern about Tren de Aragua’s activities in the United States, the U.S Treasury Department officially designated the group a transnational criminal organization in July 2024. The U.S State Department also offered $12 million in reward money for information leading to the arrests of three of its senior leaders.
History
Tren de Aragua originated in the early 2010s inside Tocorón prison, located in Venezuela’s Aragua state. The organization’s name, which roughly translates to “the Aragua train” is thought to come from a labor union connected to an unfinished railway project in the region. Its rise was closely tied to Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as “Niño Guerrero,” a Tocorón inmate who became the gang’s leader. Under his control, the organization consolidated power inside the prison and began expanding its influence outward. Tocorón functioned not only as a prison but also as Tren de Aragua’s base of operations. Venezuelan authorities, following a broader pattern of prison self-governance, allowed inmates known as pranes, or criminal leaders, to effectively run the facility. With access to illicit revenue, the gang transformed Tocorón, adding amenities such as a swimming pool, zoo, nightclub, and restaurants—symbols of the criminal organization’s dominance within the prison system.
After establishing control of Tocorón prison, Tren de Aragua began expanding its influence beyond the prison walls. Its first area of control was nearby neighborhoods, where it enforced social order and reportedly received government support through one of the organization’s charitable fronts known as “Fundación Somos El Barrio JK.” Other gangs in Aragua and nearby states began entering into nonaggression agreements with Tren de Aragua. The organization gradually extended its reach to other parts of Venezuela through alliances with smaller gangs. About 2018 Tren de Aragua expanded and began operating across the Venezuela and Colombia border, particularly between the Venezuelan state of Táchira and Colombia’s Norte de Santander department. There, it competed with Colombian criminal groups such as the National Liberation Army and the Gaitanistas for control of border areas used for smuggling drugs, contraband, and migrants. Between 2018 and 2023 the group developed a transnational criminal network, establishing itself in Colombia, Peru, and Chile, with additional reports of activity in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil. As its presence grew, it moved into local criminal economies, often using targeted violence to displace rival criminal groups. Its activities abroad include extortion, migrant smuggling, kidnapping, retail and small-scale international drug trafficking, human trafficking, loan sharking, and robbery. These cells often specialize in different activities depending on the local conditions.
Tattoos of Tren de Aragua gangs are highly elaborate
CECOT El Salvador
CECOT was built after President Bukele declared “war” on the gangs that had terrorised El Salvador for decades and led to its reputation as the murder capital of the world. In slickly choreographed promotional videos prisoners scuttle into CECOT, shackled and bent over between two rows of guards. Prison administrators have promoted the high-security prison as “key to winning the war against the gangs”.
Sprawled over 23 hectares, CECOT consists of eight concrete buildings, each containing 32 cells. Each cell, designed to hold more than 100 inmates each, has 80 four-storey metal bunks without bedding and two toilets and sinks with no privacy. Mesh ceilings allow guards to patrol the cells from above.
According to ananalysisby The Financial Times using satellite imagery, if the prison were to reach its 40,000 person capacity, detainees would have just 0.6 square metres of cell space each. That’s less space than the one hen per square metre rule Australian poultry farmers must adhere to for “free range” accreditation.
In March 2022, President Bukele used his government forces to crackdown on El Salvadors gangs, mainly the MS-13 and 18th Street.
El Salvador’s parliament has approved a state of emergency after the Central American country recorded dozens of gang-related murders in a single day.
Police said there had been 62 murders on Saturday, making it the most violent 24-hour period since the end of the civil war in 1992.
New laws restrict the right to gather, allow arrests without a warrant and the monitoring of communications.
Last year, the gang-plagued nation recorded 1,140 murders – a 30-year low.
However, that still equates to 18 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. In November, another spate of violence led to more than 40 people being killed within three days.
Hours before MPs voted on the new powers, which will remain in place for 30 days, police said four leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang had been arrested over the spate of killings…..
The Trump administration is focusing on Venezuelan immigrants, looking to deport members of Tren de Arugua.
A USA TODAY investigation found the group is still small in the U.S. − with activities far less pervasive than established transnational criminal groups, such as MS-13.
As the above shows, El Salvador is home to MS-13. Seems strange it is TDA and not MS-13 being pursued by ICE, thus rounding up Venezuelan immigrants rather than Salvadorians?
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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