BY ISABEL DEBRE and NAYARA BATSCHKE
ARICA, Chile (AP) — The Venezuelan gang members wrote out even their most minute purchases in blue pen: $15 for a drug trafficker’s Uber; $9 for instant coffee during a lookout shift; $34 for supplies to clean what investigators learned were torture chambers.
The meticulous spreadsheets seized during police raids in Chile’s northern town of Arica, and shared with The Associated Press, suggest the accounting structure of a multinational.
They amount to the most comprehensive documentation to date of the inner workings of Tren de Aragua, Latin America’s notorious criminal organization designated by President Donald Trump as a foreign terrorist group.
An investigation built over years by Chilean prosecutors in Arica, which resulted in hefty sentences for 34 people in March — and inspired other cases which, earlier this month, sent a dozen Tren de Aragua leaders to prison for a total of 300 years — contrasts with Trump’s mass deportations of suspected gang members.
While Trump’s supporters cheer the expulsions, investigators see missed opportunities to gather evidence aimed at uprooting the criminal network that has gained momentum across the region as migration from Venezuela surges and global cocaine demand spreads.
“With the U.S. snatching guys off the streets, they’re taking out the tip of the iceberg,” said Daniel Brunner, president of Brunner Sierra Group security firm and a former FBI agent. “They’re not looking at how the group operates.”
Transnational mafias have fueled an extraordinary crime wave in once-peaceful nations like Chile and consolidated power in countries like Honduras and Peru, infiltrating state bureaucracies, crippling the capacities of law enforcement and jeopardizing regional stability.
The new developments are testing democracies across Latin America.
“This is not your typical corruption involving cash in envelopes,” said former Peruvian Interior Minister Ruben Vargas of the impunity in his country. “It’s having criminal operators wield power in the political system.”
Chile, long considered one of Latin America’s safest and wealthiest nations, is also among its least corrupt, according to watchdog Transparency International, giving authorities an edge in fending off this kind of organized crime.
But with no experience, the country was caught unprepared as abductions, dismemberments and other grisly crimes reshaped society.
Now, three years later, experts hold out Arica as a case study in wider efforts to combat the gang.
While some see El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’scrackdown on criminal gangs as a model, critics see an authoritarian police state that has run roughshod over due process.
“Criminal prosecution, financial intelligence, witness protection and cooperation with other countries, that’s what it takes to disrupt criminal networks,” said Pablo Zeballos, a Chilean security consultant and former intelligence officer.
Using Tren de Aragua documents first recovered in 2022, Chilean prosecutor Bruno Hernández and his unit brought an unprecedented number of gang members to trial last year, dismantling the gang’s northern Chile offshoot, known as Los Gallegos.
“It marked a milestone,” prosecutor Mario Carrera said last month from Arica’s shantytown of Cerro Chuño, a Los Gallegos stronghold. “Until then, they were acting with impunity.”
Following migrants to ‘virgin territory’
Tren de Aragua slipped into northern Chile in 2021, after the pandemic shut borders and encouraged Venezuelans to turn to smugglers as they fled their nations’ crises and headed to Peru, Colombia and Chile.
Héctor Guerrero Flores — a Tren de Aragua leader nicknamed “Niño Guerrero” — dispatched managers to take over networks of “coyotes” shepherding human cargo across Chile’s desert borders.
“It was virgin territory from their perspective,” said Ronna Rísquez, the author of a book about the group.
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Tren de Aragua put down roots in Cerro Chuño, a former toxic waste dump outside Arica where Venezuelan migrants squeeze into boxlike homes.
Residents said gangsters extracted “protection” fees from shop owners and unleashed violence on those who wouldn’t pay.
“We live in fear of them,” said 38-year-old Saida Huanca, recalling how Los Gallegos extorted her minimarket colleague and sent a knife-wielding man to collect road tolls. “I didn’t leave the house.”
The gang terrorized competitors and turncoats.
Court documents 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, show a rival panicking about Tren de Aragua’s arrival. “Where am I supposed to run, dude?” Chilean kingpin Marco Iguazo can be heard asking.
Bodies were found, shot or dismembered and stuffed into suitcases. Many were buried alive under cement.
“It was total psychosis,” said Carrera, who reported Arica homicides surging 215% from 2019 to 2022.
Cloud emojis and Christmas bonuses
Last month at Arica’s investigative police headquarters, AP observed Hernández attempt to persuade 23-year-old Wilmer López to talk. The alleged Los Gallegos hitman kept silent, eyes fixed on his Nikes.
As a rule, members don’t collaborate with investigations. Without testimony last year, Hernández’s main recourse was bookkeeping records. They revealed a rigid bureaucracy with centralized leadership that granted local cells autonomy.
“We had to prove not only that they committed crimes, but that there was a structure and pattern,” said paralegal Esperanza Amor, on Hernández’s team. “Otherwise they would’ve been tried as common criminals.”
Documents showed migrant smuggling and sex trafficking as the gang’s primary source of income.
While the per-client price for sex varies by city — $60 in Arica, over $100 in the capital of Santiago — each cell replicated the same structure. The gang confiscated half of women’s earnings, then deducted rent and food in a form of debt bondage.
Salary spreadsheets showed regional coordinators earning up to $1,200 monthly. Hitmen could earn $1,000 per job, plus protection for relatives in Venezuela. Most operatives received $200 Christmas bonuses.
Investigators cross-checked messages among gang members with drone surveillance to decrypt their use of emojis.
Some were self-explanatory — a snake signifying a traitor. Others less so: A bone meant debt, a pineapple was a safehouse, a raincloud warned of a raid.
Getting to trial
With the defendants in custody, the bloodshed abated: Arica’s homicide rate plunged from 17 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022 to 9.9 homicides per 100,000 last year.
After the team secured 34 convictions on charges including aggravated homicide, human trafficking and sexual exploitation of minors, authorities paid more attention.
Similar investigations proliferated nationwide. Carrera traveled to Washington to share intelligence with the FBI.
“The unit did something that had never been done in Chile, and achieved results,” said Ignacio Castillo, director of organized crime at Chile’s public prosecutor’s office.
Other countries 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.
Experts say the Justice Department is too distracted by mass expulsions to conduct thorough investigations.
“Those kind of yearslong investigations are not happening,” said Brunner. “I see the current deportation tactics as working in favor of organized crime.”
A country traumatized, and transformed
The next challenge for Hernández’s unit is tracking Los Gallegos as they regroup behind bars. Some Cerro Chuño businesses said they still receive extortion threats — from prison phones.
“Organized crime will always adapt,” Hernández said. “We need to get ahead.”
Despite the national homicide rate declining, enthusiasm for a more ruthless approach is spreading as leftist President Gabriel Boric, a former student protest leader, battles for his legacy ahead of November presidential elections. Polls show security as voters’ top concern.
The current favorite is far-right candidate José Antonio Kast, who draws inspiration from Bukele and Trump. He vows to build a border barrier and deport undocumented migrants “no matter the cost.”
Watching her grandchildren play outside a church in Arica, Maria Peña Gonzalez, 70, said Kast had her vote.
“You can’t walk at night like you could before,” she said. “Chile has changed since different types of people started arriving.”
