📰🕵️IN.VISIBLES WEEKLY: This is how the Aragua Train sexually exploits migrants (and other news of the week)
Hello!
When Ana first received the Whatsapp message, she didn't think it was real. "We want you, you come with us, you will have your money and you can send it to your family," read the text sent by someone who introduced himself as a member of the Tren de Aragua, the powerful Venezuelan criminal organisation. When Ana said she was not interested, the threats began, which included photos of her walking with her sister in a park in her hometown. Now she lives in fear of what might happen to them.
Ana's story is part of a major investigation by the alliance between El Espectador in Colombia and Alianza Rebelde Investiga media (Runrun.es, El Pitazo and Tal Cual) in Venezuela, coordinated by In.Visibles co-founder Ronna Rísquez, in which several journalists reconstructed - through intercepted audios of this mega gang, testimonies of trafficked migrant women and statements by officials - how the organisation operates and the impact its having on vulnerable women and girls.
You can read the full investigation (which is also one of the finalists for the Gabo Prize for journalism) here.
This week, we also bring you the most important news on organised crime in Latin America.
Thanks for reading and see you next week!
Josefina Salomón
Editorial Director
1. Prisoners raise their voices. In an unprecedented event, more than 50,000 people deprived of their liberty in 51 prisons in Venezuela joined a hunger strike to demand that the government of Nicolás Maduro comply with the laws that regulate the prison system and establish alternatives to serving their sentences. The prisoners demanded respect for their human rights, that their cases be evaluated and the length of their sentences updated so those who had served their time could be released, as well as the suspension of arbitrary transfers. The protest, perfectly orchestrated from prisons in at least 16 states across the country, began on Sunday 9 June and began to be dismantled on Friday 14, after President Maduro dismissed the Minister of Penitentiary Service. "The penitentiary system has to be cleaned up. We have to build a new governance, a new penitentiary regime, put an end to corruption, forge a new generation of custodians. This is a new chapter," said Maduro, whose government intervened and regained control of seven prisons in the country that were dominated by prison inmates in 2023. The protest, however, illustrates some of the many challenges facing Venezuela's prison system, from which dangerous gangs such as the Tren de Aragua have emerged.
2. Demand. A coalition of human rights organisations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have filed a lawsuit against US President Joe Biden to stop the executive order closing the border with Mexico. The organisations, which in the past succeeded in stopping a similar executive order imposed by President Donald Trump, say the order violates anyone's right to seek asylum. Biden's order states that the border with Mexico can be closed when the number of people attempting to cross it exceeds 2,500 in a day (it is currently at about 4,000). Luis Miranda, principal deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Department of Homeland Security, told the Alianza Rebelde Investiga (ARI) that the flow of migrants at the border had dropped by almost 20 per cent since the measure was implemented. Humanitarian organisations working at the border, meanwhile, say the demand for humanitarian aid has increased. Migrants arriving at the border, many fleeing extreme violence, face a catalogue of abuses, including kidnappings and massacres at the hands of criminal organisations that control the routes through which they transit.
3. Ghost town. That is what Tila, located some 230 kilometres from Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas in Mexico, became when its 4,000 inhabitants fled violence at the hands of a group of armed men who arrived on the night of 4 June. Residents are still afraid to return despite the fact that the government dispatched some 5,000 soldiers and arrested six suspects, Reuters' Gabriel Sanabria and Lizbeth Diaz reported. While the government says the violence was the result of a local dispute, villagers say they have long been under the control of criminal organisations that extort money and punish those who fail to pay. Chiapas, in addition to being Mexico's poorest state, is strategically located on Mexico’s lucrative drug corridor, one that criminal organisations, including the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation (CJNG) and the Sinaloa Cartel, fight to control.
4. Collapsed Morgue. While Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa, claims that homicides have decreased in the country, authorities in Guayaquil, the epicentre of the security crisis, have denounced that high levels of violence have led to the collapse of the city's morgue, according to an investigation by Carolina Mella for El País. According to the report, the four people who work in the service are responsible for attending to more than 15 bodies every day. They face an impossible task. They are asked to examine each body in less than 30 minutes when the protocol estimates that checking, taking photographs and collecting samples from each can take between three and six hours. The main concern is that if the tests are not carried out correctly, evidence that can be essential to secure justice for the victims, can be lost.
5. New government, old problems. Haiti's transitional council announced the new cabinet on Tuesday, AP reported. The fact that most of the members of the cabinet, whose main task will be to appoint an electoral commission to organise general elections by February 2026, are new to government has been seen as a potentially positive sign about what is to come. Prime Minister Garry Conille, who was appointed just a few weeks ago, will also take on the role of interior minister and will be in charge of the country's security and intelligence forces. The situation in Haiti was described as "catastrophic" in a United Nations report released last month with more than 1,500 people killed and 800 injured in the first three months of 2024, most of them at the hands of criminal gangs that exercise almost absolute control over the capital, Port-au-Prince. Humanitarian organisations have also reported a food emergency. The Kenyan government confirmed that the first police officers who will be part of an international mission to support local security forces will arrive in the country in less than two weeks.
ALSO
Some of the (other) best reads of the week...
Colombia's first legal coca lab fails to get off the ground (Lucas Reynoso, El País)
Inside Mexico's anti-avocado militias (Alexander Sammon, The Guardian)
This is how a teenager's death set off alarm bells in Ecuador (Michele Bertelli, Al Jazeera)
Bolivia declares one of its main nature reserves "free of coca crops" (Página 12)
Two years after Bruno and Dom's murders, gangs still operating in the Amazon (Jaqueline Sordi, Mongabay)