The CayapoMarch 21, 2025 , 2:10 pm .
We must place Chávez at the level he deserves, because he is the generator of the thought that can constitute us as a people (Photo: El Cayapo)
We slaves today have a new opportunity. It's up to us to violate the still, which, as a matter of custom and tradition, always tries to stop the unstoppable.
Once again, we've won another long and arduous battle in which the enemy risked everything, but they lost, leaving behind on the battlefield a great wealth of spoils that we must learn to exploit, not only in terms of physical resources: cars, land, factories, and other small things, but also in terms of fundamental resources: knowledge of all kinds acquired in the struggle, which we must study thoroughly and prepare for new challenges. Let's not repeat the example of the old elites, dedicated to consuming circumstantial abundance only to be left once again in ruin, weak and awaiting the next blow from their now-restored masters. Of course, back then, we slaves were the ones who bore the brunt.
We must always remember that this war was not ours to wage, but imperialist capitalism, seeking our resources, the appropriation of territory, and the people capitalism needs. With this battle, we have bought time to better equip ourselves and avoid further attacks, no matter what happens, because the enemy is wounded and thirsty for revenge. We must never let our guard down; on the contrary, we must increase our alertness and gain more allies. The key is to think about how to definitively escape the imperialist capitalist embrace.
Now it's time to talk about events that occurred outside of everyday life. After World War II, the order imposed by capitalism in the Treaty of Westphalia was contradicted. Now the war is for absolute control and the new rules that the capitalist sector that dominates the planet will impose. The truth is that after this process, the trend is toward the disappearance of the nation-state and other international structures that served as the basis of the global capitalist regime, and the imposition of corporations like the oil companies, which understand that they can only exist within the framework of chaos, that is, in anarchy, regimented by the power of transnational corporations, where governments, regardless of their ideology, will be merely a figment of their agenda.
To achieve these goals, the struggle today is to the death; the masters are fighting for power. Humans will use every means at their disposal, regardless of the outcome. As an idea, as an imaginary, as a system, they will continue to dominate the planet based on their culture. Unless something different happens, which will be forced by another way of thinking, replacing the current system.
Faced with these facts in full action, the vast majority of enslaved people understand little or nothing, we understand, what power is despite feeling its immense weight on their backs, at most we confuse it with the State, which we always blame for everything that happens without fully understanding that power is not a mysterious, miraculous fact, that power is a real, verifiable fact, that power is a compendium of weapons and words that inhabit a real world, physically constructed over the centuries, which is sustained by myths, imaginaries, methods, constructions, conventions, institutions, laws that always favor whoever exercises it, in whatever name it may be.
Stubborn reality tells us that power cannot be wielded like a jerk, that power doesn't work to settle drunken arguments, that power is a tool to achieve objectives—and until now the elites know this very well—concretized only through bullying, whether well-dressed, with flattery, or with missiles.
The question for us slaves is: Which whip will we follow in the struggle? Or is it possible to think, design, and construct something different? Will we be able to resolve the master-slave contradiction and build a culture that replaces humanist culture and its productive apparatus: capitalism? Because we understand that the masters have no interest in changing what exists, since they are their father, mother, and child at the same time, the three divine persons, and only one true capitalism, whichever master wins, will impose its system on us.
We started as an imitation
If we slaves truly want to live differently, it's best to start now by abandoning our illusions, our pipe dreams, our hopes of becoming masters, and focus on thinking about a different culture that will replace the current one that keeps us enslaved. Enough of joining the victors after every major war between capitalists; we slaves need to create our own vision of life; otherwise, we'd be talking philosophical nonsense that only leads to illusion, and those who live on illusions die of disillusionment.
The first thing we must confront is that we are not a people; we do not exist as such, even though we are designated or named as such in law or the constitution. Let's start there: when the War of Independence took place, there was no people within the established social and economic structure. During what was called the colonial period, in these territories, there were feudal lords or Mantuans, and their slaves with certain licenses, some freedmen who had no rights to anything, even though they could walk around without a whip on their backs; it was the only thing they could do, but as soon as they slipped, that disappeared. That was what happened. But there was no constituted people, but rather a landowner with his servants, who paid for protection to the crown, which extended its criminal arms to these territories through individuals whose only desire was to get rich at any cost. And that idea was transmitted to the Mantuan elites. That's what really existed in this mine, which has never ceased to be one, throughout the world invaded by capitalism.
The truth is that the concept of "people" is an invention of the owners who organized themselves, called themselves "people," and demarcated the territory. They had their coat of arms, their flag, their charter of rights, a justification for robbing their neighbors and taking what they owned, while slaves were not considered people. This is a problem that no one wants to interfere with as a politician, and that is because, for the owners, we slaves were, and are, nothing more than merchandise, because they bought us, and continue to buy us, just like any other.
The liberators, with Bolívar at their head, attempted to create or shape a people, but the slaves' lack of unifying ideas and the foreign-imitating elites' thirst for wealth conspired to assassinate Bolívar and keep us in the hands of foreign masters. Just as is happening today with María Corina, a simple junkyard worker educated to sell off the land, resources and people, to favor the interests of transnational corporations by offering the absolute privatization of all natural resources, especially oil, without regard for the people, because that idea doesn't exist in her, and shame for treason is not an intrinsic component of her core ethic, nor is it for all those who accompany her in these bastard intentions.
They are simple wandering beings who can serve any traveling circus that pays for their tricks, depopulated people, nothingness.
One example is the political action we're involved in. When Chávez came to control the state, but not power, in the hands of the owners as we've already defined it, politics was settled between political parties that, generally regardless of their professed ideology, were all part of the "democratic game." Politics was just another business, with its believers and fanatics led by leaders, managers, or, as the new pitiyanquis like to call it: CEOs.
No one questioned who they served; everyone understood that the policy was to maintain the exploitative conditions that the oil companies had maintained in the country for a century, exploiting it like their mine. Politicians knew that government could not be governed without the consent of the oil companies; for a hundred years, the oil companies had appointed and removed leaders without anyone questioning their decisions.
They met in structures of equal standing, according to their position within them, but the plans of speculative financial capital to eliminate nation-states and create controlled chaos resulted in the emergence of Chavismo in history, which cracked those already exhausted and ossified structures that could never be repaired. This generated a clash for power; the owners appealed to their own CEOs, their "community management," who took on politics as just another business, because their worldview is: I am the owner, I command, and everyone obeys, without half measures or chiaroscuro.
So, the old and new politicians who belonged to the stale party structures have been relegated after some skirmishes. As a result, the Parras, Britos, Gutiérrez, and other lieutenants in those parties realized that they were leaders at their level, but that with the new situation and the new formations for war, they would never rise in the opposition because to reach power they would have to bypass the oligarchy, and this would never allow them for a very simple reason: they no longer need stewards because they will exercise politics directly as just another business. Therefore, as intelligent politicians, the lieutenants realize that, within Chavismo, while they will not overthrow Chavismo, they can be deputies, governors, councilors, mayors, representatives, and will have some influence in negotiations. They will have a political life and will be part of a country. And they are fine knowing that they will be treated as equals and respected. But they also learned that with María Corina at the head and the thugs who accompany her, no one will respect them because the oligarchy considers them second-class villagers, that is, slaves exercising politics in favor of the owners.
When we analyze who the scorpions are, mostly people from the interior of the country, who have risen in politics, like the vast majority of Chavistas, that is the harsh and real truth of a country like this. When we talk, for example, about the historical bloc, we are talking about including these slaves in contradiction, even if they continue to think they are masters or aspire to be masters, strutting around in their suits imitating mantuanos. But it is with them that we will seek, within the framework of contradiction, to consider the construction of a people in this territory, where we live by certain rules. And for that people to exist, we must forge it, sow it, create intrinsic ways, customs, and habits, where we will never again be named or designated but rather name ourselves with pride. We are. May their name never and never forever be in vain, the plaything of bandits, looters, and traitors.
To achieve this, all its proponents will have to discuss and confront each other regarding the existence or non-existence of capitalism and oligarchic privileges. As the novice hunter says, "that is a difficult issue to resolve," but we are sure that we will resolve it, as Carlitos Gonzáles said: "I have seen uglier ones, and they have gotten married."
For now, we have things to think about and resolve. On one side, we have the internal owners who refuse to let go and are willing to betray and destroy this territory by filling it with blood, just as they are already doing, as long as they remain. We also have the foreign owners, who care even less about what happens here, as long as they are provided with their statutory surplus value, their dowry, their fattened tithe. And on the other side, we are slaves yearning to be owners because we slaves have no other option in mind, because we don't know it and aren't even interested, for now, in knowing it. At most, we join the offerers of happiness, of illusion, demagoguery, chimeras, hopes, of fictional worlds where the slave's mouth waters, magical worlds sated with food and pleasures, without the worries of work, simple tales from the Arabian Nights with which the same-old politicians have dazzled us, regardless of their ideology.
The only possibility is for us slaves to understand the need to generate a different idea that makes us feel like substitutes for the owners, but not in property but in life, because we stopped being slaves and we do not need to be owners and that is the contradiction in which we have to enter as slaves, whether we are lawyers, doctors, politicians, engineers, managers, intellectuals, poets, academics, bricklayers, carpenters, farmers, fishermen, philosophers, in order to become a people, because we are not at the level of a people in belonging, we are barely the imitation, the crude imitation, of paraphernalia and pageantry of the invaders, at most skeletal guilds used in our name, to maintain the ambition and misery of those leaders, whatever defenders they may be.
When we hear Chávez say that our future has been stolen, what is he saying? None of us has a future; he's speaking from the oldest to the youngest, and we can extend that, if we set our minds to creating the idea, to five unborn generations, because it's a long time, a long journey to establish ourselves as a people.
When the masters of capitalism appeared in Europe, thousands of years of confrontations, thefts, crimes, and murders ensued before the concept of the predestined, of manifest destiny, could emerge in the minds of those who, upon arriving in North America, said: "This is the territory," because capitalism cannot develop in Europe as we dream of it. In fact, we see that the greatest development of capitalism is in the United States, where they were able to murder, exterminate the inhabitants, or reduce them to reservations. It was a scorched-earth policy, where they destroyed forests and exterminated animal species that contravened their presence, the proper functioning and development of capitalism, and the fulfillment of the higher precepts of humanism. All in the name of the all-powerful individual ego-god.
The United States was conceived as the territory where the capitalist experiment would yield the expected results. It was already known what had to be done, and by not considering the original inhabitants as people, they invaded the territory devoid of people. That is, crime wouldn't bring pangs of conscience. They could build in the United States what they called the empire of liberty, and so they did. Everything else is symbolism, a totem, but the essence of the problem is that they took the concept of liberty, democracy, equality, and fraternity to sublime achievements, where they truly practiced a system, a mode of production, and managed to develop it to its full potential. It is no coincidence that it was in the United States that the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was produced, which, four years later, was adopted by the French Revolution.
People should ask themselves, for example, how Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the first American Constitution, which stated that all men were free, with rights, how is it that this man who had many slaves, even relationships with the black slaves who bore him children and none of them had any rights to his fortune, was a true pater familias , who without a blemish went down in history as the president of the United States and drafter of the Constitution, who did not grant freedom and gave rights to his enslaved children? There is no better representative of humanity, he had all the cards.
Why not in India or China? For the simple reason that they were already cultures, civilizations that could not be exterminated, because the costs of such an undertaking would ultimately bankrupt nascent capitalism. The vast labor force and resources of India, New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Africa, South America, and part of the Caribbean serve to generate vast accumulations of capital, which, in turn, finance the great works of capitalism and its expansion across the planet, establishing itself not only as a plundering apparatus of production but also as the highest humanistic culture.
Rights belong only to the master, in the slave it is an illusion
What really determines law? Is there a divine or earthly law that created them? As far as we know, this didn't exist until very recently in history, when the owners of the thirteen colonies issued them for the first time in 1776: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It was then endorsed with the so-called French Revolution in 1789. These were rights created by humans, white men who were owners and believed themselves predestined as the superior race, imposed by God to dominate and subdue nature in general, that is, everything that wasn't owned, white Anglo-Saxon, who drafted this act or manifesto.
Another interesting fact: these rights were wielded against the power of the crown and the church, that is, the confrontation was between owners, and each owner knew that his reason and rights begin and end with the power of his weapons and that of others.
We slaves never had rights because they belonged to powerful men. Slaves were not considered worthy of rights by these men. That is, apart from white Anglo-Saxon owners, the entire world population was not considered people, which includes women. But slaves, instead of creating their own rights, embraced the idea that they too should be owners, and here we are with the same illusion, fighting for the rights of owners, liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy, progress, without realizing that everything happens through the effort of our backs and brains, that as long as we fight for those carrots, we will remain the same slaves, generation after generation.
Only after World War II were the so-called universal human rights implemented within the United Nations, a tool used to negotiate whether or not to subjugate underworld countries, according to the interests of the world's masters. These unwritten rights are manipulated by slaves, which many domestic slaves and those accommodated in the skirts of their masters are responsible for using to benefit one or another master. An example is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which they try to intimidate by accusing it of violating the human rights of terrorists every time it defends itself against their actions. All the cockatoos of the world cry out in unison: "Venezuela, terrorist!" But in reality, it is the masters who rock the cradle of the world's terrorists with their finances in the name of their reason and rights, which they uphold by force.
In the various processes of slavery throughout history, neither the owners nor the slaves ever spoke of rights for slaves. In other words, the slaves didn't understand any rights; they only knew about work and more or less whippings on their backs. These laws were only enforced by the master; they knew they belonged to the master. Within this framework, the slaves' miserable, dignified, or intermediate behaviors each had a punishment, a reward, and that's it.
The violence that has been exercised against slaves is brutal and bestial. In the United States and around the world, it's clear that in the slave-master relationship, the slave has no reference points, no alter egos, other than the master and his cultural influences. Therefore, no one wants to be a slave, but they do want to be a master because it's their only cultural, philosophical, and conceptual reference. In other words, we slaves don't think about ceasing to be slaves; for now, we only cry out for the masters to love us as themselves. To accept us, as if they no longer accept us as the slaves we are. We still can't imagine what it will be like to be human.
That illusion has been sold out completely, and we've bought it, complete with toys. That's what the middle class is doing, "We're out to take on the world," without understanding that the system is eating us. The middle class is the domestic slave that has been transformed over time with professions, sports, and cultural affectations, but it's the same domestic slave that believes itself to be the master because it lives in the master's house, hiding its daily crimes, sleeping in hidden rooms, eating in the kitchen, and paying good attention to the masters' visits.
The slave-master relationship is a love-hate relationship because we want to be the master who subjugates, and we hate it because the master subjugates us, does not let us be the master, the trap is perfect, absolute, it is a real problem, but also conceptual and referential because we have no other reference and the offerers of possible worlds offer us illusions, utopias, chimeras that never materialize and become salt and water and, of course, we have never thought not because we do not have a brain but because we have not seen any other perspective than that of the master.
The possibility of thinking lies in the future because it has no reference to an owner, and thinking is the only way we can overcome the present, but we were sold the trick that in the future, if we work our backs off, remaining loyal to the corporation every day, we will become happy owners.
So, my friend, building ourselves as a people is a painful, serious, complicated, far from simple, and far from pleasant conversation, because we ourselves are denied the possibility of thinking of ourselves from any other perspective than that of being the owner. To think of another possibility, we need to abandon the illusion of the big car, the big pool, the stunning models, the grand trips, which we've never had, and even if we dream of them, we'll never have them, the same for women, who are no different in slavery than men.
If this conversation doesn't arise, there's no way out of the trap, because in capitalism there's no solution to anything. The trap is perfect: it produces the poor it needs to continue reproducing itself as a system, and there are no people willing to get rid of that because the slaves, whether they be intellectuals, professionals, administrators, artists, politicians, or academics, are all aspiring to control, just like the master.
In previous wars, whether for independence or whatever, domestic slaves, faced with the promise of plunder, went with their masters wherever their masters went, and it's the same thing that happens to this entire middle class with María Corina, with the Capriles: we see stupid slaves living in Miami, serving men or plundering misery.
This is one of the most important discussions we must have when considering the idea of creating a country, but we are obliged to move away from the old frameworks that maintain the platform, the totem poles, the flags, the coats of arms, the anthems, the borders. All of this must be subjected to the fire of conversation, because if we don't discuss it, we cannot solve the problem and we will always be, through ignorance, sleeping with the enemy.
For us, speaking like slaves in contradiction, in the savannah of creating thought, the discussion before us is quite complicated, but it must be had, and that's where issues of corruption, whether AD or COPEI, socialists, communists, Chavistas, or anything like that don't come into play. Rather, we submit everything we've thought to the bonfire, and whatever has vital force will survive. If Bolívar, Miranda, Rodríguez, or Zamora sustain themselves with a serious and profound analysis of reality, they're welcome. It's not us, as fanatics, who will uphold or condemn them, but their work.
We need to raise a multitude of thoughts and ideas and promote a conversational structure that addresses each of these topics to be able to say that this structure contains the thinking that will make us Venezuelans, or even question the term "Venezuelans."
We must place Chávez at the level he deserves, because Chávez is the generator of the thought that can constitute us as a people. To achieve this, he issued many of the keys and codes; the problem is sitting down with teams to dissect those codes. For example, when he says: "The future was stolen from us," who are we? We must understand that we are not a small or great civilization; we were not born from a great or small powerful myth; we are not the chosen ones of God or gods; we are not descended from any distinguished superior race; we have never been conquerors, invaders, or plunderers; we are not heroes, nor do we descend from them; perfection does not dwell within us; we have not created nor profess any philosophy that we should impose on anyone; we are not predestined to dominate and subjugate the species or nature in general; we were not born to have enemies, even if the enemy enslaves us, because we are only slaves entering into contradiction, trying to speak as a species, as a body, as a form of life. To stop being what we are and propose what is different, what is original, in short, we are what is possible, what thinks to be thought, to authentically be in belonging.
Therefore, everything we can derive from his codes is valuable for analysis, because he didn't have time to reflect, to philosophize about what he said, but the depth of his speeches, the phrase "They stole our future" is a book that must be written.
There are a number of his speeches that are very precise. When he tells the Americans and the Europeans to go to hell, every one of those things, he's telling us that with what exists, it's not just that we should build what we have to build—this can't be the windows, the doors, the mirrors, the walls, the floors of the other house—but that we must be authentic, original. This is one of the great tasks we have and that thinking teams will have to undertake in the future, because it's no longer possible to do it individually. This task can't be undertaken, for example, only by university students, as technically university students, by academics, by poets, by painters traditionally conceived as individuals, because they already have European thought seared into their brains, and there's no way to scrape off those stickies, there's no rust we can apply. That rust has already killed those brains, and there's no way to relearn or unlearn, that's not possible.
They don't have their own ideas; they're copies of copies of copies. It's crude, unoriginal, pure rehash. They don't have a serious analysis that separates itself from the entire political and philosophical world. If they talk, for example, about Chávez, what almost always comes up is petty mockery, fear, denial, disdain, excessive insults, expressions of hatred and fear, if not formulas learned from anti-communist manuals, or the miracle, the religious nonsense, or the witch doctor, the predestined. But there's no serious, calm study of time, of the space in which we live. Ideology manifests itself in all of them as a false perception of reality; but not the analysis that needs to be done: Where did Chávez come from? Why this process? How did he reach the conclusions that led him to the actions he implemented? What were his methods, his visions, his dreams? What is his concept of a country other than the mine that we are?
The root of thought is as broad and deep as the ocean, as ancient and new as life itself, born for the different, the created, the original.
https://misionverdad.com/chavismo/ocean ... -profundos
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Tren de Aragua: Reality and Propaganda
March 22, 2025
Photo composition showing two criminals captured by police officers, with a firearm in the background. Photo: Ojo Público/file photo.
By Eligio Rojas – Mar 21, 2025
“Cosmic dust.” This is how President Nicolás Maduro described the defunct Tren de Aragua, the criminal gang whose name echoes across Latin America and beyond as if it was an organization with a central command, camps, and an arsenal.
“The Tren de Aragua is cosmic dust in Venezuela; it no longer exists, we defeated it,” President Maduro declared on Wednesday, March 19 before a group of cattle ranchers at the Simón Bolívar Park in the Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda Air Base in La Carlota, Caracas. It was the 48th National Zebu and Cattle Fair, where the president took the opportunity to respond to his US counterpart Donald Trump’s claim that all Venezuelan migrants belong to the Tren de Aragua gang.
This criminal organization went through three phases, according to documents compiled by the Venezuelan National Anti-Extortion and Anti-Kidnapping Command. The first phase began with its founding in 2008 around railway construction projects in central Venezuela. The gang, led by Johan Petrica (one of the group’s founders), extorted “protection fees” from workers’ cooperatives. This is how the name Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) originated.
Héctor Guerrero Flores (alias Niño Guerrero), who began his criminal career in 2005 with the murder of police officer Oswaldo Antonio González Castillo on September 3 of that year in the 24 de Julio neighborhood of Santa Rita, Aragua state, later joined this gang. He avoided arrest at the time.
Wanted criminal Niño Guerrero was one of the leaders of the post-election violence after July 28, 2024.
First arrest
Niño Guerrero’s first arrest occurred on January 19, 2010, on the Maracay-Turmero Intercommunal Road in the Samán de Guere sector of Aragua state. There, he was set to meet with his gang to review recent home robberies in southern Aragua state.
That day, a Scientific, Penal, and Criminal Investigative Corps (CICPC) task force arrested Niño Guerrero and Freddy La Fresa, as well as other criminals. Authorities confiscated 13 watches of various brands and models, a Gamo-brand replica firearm, four pistol magazines, and 36 bills of various currencies.
This imprisonment marked the second phase of the Tren de Aragua. From the Aragua Penitentiary Center in Tocorón, Guerrero began establishing gang cells in central Venezuela, focusing on home robberies in Maracay and other towns.
Two years after his arrest, on August 29, 2012, Niño Guerrero and 14 gang members escaped the Aragua Penitentiary Center, fleeing to Lara and Portuguesa states. He paid 500,000 bolívars to Luis Alberto Gutiérrez Linares, director of the Tocorón Prison, to facilitate the escape.
Nine months later, on May 18, 2013, Niño Guerrero was recaptured in the Nueva Segovia housing area of Barquisimeto, Lara state. Back in prison, the Tren de Aragua leader continued his criminal operations, now stockpiling firearms, ammunition, and explosives.
Tocorón prison raid
This second phase of the gang ended on September 20, 2023, when the government deployed 11,000 security agents to take control of the Aragua Penitentiary Center in Tocorón through the Gran Cacique Guaicaipuro Operation. By the time of the raid, the Tren de Aragua’s leadership had fled. Remigio Ceballos, interior minister of Venezuela at that time, claimed that Niño Guerrero lived in the prison though he “enjoyed total liberty.” “He was here, but he was already free,” Ceballos stated while displaying seized military equipment.
Niño Guerrero’s escape: The third phase begins
Upon request from Venezuelan authorities, Interpol issued Red Notices for Héctor Guerrero Flores (Niño Guerrero) and Josué Santana (El Santanita), key operators of the Tren de Aragua. Both fled Tocorón before the raid.
The third phase saw the Tren de Aragua fragmented into transnational cells operating without a central command. Media reports highlight how the group’s name is now exploited by opportunistic leaders for political purposes. For example, in February 2024, an alleged Tren de Aragua cell was hired by Iván Simonovis to assassinate Ronald Ojeda, a Venezuelan former military officer under Chilean government protection. Simonovis allegedly sought information on weapons linked to Operation White Bracelet, a plot to abduct President Maduro. Simonovis believed that Ojeda had sold the weapons to others without his permission.
The group that killed Ojeda was composed of Rafael Enrique Gámez Salas (El Turco), Carlos Francisco Gómez Moreno (Boby), Luis Alfredo Carrillo Ortíz (El Gocho), and Dayonis Junior Orozco Castillo (Botija). El Turco was arrested in the US on December 30, 2024. The others were captured in Colombia. Venezuela has requested their extradition.
Another faction of the disbanded Tren de Aragua was allegedly sheltered by former Colombian President Iván Duque and sent to Venezuela ahead of the July 28, 2024 presidential elections. Led by Niño Guerrero, the group’s mission was to create violence in the streets and declare the alleged victory of the far-right candidate Edmundo González. On July 29, the group attempted to storm Miraflores Palace after President Maduro’s victory was announced.
Cabello: Someone is lying
The Trump administration labeled the Tren de Aragua an international terrorist organization, and with this allegation deported Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele shaved their heads and detained them in a concentration camp-like prison.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello questioned whether all deportees were Tren de Aragua members, and demanded the US extradite captured suspects. “The US is acting in a confusing manner. They promised to send us Tren de Aragua members but they have not. Someone there is lying.”
Venezuelan Attorney General’s Office describes the Tren de Aragua as “the most powerful criminal gang in Venezuela, the only one to establish transnational cells abroad.” Sentence 013 of the Supreme Court’s Criminal Chamber approved the extradition of four suspects from the US and Colombia for Ojeda’s kidnapping and murder.
“It is essential to understand the adversary being combated, and in this specific case, it involves the Republic of Chile, the Republic of Costa Rica, the Republic of Colombia, the Venezuelan State, and various Latin American countries,” reads the ruling. “We are confronting the most powerful criminal structure in Venezuela, and the only one that has been able to establish cells on foreign borders, transitioning from a confined prison gang into multiple transnational cells with a broad criminal portfolio. Notably, this case highlights the roles of Venezuelan citizens Carlos Francisco Gómez Moreno alias ‘Boby,’ Dayonis Junior Orozco Cartillo alias ‘Botija,’ and Rafael Enrique Gamez Salas alias ‘Turco,’ as leaders of these cells tasked with executing criminal acts both within and outside the Venezuelan national territory.”
(Últimas Noticias)
https://orinocotribune.com/tren-de-arag ... ropaganda/
President Maduro Receives Family Members of Venezuelan Migrants Illegally Imprisoned in El Salvador
March 21, 2025
Family members of Venezuelan migrants illegally imprisoned in El Salvador, accompanied by Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, hold a press conference at Miraflores Palace, Caracas, March 20, 2025. Photo: Presidential Press.
The relatives of Venezuelan migrants illegally imprisoned in El Salvador met with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who listened to the complaints of fathers, mothers, siblings and other family members of those arrested in the US and transferred to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador on false allegations.
“Today at the Miraflores Palace, the President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro Moros, accompanied by the First Lady of the Republic, Cilia Flores de Maduro, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, Minister for Territorial Socialism Héctor Rodríguez, and myself held a meeting with relatives of our brothers and sisters abducted in El Salvador,” National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez announced to the press on Thursday, March 20.
Rodríguez then introduced several relatives of the migrants and emphasized that “it is important for the people of Venezuela to hear from the relatives of our abducted brothers and sisters … the truth about these sisters, about these brothers who are going to be rescued by the force of truth, by the force of God and by the force of the people of Venezuela.”
“The US government deceived the migrants who were waiting for a flight to be repatriated, sending them instead to concentration camps in El Salvador. We will not rest until they are rescued. This country is waiting for them with open arms!” he added.
“We are going to move heaven and earth, we are going to talk to whoever we have to talk to,” he stressed. “We are going to do whatever we have to do to bring all Venezuelans from the United States of America, but first we will ensure that the 238 Venezuelans kidnapped in El Salvador return to the safety of their families in their homeland, in their territory, in the homeland that we all carry in our hearts.”
Jorge Rodríguez: Everyone’s profession was known
Rodríguez pointed out that all the migrants illegally sent to El Salvador had known professions in the United States, which exposes the falsity of the accusations that they are criminals.
He said many were detained at their workplaces, on roads, and even at immigration offices where they went to express their desire to be transferred to Venezuela.
However, they were illegally detained and sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.
Women sent to men’s prison
Rodríguez also noted that eight Venezuelan women were sent to the men’s prison in El Salvador.
“How is it possible that Bukele accepts, allows and also charges money for taking abducted young people who have committed absolutely no crime, neither in El Salvador, nor in the United States of America, nor in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela?” he asked.
He called the situation “a vulgar abduction, and they are subjecting innocent young people to slave labor. How is it possible that eight young Venezuelan women have been sent to a highly dangerous prison where there are only men?”
He criticized the abduction and imprisonment of even a 20-year-old. “How is it possible that they have kidnapped a minor according to US standards? This boy just turned 20, and in the United States the age of adulthood is 21 years. How is it possible that they sent young men to El Salvador and left their wives and children who at this moment have no idea what they can do?”
US State Department blocking repatriation
Rodríguez dismissed the US State Department narrative that claims Venezuela does not want to repatriate Venezuelans.
“Who is preventing those flights from taking place?” he asked. “It is the State Department of the government of the United States. We repeat, we are ready to take whoever we have to take from the United States, at the frequency that is established. If it were up to us, we would bring them all to us. If it were up to us, we would not leave a single Venezuelan to be mistreated in the United States.”
“We will not rest, and I am referring to all the people of Venezuela, to President Nicolás Maduro, to the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, to the National Assembly, and above all to the mothers and fathers of our children, we will not rest until we see them landing at the Simón Bolívar Airport in Maiquetía, here in their homeland, in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. We will not rest and we will achieve it.”
Family members of migrants decry atrocities
The relatives of the Venezuelan migrants also made statements at the end of the meeting. They specified that none of their children detained in El Salvador has committed any crime.
Jepzy Arteaga, who was introduced by Rodríguez as “the mother of one of our kidnapped brothers,” said that what happened to her son is an atrocity.
“We came today to condemn the atrocity that is being perpetrated against our children, since none of them has committed a crime, all of them are innocent, not because we say so, but because it has been demonstrated,” she said.
She added that rather those who kidnapped them “are committing the crime against our children … We ask for help, everyone’s help with signatures, we will take to the streets if necessary, but we want our children back. Please, we need the help of all of you.”
Osvaldo Moreno, father of another kidnapped Venezuelan, said, “I have come to say to the world, to the country, that we must create awareness that what they are doing to our children is a total injustice, they are destroying our lives, our hearts.”
“Here there are broken parents, broken families, innocent children who are in that maximum security prison next to criminals, simply because of our nationality, for being Venezuelan,” he added. “May this demonic duo of Trump and Bukele fall! Open your eyes, Venezuelans, today it is us, but we all run this risk simply because we are Venezuelan. Migration is not a crime.”
“Our children have not committed any crime, and it has already been verified,” he continued. “All the people who are in that prison are innocent. Their only crime for this demonic duo is to be Venezuelan. Let us defend our nationality before the world, and we urge the international human rights organizations to raise their voices against this atrocity.”
(Últimas Noticias) by Aura Torrealba
https://orinocotribune.com/president-ma ... -salvador/
Mother of Venezuelan Illegally Imprisoned in El Salvador Ready to Do Anything to Rescue Her Son
March 21, 2025
Venezuelan march in support of migrants in the US unjustly detained and sent to a Salvadoran prison on allegations of ties to gangs, Caracas, March 18, 2025. Photo: El Correo del Orinoco.
“If I have to go to El Salvador to look for my son, I will do it; if I have to chain myself to that prison, I will do it, because I am ready to do anything for my child. I never imagined being in this situation in which I am at this moment,” said Jepzy Arteaga, mother of Carlos Alejandro Cañizales Arteaga, one of the 238 Venezuelan migrants detained by the Trump administration in the United States and then, on March 16, illegally transferred to the Confinement Center for Terrorism (CECOT), a maximum-security prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador. Human rights violations are common at the facility, according to various legal and social organizations.
In Caracas’ Plaza Bolívar, where a signature collection campaign against US policy toward Venezuelan migrants was held Wednesday, March 19, Jepzy Arteaga told Diario VEA that her 25-year-old son, Carlos Alejandro, is unjustly imprisoned in El Salvador. He is not a criminal and does not belong to any criminal organization. The young man, a resident of Valencia in Carabobo state, left for the US six months ago seeking better economic opportunities to support his family but instead faced suffering and injustice.
She explained that before being sent to El Salvador, he was imprisoned in the US since February 17. He had been arrested in North Carolina as an “undocumented immigrant.”
Carlos’ wife and his sister remain in the US; they are terrified and want to return home.
How she found out that Carlos was sent to El Salvador
“Because everything added up,” she said. “On Saturday [March 15] he called me, saying, ‘Wait for me, I will be with you people today.’ I, happy, arranged a welcome for him for Saturday, because he was supposed to be here by the evening. He did not arrive on Saturday; I thought something must have delayed him, he will be here on Sunday. On Sunday, his wife called me and asked, ‘Did you check social media?’ My daughter also called me and asked me, ‘Did you see what is happening?’ I said no, and they told me that all those who had been transferred for deportation were sent to El Salvador. I did not want to believe them.
Holding a placard with a picture of Carlos, she continued, choking, that after hearing the news she “started to investigate. I wanted to pay for a lawyer. I asked them to look for a lawyer in Texas.”
On Monday, March 17, her daughter called her again and explained, “We cannot have any lawyer here, because Carlos is already in prison in El Salvador.”
How his wife and sister came to know
“I asked her the same thing: ‘Daughter, how can you be sure?’ And she responded, ‘I am going to send you the video,'” Arteaga said. “And when I saw the video, when they were shaving my son’s head with that machine, he was a bit unrecognizable, but we were able to identify him. My daughter told me, ‘That is Carlos Alejandro.'”
“From that moment we do not feel alive,” she continued. “God gave me the strength to come here today and to keep fighting.”
“What worries me the most is what they are living in El Salvador,” she added, referring to all the Venezuelan migrants illegally imprisoned in that country. “Everybody has seen that prison, how dangerous it is. They are not used to living like that, because they are not criminals.”
Arteaga called upon the Salvadoran authorities to investigate. “Those who have criminal records, they can pay for their crimes, but those who are innocent, please bring them back home,” she urged. “Here all the mothers are desperate, and we will keep fighting.”
“I never imagined being in such a march, I never imagined going through this, but only God knows why he does these things,” she lamented.
She also prayed for strength to tolerate the pain that she is suffering. She prayed for the Salvadoran authorities to come to their senses, to carry out investigations, and “to return our children to us.”
No contact
Jepzy Arteaga still has no information about her son. “We cannot contact him. I looked up on the internet, in that prison you are not even allowed to call anyone,” she said.
She added that while her son was detained in the US, she at least received information as to his situation. “The only thing that he was allowed there was to call me when he could,” she explained. “He could not call everyday, but he could most days… He was not provided proper food, but at least I had information of him. I was content with hearing his voice every time he could call me.”
Are her daughter and daughter-in-law engaged in procedures to return?
“See, that is not easy either, because they do not have the economic means to return on their own now,” she responded. “And the way these deportations are going, I am afraid if they could return. What if they too are deceived, what if they are told that they were being taken to Venezuela and then they are not sent here? I would prefer things to calm down a bit. They have already decided to return, they are only going to work out how to return.”
Her message to Venezuelans thinking of migrating
“Please do not do that, please don’t imagine a life that doesn’t exist,” she urged. “As my grandmother used to say, we tried to make a joke and ended up with a scowl. Money does not bring you happiness.”
Her message to Nayib Bukele and Donald Trump
“They should put their hands on their heart, they should realize that one day God will take it into his hand, that this will not remain as it is,” she said. “I know that it is not just my child but many other people. Sometimes they think themselves God because they have a position, they have power.”
Her message to the far right that is celebrating how Venezuelans are being treated
“They too have children, and I am sure that they have family members who are in the same situation,” she remarked.
Does she believe the Venezuelan authorities will be able to bring back the abducted Venezuelans?
“At first I doubted it,” she admitted. “But after I was here yesterday, and now that I am here, I am certain that God will give them the wisdom to bring our children home.”
(DiarioVEA) by Yuleidys Hernández Toledo
https://orinocotribune.com/mother-of-ve ... e-her-son/
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