Chile refutes Venezuelan foreign minister’s statements on Aragua Train

Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said it is an insult that the Nicolás Maduro administration denies the existence of the criminal gang Tren de Aragua and says it is an invention of the international media.

«It is an insult, not to the Government of Chile but to the people of Chile and the peoples of Latin America. Unacceptable.“Tohá said in a statement to the press.

The minister regretted that while the Venezuelan regime boasts of “be a Bolivarian country«, «Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and other Latin American countries suffer greatly from the scourge of this criminal gang.«.

«People have lost their relatives, they have lost the tranquility of their neighborhoods, they have lost their businesses because of this.“, he added.

Let us remember that the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Yvan Gil, assured on Monday in a meeting in Cúcuta (Colombia) with his Colombian counterpart, Luis Gilberto Murillo, that “The Aragua Train is a fiction created by the international media to try to create a non-existent label, as they did at the time with the Cartel de los Soles.

«We have seen, for example, how ridiculous videos appear even of people saying ‘we are from the Aragua Train’, with a Peruvian accent, with a Chilean accent.he added.

The Aragua Train runs across the entire continent

The Tren de Aragua is a transnational criminal organization originating in Venezuela, considered the most powerful gang in the country and dedicated to carrying out murders, extortions, kidnappings, human trafficking, and other crimes.

Since 2018, the group has expanded rapidly across the Americas along the routes used by Venezuelan migrants and is known to operate in cities in Colombia, Peru, Chile and other countries.

For several years now, Chile has been experiencing an increase in crime, which has led to the homicide rate rising from 4.5 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 6.7 in 2022, and which is largely attributed to the arrival of gangs such as the Tren de Aragua.