CARACAS.– In search of strengthening their power in Venezuelathe regime Nicolas Maduro relies on alliances with criminal groups which together with high-level officials forms a “hybrid governance system” that would be further consolidated during the presidential election year, according to the Insight Crime organization’s 2024 outlook report.
The report points out that “organized crime networks, on which the system relies, distribute illicit income with high-level officials, while at the same time exercising social and territorial control in their areas of influence. In exchange, criminal structures receive safe passage and, in some cases, are supported by State forces in their operations.”
Furthermore, it highlights that although in 2023 the authorities, in a highly propaganda display, attacked prisons, including the Tocorón prison, where the El Tren de Aragua criminal gang operated; drug trafficking networks, urban gangs and illegal mining syndicates, among others, in 2024 would aim to anchor the regime in power.
InSight Crime is a research and debate center on organized crime and citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is made up of at least 50 researchers and journalists in America and Europe with extensive experience in countries with problems of violence and insecurity. Among these countries, it monitors the movements of organized crime in Venezuela.
This January 31, the organization analyzed with a panel of experts organized crime in Venezuela and the appearance of other uncommon crimes such as extortion associated with organized crime. Participating were Jeremy McDermott, co-director of Insight Crime; Professor Angélica Durán-Martínez, from the University of Massachusetts; the sociologist Roberto Briceño-León, director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence and the lawyer Ligia Bolívar, general coordinator of Alerta Venezuela. They evaluated criminal dynamics throughout the country.
Among the predictions for 2024, McDermott highlighted an intensification of legislative and judicial mechanisms and the regulation of illicit markets. “There will be a deepening of the action of non-state hybrid armed groups, favored by the regime to remain in power.”
He also said that Venezuelan migration will be directed mainly to the United States.
Maduro and the 2024 elections
The organization considers that despite growing international pressure and the threat of reinstating sanctions by the US government, “previous experience shows that Maduro will not hesitate to use political violence if he feels that his continuity in the Miraflores Palace is threatened.”
In a recounting of the most recent events, he recalls that the delegates of the Venezuelan regime and the opposition sealed two political commitment agreements in Barbados, in October 2023, focused on holding free and fair elections, as a condition for the uprising. temporary sanctions by the United States.
However, the Maduro regime “has been tightening the screws” against dissidence and on January 25, the Supreme Court ratified the questioned political disqualification of the opposition presidential candidate María Corina Machado, to participate in the 2024 elections, thereby They failed to fulfill their commitments, as they say.
After referring to the questioned 2018 presidential elections, which the national and international forum considered “illegitimate” due to its unconstitutionality and “due to repression mechanisms promoted by the regime,” they highlight that the Venezuelan regime in 2024 has adopted coercive measures. Among these, the approval of the National Assembly, in the first discussion, of the bill that undermines the rights of NGOs in the country and launched the “Bolivarian Fury Plan”, which applies State violence to political dissidence.
The regime and criminal groups
“As the year progresses, it is likely that we will see other forms of electoral coercion, carried out by hybrid armed groups such as the so-called collectives and the subversive group ELN, which control the supply of resources such as gasoline and food that function to manipulate the voter intention.
“Hybrid armed groups such as the National Liberation Army, ELN, continued to coordinate and cooperate with elements of the State. “They extended their influence over illegal mining in the states of Bolívar and Amazonas, they controlled the shipment of tons of cocaine to the Caribbean, and they regulated migratory movements on the border, they were behind human trafficking networks and managed smuggling.”
In this context, the report also highlights that “Venezuela’s role as a transit point has grown with the increase in volumes of cocaine shipments that flow through the country to the Caribbean and mainly to Europe.
They do not rule out that Maduro appeals to political violence before the elections scheduled for the second half of 2024.
“The 2024 presidential elections will determine the future of the hybrid state that has granted different licenses to hybrid armed groups and state actors that co-manage a prolific criminal enterprise.”
During the forum, the Organized Crime Observatory in Venezuela was formally presented, which will be available on the InSight Crime site, which displays OVV statistics, although there is less information in Venezuela every day.
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Source: InSight Crime Organized Crime Report and Forum
