In Las Claritas, the heart of Venezuela’s mining region, cracks began to appear in the alliance between organized crime, political power, and security forces. A military operation targeting mines controlled by illegal armed groups, followed by the U.S. announcement of the alleged killing of Tren de Aragua leader “Niño Guerrero,” signals an attempt to reconfigure power in southern Venezuela, a strategic region due to its vast gold reserves and its role in the new negotiations between Caracas and Washington.
Category: Criminal factions
Gold, excavators and rifles: armed groups and militias control the Sararé Indigenous Territory
Operating within the ancestral territory, the Comando Vermelho vies for control alongside schools, health clinics, the local office of Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs (Funai), garimpeiros and militias, while controlling the machinery driving deforestation in Mato Grosso, a Brazilian state that borders Bolivia.