By: Insight Crime
October 8, 2024
Tren de Guayana, one of Venezuela’s oldest illegal mining groups, allegedly has used ties to President Nicolás Maduro’s administration to push out other criminal groups and solidify its power in the state of Bolívar.
Tren de Guayana began its operations in 2007 as an urban gang in the Vista al Sol neighborhood, in the city of San Félix in Bolívar. In recent years, it has achieved absolute control over El Callao, a mining town located in southern Bolívar known for its gold deposits.
The gang may have had some extra help with its takeover in El Callao. The territory was highly contested. For approximately two years, Tren de Guayana battled the mining gang, the Peru Syndicate — also known as the Toto and Zacarias gang — that dominated the area from 2010 to 2022. The R Organization criminal group also fought for control of the mining enclave.
Miners, former mining corporation workers, and residents of mining towns consulted by InSight Crime said that the Tren de Guayana’s alliances with security forces and the Maduro regime cleared the way for the group to dominate El Callao.
From War to ’Peace’
InSight Crime first visited El Callao in February 2020. Since then, we have monitored the area’s ongoing two-front war: the disputes between armed non-state actors and incursions by security forces.
For more than six years, residents and miners in El Callao lived with extreme violence, including massacres, leaflets threatening local authorities, clashes between the Peru Syndicate and security forces, and disputes between criminal organizations, which left heads and corpses on public roads.
The key to the Peru Syndicate’s 12-year reign in El Callao was its ties to the area: its leaders were from there, so they knew the terrain, and they had the protection of the local population.
But in 2017, things began to change. The Maduro administration began to organize security operations against the group, which was not allied with the government.
“They don’t pay taxes to the state, that is to say, they don’t give it a percentage,” a soldier stationed in El Callao told InSight Crime in a 2021 interview. “Dialogues and negotiations have been attempted with them, but their leaders don’t accept.”
The Peru Syndicate refused to give up its criminal enclave and resorted to extreme violence to protect itself. The group broadcast videos denouncing crimes committed by state forces, and certain factions of the gang migrated from Bolívar and expanded their criminal economies in the northeastern state of Sucre.
The fighting between the Peru Syndicate and armed forces was compounded by clashes with other criminal groups. Since 2014, Tren de Guayana has been active in El Callao, threatening the control of the Peru Syndicate. Between 2017 and 2019, the two groups clashed repeatedly, and violence ballooned. The nonprofit Venezuela Violence Observatory (Observatorio de Violencia Venezuela – OVV) called El Callao the most dangerous town in the country, with a homicide rate of 620 per 100,000 residents. During this time, the Peru Syndicate’s firm grip on the area weakened as it lost many members, much capacity, and extensive territory.
The R Organization, another powerful criminal organization that controls the nearby mining town of Tumeremo, had also set its sights on El Callao. In 2021, the R Organization began encroaching on El Callao territory, reviving its long held rivalry with Tren de Guayana. After several confrontations, the Venezuelan Mining Corporation (Corporación Venezolana de Minería – CVM) helped mediate a truce between the two gangs.
Meanwhile, between confrontations with its criminal counterparts and security forces, the Perú Syndicate had suffered important casualties. The capture and assassination of its main leaders, Eleomar Vargas Vargas, alias “Zacarías,” and Alejandro Rafael Ochoa Sequea, alias “Toto,” brought the group to its knees. Zacarías was captured in Cúcuta, Colombia in November 2022. That same year, tensions with Tren de Guayana Train and the R Organization worsened, and the Peru Syndicate was eventually displaced from the area. Just over a year later, in December 2023, a hitman killed Toto in front of his home in Cúcuta.
El Callao’s New Parallel Government
Under the fierce sun in El Callao, Carlos*, one of the miners who works in the El Perú sector, said that for the last two years, life has been more peaceful. Although he agreed to talk to us, he kept his voice down so his colleagues would not hear what he was saying.
“The group who used to have control here was very dangerous,” he said about the Peru Syndicate. “Whoever did not pay was killed. They killed many innocent people. You don’t see the madness you used to see before … You would be sitting here, and the bullets would go by like fireworks.”
An informal mine in El Callao
Artisanal miner shows how to find gold using the process known as “batea.”
An informal mine in El Callao
Everyone who practices informal mining in El Callao has to pay a “tax” to Tren de Guayana. Credit: InSight Crime
Many miners and villagers repeated this idea that life in El Callao is more peaceful now. One resident said that the anarchy and violence decreased after the Peru Syndicate left, leaving Tren de Guayana with absolute control, in part, because they work together with the state mining company.
“They are operating with CVM. In fact, the corporation’s logo is always on their numbers,” said another resident referring to Tren de Guayana members’ Whatsapp photos.
But everyone knows that those who break the rules of Tren de Guayana are punished. Carlos said that, in order to ensure food for his family, he tries to keep a low profile.
He added that Tren de Guayana controls everything, and everyone must pay them a “tax” — an extortion fee — to work. According to Carlos, some of that money then goes to the government.
Although many local sources claim that the Maduro government and security forces allied with Tren de Guayana to displace the Peru Syndicate from El Callao, there is no concrete evidence to confirm it. But there have been accusations that Tren de Guayana coordinated operations with a faction of the army, and employs active and ex-military soldiers as mercenaries.
Tren de Guayana Extends Its Reach
Tren de Guayana’s expansion has not been limited to only El Callao. On a visit to Guasipati, another mining town in southern Bolívar, InSight Crime confirmed that the criminal organization has also taken over this strategic territory. Although the town’s airport is not operational, the area is used as a clandestine airstrip where planes with gold shipments frequently depart.
From inside one house in Guasipati, pick-up trucks can be seen regularly entering and leaving the mines after 8:00 a.m. on a working day.
“Ronny Matón, the leader of Tren de Guayana, must have passed through there more than once. But we wouldn’t recognize his face,” one resident said. “In a way, they are an armed group. But as far as organization, I think they have done better than the government.”
Tren de Guayana’s military power and its alleged alliances with the Maduro government not only helped the group defeat the Peru Syndicate and the R Organization, but in early 2024, according to sources in Guasipati, the gang prevented the infamous Tren de Aragua from encroaching on its mining enclave.
Tren de Aragua “also wanted to get involved here, but they had that conflict with Ronny. So, they couldn’t because Tren de Guayana has the power,” said a former worker from the General Mining Company of Venezuela (Compañía General de Minería de Venezuela – Minerven).
Like in El Callao, since Tren de Guayana took over Guasipati, confrontations with other gangs have ceased and violence levels dropped.
The former Minerven worker recalled how in 2014, every day they woke up to news of murders in the town.
Although there are no official figures for the homicide rate in Guasipati in 2014, Venezuela had the highest homicide rate in South America that year, according to InSight Crime’s 2014 Homicide Round-Up, and the second-highest homicide rate in the world, according to the OVV.