Killings and torture in prison raise alarm about gang crime in Chile

(Bloomberg) — During Marcelo’s first week in Santiago I prison, he was happy when his fellow inmates handed him a phone so he could call his girlfriend and family.

Before the night was over, the same people filmed his screams as he was tortured, demanding that those on his newly registered contact list send money to make it stop.

Marcelo said the incident was a result of a growing population of foreign detainees, who brought with them a more violent and exploitative prison culture to Chile.

While most of the people who stabbed and beat him were Chileans, foreign prisoners are “the ones responsible,” said 29-year-old Marcelo, who asked to use an alias for fear of retaliation. ‘You didn’t see that before. Calling and extorting a prisoner’s family was completely outside the codes of Chileans.”

Marcelo’s sentiment – that the influence of foreigners is behind this violence – is shared by many Chileans, 92% of whom think immigration has worsened safety and security in the country, according to AtlasIntel’s LatAm Pulse survey and Bloomberg News. More than 95% of respondents in October think Chile should have more restrictive immigration laws. The concerns mirror those across the region and even as far away as the US, where similar conversations are taking place during the presidential election season.

While Chileans like Marcelo are affected by rising crime alongside the arrival of migrants to Chile, there is also another reality: the newcomers themselves are bearing the brunt of the violence. Organized crime groups such as Tren de Aragua – which has become the face of the phenomenon from Santiago to New York – often target migrants, who are vulnerable and in precarious economic circumstances. In Chile, the gang, founded ten years ago in a Venezuelan prison, was involved in the much-publicized murder of Venezuelan dissident Ronald Ojeda.

Rising crime has eaten away at the government of left-wing President Gabriel Boric, who is now trying to build a legacy of fighting violence and drugs through the social security platform he campaigned on.

Since 2022, the government has more than tripled its budget for fighting organized crime to $89 million. It has created a new public prosecutor’s office and a new police unit, and is building high-security prisons. Prosecutors are now recommending pretrial detention for any undocumented immigrant arrested for a crime.

All this matters for a country that has virtually no history of criminal gangs and where police once carried only revolvers and drove unarmored vehicles. Chilean police tactics are now beginning to mirror those of neighboring countries in the region, which are having to dismantle cocaine laboratories in the jungle and patrol dangerous favelas.

“The presence of organized crime in our country has shocked us, but it will not paralyze us,” Boric said earlier this year. “We are going to win this battle step by step.”

Unexpected arrival

The Venezuelan diaspora has been a gold mine for Tren de Aragua, which specializes in human trafficking. People pay gang members to smuggle them across the border into Chile, and some have to work for the group to repay their debts. That makes migrants vulnerable to becoming the gang’s first victims.

There’s no denying that homicides, violent crimes and drug seizures have increased in recent years. Last year, local investigative police seized 30 tons of drugs, including cocaine and processed cannabis. That is more than the 21 tons registered in 2019.

According to the Office of the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention, Chile’s homicide rate in the first half of the year was 579, or 2.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. That is an increase of 30% compared to 2019, but a decrease of 9% compared to the first half of 2023. More than 20% of homicide victims this year were foreigners, compared to 4% in 2020.

While the number of Chilean victims remains more or less stable, it is the murder of Venezuelans – more than 700,000 now live in Chile – that is skyrocketing. According to the National Forensic Medical Services Center, authorities conducted 73 autopsies on Venezuelans who suffered violent deaths last year, compared to just three in 2019. The number of Colombian autopsies will double to 60 by 2023.

There is a sub-segment of ultra-violent crimes within the homicide data, “which tends to include more people of foreign nationality, because these crimes are linked to the modus operandi of gangs that have emigrated from other places,” Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said . said in an interview with La Tercera earlier this year.

In July, an alleged fight between two rival gangs resulted in the killing of five Venezuelans at a party near Santiago.

As the number of incidents has increased, so has their complexity.

“We are now encountering crime scenes that we did not see in the past, with a dead person with many bullet marks on his body, hands and feet tied, and possibly in a different place than where he was killed,” said Juan Pablo Pardo, chief of the organized crime brigade in the investigative police.

That has forced Chile to refine its research methods. The local prosecutor, criminal justice analysts and a psychologist now accompany investigating police to the crime scene if there is any suggestion of gang involvement.

“Often it is the psychologists who receive the most relevant information from the victim’s family,” said Tania Gajardo, deputy director of the prosecutor’s office’s specialized organized crime unit. “The victim in the context of organized crime is not a traditional victim. They do not trust the police and do not cooperate with the investigation.”

Gang culture

Chile is still safer than most countries in the region. Only Uruguay, Argentina and Costa Rica appear better positioned in the 2024 Global Peace Index, which also includes security indicators.

But according to an Ipsos survey, concerns about violence, crime and immigration are greater in Chile than in any other country in the world.

The number of foreigners in Chilean prisons has doubled in five years to 14% of the total in 2023, of which 26% are Venezuelans, compared to 1.5% in 2018. Colombians and Bolivians each represent about 28%, according to Chilean prisons data . prison service, known as Gendarmería.

The recent rise in xenophobia could risk further exacerbating the problems migrants already face. Undocumented people tend not to go to the police when they are victims of abuse or extortion. Some start working for gangs out of fear and because it offers a source of income for people who do not always have other job prospects.

“The more xenophobic a country, the more insecure the status of Venezuelans in a country, the more fertile the ground for the continued exploitation of Tren de Aragua,” said Jeremy McDermott, co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime. “These are opportunistic criminals and they are extorting the Venezuelan diaspora. Members of Tren de Aragua are parasites of the Venezuelan community.”

Fight back

One of the main challenges Chile faces is that Tren de Aragua’s intellectual leaders are located elsewhere, making it difficult to map the chain of command. There are also fragmented groups that claim to have or have close ties to Tren de Aragua.

“There is a franchise system in Latin America where criminals pay to use the name of the most brutal gang,” said Pablo Zeballos, an organized crime consultant and former police intelligence officer. “The best brand in the region is brutality.”

It is difficult to determine whether Chile will win the battle, but the country has achieved some victories. Police have jailed two prominent Tren de Aragua leaders and requested the extradition of one of the gang’s founders, known as Larry Changa, who was captured in Colombia.

“I’m quite impressed with the Chilean authorities and I think they are doing the right thing,” McDermott said. “It’s a steep learning curve, but the fact that Larry Changa ran from Chile in 2022 shows that he felt there was a very real risk of being picked up here.”

Moreover, the increase in homicides may be a sign of the gangs’ weakness, not their strength, prosecutor Gajardo said.

“Given our containment work, the cells of Tren de Aragua were left without leadership, and this has created disorder,” she said. “Killings between rival gangs mean that they no longer control the area. If everything is calm, it means they have seized the areas and the state is letting things happen.”

Yet that may provide little comfort to communities ravaged by the rise in organized crime.

Next goal

The northern city of Antofagasta becomes a battleground between foreign gangs battling for territorial control.

Its easy access to the Pacific Ocean, the capital Santiago and its proximity to the borders of Bolivia and Peru have long made it a hub for Colombian drug trafficking gangs.

Now, after expanding in other northern cities such as Iquique and Arica, Tren de Aragua is preparing to fight for Antofagasta, according to advisor Zeballos. “A very violent future is foreseen in Antofagasta.”

Pedro Araya, a native of the town and senator for the region, says the place is cursed for both its geography and mining wealth. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and the Antofagasta region is at the heart of the industry, with more than $17 billion worth of projects in the pipeline until 2032.

“This means a greater influx of people into the region, from miners to criminals looking to seize new economic opportunities,” Araya said. “There is a potential for an absolute loss of control over the northern region.”

First priority

As Chile arrests more gang members, the race is on to prevent the prison system from becoming a new command core for organized crime. Preventing corruption will be an important part of those efforts.

“Criminal organization and state corruption are two sides of the same coin,” said Fernando Guzman, a judge who has regularly visited Santiago I. “It is impossible to build a powerful criminal enterprise, with significant profitability, without an alliance with some. government agencies.”

There have been some isolated cases of corruption among police and prison guards.

President Boric reiterated that public security will be a key priority next year when he unveiled the national budget proposal on September 29. He will spend an additional $30 million by 2025 just to combat organized crime in prisons.

“Prisons have not just become a school for crime,” Guzman said. “They are also a place to fund and recruit members for organized crime.”

What that means for prisoners like Marcelo remains to be seen.

He was able to get medical help after his attack by telling prison guards that he had accidentally cut his arm with a can. Once he was out of his cell block, he was able to report what had happened.

Ultimately, Marcelo was moved to another cell for his own safety and subsequently placed under house arrest, but not before his girlfriend wired more than a hundred dollars to his attackers. He is awaiting trial in December, with the prosecutor seeking a 10-year prison sentence for drug trafficking, the harshest possible punishment.