Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh, welcome back.
Speaker 3: It could happen here a podcast where I just got
Speaker 3: vaccinated and boy, howdy, the ship this year hits like
Speaker 3: a fucking train.
Speaker 4: It does, I I go vaccinated, it's it's it's a
Speaker 4: rough one this year.
Speaker 2: Oh man, Yeah, fucking RFK Junior was right.
Speaker 4: Broadcasting through the vaccine injury today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I've received my vaccine injury. I'm complaining
Speaker 3: to the board. Oh man, I'm gonna nap after this.
Speaker 3: But first, how about we talk about fucking trendy Aragua,
Speaker 3: the fucking narco criminal group that President Trump is currently
Speaker 3: justifying blowing up boats in the middle of international waters
Speaker 3: as a result.
Speaker 4: Of Yeah, it's great. It's a good thing that we
Speaker 4: are now killing civilians in countries where we are not
Speaker 4: at war with It's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: This has been something Stephen Miller had been talking about
Speaker 3: since the first Trump administration, you know, and had talked
Speaker 3: with like back when the military was willing to push
Speaker 3: back against Trump more. People would be like, what you
Speaker 3: what the fuck are you talking about? We can't launch
Speaker 3: strikes at just like random boats, and Steve Miller be like,
Speaker 3: why not?
Speaker 2: And now they're doing it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this group, this criminal cartel out of Venezuela
Speaker 3: has been the current justification. As we'll talk about, most
Speaker 3: of what is said about this trendy Aragua by the
Speaker 3: administration about you know, their role in smuggling drugs in
Speaker 3: the United States is either just completely invented or massively exaggerated.
Speaker 3: It is a really interesting group. They have a fascinating
Speaker 3: like history. The literal meaning is train of Arugua. Sorry,
Speaker 3: And it started out with like labor unions that were
Speaker 3: working on a railway project. It was going to be
Speaker 3: connecting central and western Venezuela together. And as has happened
Speaker 3: in history, what started as like labor union organizing wound
Speaker 3: up kind of morphing into a direct criminal activity.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The guy who's generally credited as the founder, although that's
Speaker 3: kind of flattening things a little bit, is Hector Guerrero Flores,
Speaker 3: known as Nino Guerrero, and he he got put in
Speaker 3: for seventeen years for murder and drug trafficking at this
Speaker 3: prison called tokron Am I I am saying that, right, James, How.
Speaker 4: Do we see to Coron Yeah, Sarenaxin. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 4: little accent over the second. Oh, as you go up
Speaker 4: with down up to Coron. Thank you, James.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so this one of the things that's fun about
Speaker 3: this is that this prison where they start loading these
Speaker 3: guys up, becomes so heavily organized, and it eventually turns
Speaker 3: from being like a prison in the traditional sense to
Speaker 3: more being like a tiny independent city that the gang
Speaker 3: is based out of.
Speaker 2: It acted as their fortress.
Speaker 3: They established like nightclubs in it, and you know, luxury facilities,
Speaker 3: and like leaders of the gang more or less came
Speaker 3: and went as they pleased, went back to their families,
Speaker 3: and it was not really what you'd think of as
Speaker 3: a prison in the traditional sense for a lot of
Speaker 3: these guys. For a while, a payment system was created
Speaker 3: in order to like basically you would inmates would pay
Speaker 3: for protection or for access to the nicer aspects of
Speaker 3: the prison called the cause. And if you didn't pay,
Speaker 3: you know, they had various ways of physically abusing you.
Speaker 3: There's a good article in Small Wars Journal that talks
Speaker 3: about the origins and the impact of this group, and
Speaker 3: it quotes someone from inside the prison is saying, the
Speaker 3: first time you don't pay, they shoot your wrist, the
Speaker 3: second time your ankle, the third time, and you face
Speaker 3: the death penalty. So, like you're talking like pretty traditional
Speaker 3: criminal gang stuff, right, Yeah. So the journey of this
Speaker 3: group from gang that's major in Venezuela to gang that's
Speaker 3: kind of operating in larger and larger chunks of South
Speaker 3: America followed a pretty natural path where they got involved
Speaker 3: in more kinds of smuggling and more kinds of trafficking
Speaker 3: over the years, started setting up operations in other parts
Speaker 3: of South America Eca. But one of the things that
Speaker 3: the gang has sort of done is you've got this
Speaker 3: kind of process by which they have these local affiliates
Speaker 3: who are not directly associated with the gang in like
Speaker 3: the strict hierarchical sense, and that it's not literally the
Speaker 3: gang sending an official into another state. It's more like
Speaker 3: franchising is kind of the way things work, and you
Speaker 3: have different local groups, some of whom are not even
Speaker 3: connected in any way to the original organization, claiming a
Speaker 3: line of descent in order to basically draft off of
Speaker 3: that clout, you know, yeah, yeah, which is kind of
Speaker 3: what you've seen increasingly, and this has led to a
Speaker 3: situation where there's enough claims of trend being involved in
Speaker 3: the United States and other countries that it looks a
Speaker 3: lot like a larger and more centralized criminal organization than
Speaker 3: it actually is in reality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the state understands these things like many states, right,
Speaker 4: like who like with a leader and a distinct authority
Speaker 4: structure and like a direct command. That is not how
Speaker 4: my understanding is that they operate, right because they are
Speaker 4: not mini states there. They are a different entity to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And what is your Because you've actually spent time
Speaker 3: reporting and in Venezuela, when did you first become aware
Speaker 3: of trend?
Speaker 4: I mean I became aware of like the fact that
Speaker 4: there were armed gangs and criminals. I mean I was
Speaker 4: robbed at gunpoint when I was in Venezuela, right, so
Speaker 4: that may be aware that that there were people who
Speaker 4: who did crime with weapons, But I wasn't aware really
Speaker 4: of trend that I went until like maybe the twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't report on organized crime, nor do
Speaker 4: I particularly follow it, right, But I take an interest
Speaker 4: in Venezuelan affairs and as much as I've spent time there,
Speaker 4: and I have like an affinity with the people, and
Speaker 4: I understand that things are getting going from bad to
Speaker 4: worse for them. Under their government. So so I took
Speaker 4: an interest. I guess it was like, are you familiar
Speaker 4: with a Naco Sobrinos affair? No, okay, Naco Sobrinos is
Speaker 4: like narco nephews. I think they're actually step nephews of
Speaker 4: Maduro if I recall correctly. It doesn't hugely matter. They're
Speaker 4: like part of his family in a mediate and I
Speaker 4: believe they lived in his compound. And they used like,
Speaker 4: I don't want to make statements that are incorrect that
Speaker 4: I believe they use a presidential hangar or runway to
Speaker 4: fly a plane to Haiti, which the USDA alleges, and
Speaker 4: it is most likely true that that that that plane
Speaker 4: was stuffed full of cocaine.
Speaker 2: Sure, many such cases, Yeah, many such cases.
Speaker 4: They believe they have diplomatic immunity, which they did not,
Speaker 4: which I believe came as surprise to them at the
Speaker 4: moment of their detention. And so at that point I
Speaker 4: was like, shit, we can get onto this. How the
Speaker 4: Trump administration has like basically alled to Venezuela as a
Speaker 4: narco dictatorship. Certainly there is overlap between organized crime and
Speaker 4: the state, right, it's because the state is so poor
Speaker 4: and so corrupt. That inevitably you will see like overlap
Speaker 4: between organized crime and the state.
Speaker 2: So I guess right.
Speaker 4: Whenever the knack of Sobrino's affair was I was like, okay,
Speaker 4: I need any to sort of be aware of this.
Speaker 4: And of course in my like coverage of immigration, you
Speaker 4: hear of people mostly their talk is just not that
Speaker 4: their life has been made hard by organized crime, if
Speaker 4: I managed so much as their life has been made
Speaker 4: hard by the government completely failing to provide services and
Speaker 4: the complete collapse of the Venezuelan economy. You know, I'm
Speaker 4: not going to ask about it explicitly, but if someone
Speaker 4: mentions it, I sort of take note of it as
Speaker 4: one of the reasons why people are leaving.
Speaker 3: Would you bring up as a really good point, which
Speaker 3: is that twenty fourteen is kind of when the most
Speaker 3: recent Venezuelan economic crisis really kicked off. And two is
Speaker 3: fourteen to twenty eighteen was a major period of growth
Speaker 3: for trend and then twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: is when they really started pushing up into and involving
Speaker 3: themselves increasingly in Colombia and the United States as a
Speaker 3: result of like the increased flow of Venezuelans out of
Speaker 3: Venezuela and into other countries and eventually up to the
Speaker 3: US and to some extent, And it's been since twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two that the gang has really been pruned back,
Speaker 3: you know, both as a result of the Venezuelan government
Speaker 3: taking control of the prison again and like basically invading
Speaker 3: it with the military in order to deny them access
Speaker 3: to what had been like their primary centralized, like hub
Speaker 3: of control, and also due to the fact that, like
Speaker 3: after expansion into Columbia and Chile, both criminal organizations and
Speaker 3: the governments of those countries increasingly pushed back against the organization, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why they're being targeted. But also
Speaker 3: one of the things that's like fundamentally bullshit about the
Speaker 3: administration's description of what's happening is that we're very much
Speaker 3: talking about a cartel that's on its back feet and
Speaker 3: been on its back feet for the last several years
Speaker 3: as the result of significant reversals in their business and
Speaker 3: in their political situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, Columbia has been the Columbian Civil War
Speaker 4: is one of the longest running conflicts in the world.
Speaker 4: But things have changed their substantially, right, in the last
Speaker 4: five or seven years. You know, you have people from
Speaker 4: the FOC disarming. You have the fracture of what was
Speaker 4: previously their territory in some of who were previously their
Speaker 4: militants into other groups, right, And so that has allowed
Speaker 4: the state there to continue its conflict against what remains
Speaker 4: of that and also to clamp down other groups. Right.
Speaker 4: And evidently, like the flow of drugs, United States relies
Speaker 4: on the complicity or inability to stop it of many states.
Speaker 4: And yeah, we've seen like a concerted effort and also
Speaker 4: like the attempts of the United States to stop smuggling.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So, I guess if people aren't familiar, we should just
Speaker 4: explain the US DHS, of which the United States Coast
Speaker 4: Guard is part. I think a lot of people aren't
Speaker 4: aware the Coast Guard is part of DHS claims a
Speaker 4: universal jurisdiction or jurisdiction at least in areas where drugs
Speaker 4: are being smuggled to the United States, Right, So the
Speaker 4: US Coast Guard had a role to play in this
Speaker 4: in the I guess interdiction is the word they would
Speaker 4: use of drugs coming to the United States. I probably
Speaker 4: haven't got data on this. In the last year or so.
Speaker 4: But it certainly was the case that most drugs entering
Speaker 4: the US entered through ports of entry as opposed to
Speaker 4: like between ports of entry, right, like through the desert,
Speaker 4: through the mountains, and so like these these boats, I
Speaker 4: guess are not just to be clear that they're not
Speaker 4: necessarily going to the United States, and most states are
Speaker 4: not going to United States, and most states are going
Speaker 4: to Mexico and then moving to the United States through
Speaker 4: other methods. But like as the governments both south of
Speaker 4: the United States and in the United States who adapted,
Speaker 4: it's become harder and harder for those people, right, And
Speaker 4: so it's become harder and harder for these criminal organizations
Speaker 4: to make money off these drugs.
Speaker 3: And that's led to, I mean a situation that one
Speaker 3: of the things that they've been accused of being by
Speaker 3: the Trump administration and internationally is essentially an agent of
Speaker 3: the Maduro regime, right, And this is something that certainly
Speaker 3: the Venezuelan government denies. This is not a thing where
Speaker 3: I can you know, entirely give you this is exactly
Speaker 3: what's happened. But it seems accurate to say that as
Speaker 3: an organization, as their their actual like control and power
Speaker 3: have been eroded, they have been utilized increasingly as a
Speaker 3: way to, for example, deal with like dissidents who are
Speaker 3: hostile to the Madeiro regime right as a as a
Speaker 3: deniable asset. In particular, there's been cases that are reasonably
Speaker 3: well documented of dissidents against the Venezuelan regime in Chile
Speaker 3: and Trendy Aragua being used as like assassins to to
Speaker 3: take out dissonance in foreign countries in a deniable manner. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I mean it looks to me like this has
Speaker 3: kind of increased as their actual ability to directly control
Speaker 3: things and directly contest the regime as a power center
Speaker 3: has been eroded.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of a classic like I wouldn't say
Speaker 4: that like ideologically aligned, right, but sometimes their interests aligned, Yeah,
Speaker 4: to be clearly, Like trend are one of the sort
Speaker 4: of organized crime institutions in Venezuela, but by.
Speaker 2: Five only one, right, you have, yeah, Trendel. Yeah.
Speaker 4: For example, you have these other groups who have also
Speaker 4: been active in anti government protests, especially since the I'm
Speaker 4: going to use that quote unquote election here in July
Speaker 4: of last year, right, where electoral fraud is widely alleged
Speaker 4: and I documented that in My Daddy and series if
Speaker 4: people want to listen to that. But it's not like
Speaker 4: these two are lot in lockstep. But yeah, like we
Speaker 4: can understand that sometimes that the interest might align and
Speaker 4: in those areas may be beneficial for the regime to,
Speaker 4: like you say, to use them as a deniable asset.
Speaker 2: Right, which does not.
Speaker 3: Like one of the things that's kind of most frustrating
Speaker 3: is hearing them described as central to the smuggling of
Speaker 3: fentanyl into the United States, which, like, even in kind
Speaker 3: of the most elaborate version of this group being utilized
Speaker 3: by the Venezuelan government is fanciful, right, Like, because Venezuela
Speaker 3: just doesn't have that much to do with the smuggling
Speaker 3: of fentidel into the United States. Yeah, Like, Venezuela and
Speaker 3: Venezuelan criminal organizations just aren't that involved in that process.
Speaker 3: That's not where it's coming from, right. Yeah, And we'll
Speaker 3: talk some more about fentanyl, but first, you know what's
Speaker 3: kind of like fentanyl advertising. We're back and we're talking
Speaker 3: about fentanyl. Well, we're talking about like these claims because
Speaker 3: that's the justification for why we need to airstrike these boats.
Speaker 3: The most recent of which we know was boarded by
Speaker 3: another government and had drugs on board. It removed before
Speaker 3: it was struck.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we simply have no idea, no way to verify.
Speaker 3: I have no way to verify what the administration is
Speaker 3: claiming about these boats.
Speaker 2: We're just seeing boats get blown up.
Speaker 4: But yeah, and everybody who's on that boat is no dead,
Speaker 4: so there's not many many people to contradict that story.
Speaker 4: Should we explain like the usual coast Guard process.
Speaker 2: For in addiction? Yeah, I think that's probably good idea.
Speaker 4: So generally, right, what the US Coast Guide is going
Speaker 4: to do is they will have these large vessels from
Speaker 4: which they will launch smaller vessels and helicopters to intercept craft, right,
Speaker 4: like the most kind of I guess like famous charismatic
Speaker 4: other like Colombian like they call them Narco subs.
Speaker 2: There's their semi submarines.
Speaker 4: Actually that they're not like fully submersed, but they that
Speaker 4: much of the vessel is submerged. What the Coast Guard
Speaker 4: would normally do, to my understanding, is to send a
Speaker 4: vessel to intercept them, right, be it a helicopter or
Speaker 4: a boat, or probably both in most cases I would
Speaker 4: imagine tell them to stop.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: If they don't stop, the Coastguard will have like a
Speaker 4: sniper who will shoot out the engine of the craft.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They will then board, they will entertain the people. They
Speaker 4: will obviously confiscate any drugs that they find, and then
Speaker 4: they will take those people back to their vessel where
Speaker 4: they're detained, and then they'll be tried in the US. Right,
Speaker 4: and then they would normally it's they can't kind of
Speaker 4: scoop up all these ships that they've intercepted or semi
Speaker 4: subs or whatever, so they will normally destroy those and
Speaker 4: scuttle them so they sink to the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 4: I don't know how many cases they've done this in,
Speaker 4: but that would be the normal procedure for Coast Guard.
Speaker 4: It gets pre twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: It's got to be fun being a fish near one
Speaker 3: of those vessels, yeah, fishing.
Speaker 4: Getting yeah yeah, yeah. I don't know what they do
Speaker 4: with all the cac And sometimes they bring all the
Speaker 4: cocaine back for a photo op. You see that sometimes
Speaker 4: yeah yeah, yeah, that looks good. Yeah yeah, it's nicely packaged,
Speaker 4: says cocaine or fentanyl on the side or whatever. That
Speaker 4: is my understanding of what was done previously. The strikes
Speaker 4: in the last month have been extremely different, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and we're looking at I think fourteen people killed so
Speaker 4: far that we've had confirmed, although those numbers are certainly
Speaker 4: higher than the when you're hearing them, right, because we've
Speaker 4: just had another strike in the last day or so
Speaker 4: that I don't think we have exact numbers on how
Speaker 4: many people were involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They use, from what I understand, drones from Special Operations
Speaker 4: Command to do these strikes, right, which in itself is
Speaker 4: quite unusual. And then the strikes themselves consisted of did
Speaker 4: they say what I guess it looks like a hell
Speaker 4: fire missile, but I don't know if they've said.
Speaker 2: That looked like health fires to me on the videos
Speaker 2: I've seen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not exactly like high DEPF video, but you
Speaker 4: see them striking like it looks kind of like a
Speaker 4: like a it's a speedboat, right, like it's a surface vessel.
Speaker 4: It's not a not a semi sub or a submarine.
Speaker 4: It's unclear like what has happened before, at least I
Speaker 4: haven't seen any reporting or what happened before, like whether
Speaker 4: they got in order to stop I think in one
Speaker 4: case they had turned around right having noticed a drone
Speaker 4: and begun returning towards the coast, towards Venezuela, I guess,
Speaker 4: And they were still struck. And it appears that in
Speaker 4: at least one case, the drone struck them again, like
Speaker 4: it hit them once and then returned for a second
Speaker 4: run to hit I guess the survivors.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's a couple of facts that go
Speaker 3: alongside what we actually know and versus what the administration's claiming.
Speaker 3: About eighty percent of people involved in the smuggling of
Speaker 3: illegal drugs into the United States are US citizens, and
Speaker 3: then of the remaining twenty ish percent, a chunk of
Speaker 3: those are resident legal aliens, and the chunk are a
Speaker 3: mix of undocumented people, non citizens, or people whose status
Speaker 3: is unknown or extra diited aliens. Right like, this is
Speaker 3: based on the United States Sentencing Commissions data from twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, and about eighty five percent of drugs that
Speaker 3: are brought into the United States are smuggled in at
Speaker 3: ports of entry. And this makes complete sense if you
Speaker 3: think about it, in part because it's pretty easy to
Speaker 3: track when you've just got like a boat trying to
Speaker 3: smuggle stuff into the country illicitly and the people who
Speaker 3: are on that boat. If the art citizens have no
Speaker 3: right to enter the country inherently, as opposed to citizens
Speaker 3: who do have a right to enter, and ports of
Speaker 3: entry where there's a shitload of you want to heighten
Speaker 3: plane sight with this stuff? Right, Like it just makes sense,
Speaker 3: Like would you rather if you were smuggling a huge
Speaker 3: amount of illegal shit? Would you rather be on your
Speaker 3: own with a van or a vehicle full of very
Speaker 3: illegal drugs or would you rather be like hiding amongst
Speaker 3: the billions of tons of shit that gets taken to
Speaker 3: this country every single year, right, Yeah, which is why
Speaker 3: just the reality of the data is so completely different
Speaker 3: than the administration makes it out to be. And obviously,
Speaker 3: foreign criminal organizations are heavily involved in the smuggling of
Speaker 3: illegal drugs, particularly fentanyl in the United States, but we're
Speaker 3: talking primarily about like the Sinaloa cartel and then different
Speaker 3: criminal organizations involved in the smuggling a fentnyel out of China, right,
Speaker 3: which is where a lot of fentanyl comes from.
Speaker 2: As opposed to.
Speaker 3: Again, Venezuela, the government here is going for low hanging fruit.
Speaker 3: I think as The conclusion I'm driven to just every
Speaker 3: time I read about this is that, like, there doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to be a better reason for focusing on this organization,
Speaker 3: which really is just not that involved in crime in
Speaker 3: the United States nearly to the that groups like the
Speaker 3: scene lower Cartel are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it offers a chance to demonize Venezuelan people, right,
Speaker 4: and Venezuelan people made up a large number of the
Speaker 4: people who came to the United States to seek asylum
Speaker 4: under Biden, because like, if we do believe that these
Speaker 4: like the word in Spanish would be like a megabandas
Speaker 4: like mega gangs are a serious threat to the well
Speaker 4: being of people in the United States, imagine how much
Speaker 4: more of a threat they are to the well being
Speaker 4: a people in Venezuela, right, Right, And that combined with
Speaker 4: a government which objectively sucks and which also uses extra
Speaker 4: judicial violence, right, including in its battle against these gangs,
Speaker 4: leads people to want to leave and when they come here,
Speaker 4: the United States, especially the Trump Recheme, has been engaged
Speaker 4: in this demonization of migrants. Right, this offers a very
Speaker 4: convenient narrative for that to say that these people are
Speaker 4: bringing crime here. The vast majority of them are doing
Speaker 4: the exact opposite. They are coming here because the state
Speaker 4: in Venezuela has extorted them, and slash or non state
Speaker 4: actors in Venezuela have extorted them. The vast bulk of
Speaker 4: the complaints I hear from Megan for Venezuela about the state,
Speaker 4: they have no interest other than working hard and receiving
Speaker 4: like a decent living wage for that. Yeah, every Venezuelan
Speaker 4: person I spoke to almost burned on when I ask
Speaker 4: what their American dream is, tell you that their American
Speaker 4: dream is to have a job that pays them enough
Speaker 4: to feed their family. Right, Like, we have next to
Speaker 4: no evidence of organized crime coming into the United States
Speaker 4: through the asyluentists, and there are sure there will be,
Speaker 4: like I would imagine a fraction of a single percent
Speaker 4: of cases, sure in which that is the case. But
Speaker 4: it's being used against all these Venezuelan people right as
Speaker 4: we've seen. And I guess I a should just clarify that,
Speaker 4: like one thing about these megabandas that they're not like maras, right,
Speaker 4: like so like MS thirteen being a mara, right, like
Speaker 4: a gang in which members are identified by certain tattoos.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Yes, this is tattoos and emojis, yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, again, Like I understand that that is a
Speaker 4: thing that happens in some cases, but that is not
Speaker 4: a thing that is common to these gangs.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's certainly not common to trendy Araguas. Right,
Speaker 3: It's like the use of tattoos. There's not even widespread
Speaker 3: agreement among experts as to whether or not there's any
Speaker 3: sort of centralized, US based hierarchy for the group, right right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: The tattooing is just as it is in the United
Speaker 4: States and that sort of places around the world. A
Speaker 4: very common practice in Venezuela that the people do for
Speaker 4: as many reasons as there are people right to include
Speaker 4: because they love their mum, because they love their kids,
Speaker 4: because they're like a football team, because they are religious,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. That is why people get tattoos.
Speaker 4: It is not to indicate membership in any organization.
Speaker 3: No, And this is this is something that's verified. Again,
Speaker 3: Like one of the leading experts on trend is Jana Risquez,
Speaker 3: who wrote a book The trendy Aragua, The Gang that
Speaker 3: revolutionized organized crime in Latin America. She specifically told in
Speaker 3: otisis Telemundo during an interview. Venezuelan gangs are not identified
Speaker 3: by tattoos. To be a member of one of these
Speaker 3: Venezuelan organizations, you don't need a tattoo. You can have
Speaker 3: no tattoos and still be part of it. You can
Speaker 3: also have a tattoo that matches other members of the organization.
Speaker 3: So like again, there's groups and different sort of because
Speaker 3: this is a very bottom up sort of organization, which
Speaker 3: is often the case with criminal groups, where like they
Speaker 3: will you know, there will be money being passed in
Speaker 3: one direction or another, but there's not tight control being
Speaker 3: exercised in a top down manner. You can find groups
Speaker 3: that have tattoos in common, but it's not a centralized
Speaker 3: thing that the organization does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like the Venezuelan state, to be clear, is
Speaker 4: extremely violent. They have like a special armed police which
Speaker 4: deals with gangs and organized crime that kills hundreds of people.
Speaker 4: It would be unwise to be going about in the
Speaker 4: street with it like I am a member of a
Speaker 4: certain gang. Right, tattoo right, And so unless you plan
Speaker 4: to live in some area where where you feel completely
Speaker 4: safe from the state, that would be a very unwise thing.
Speaker 1: To do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we'll talk some more about things that are unwise,
Speaker 3: but first it would be wise for you to buy
Speaker 3: these products. We're back, and I want to quote from
Speaker 3: a recent piece in The Guardian on the US law
Speaker 3: enforcement claiming that emoji's signal membership in this organization. Man
Speaker 3: This is by Sam Levin and man Vy Singh from September,
Speaker 3: a couple of days ago. The first reference to emojis
Speaker 3: in the records comes from a July twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: situational awareness alert from the n WHITPD, which was distributed
Speaker 3: to law enforcement across the country and warned of trendy
Speaker 3: Araguaf threats in New York City. In WYPD Intelligence Encounter
Speaker 3: Terrorism Bureau has observed members of TDA in New York
Speaker 3: City using social media messaging platforms such as Instagram and
Speaker 3: Talk to depict the legiance to the gang. The other
Speaker 3: said TDA members often utilize emojis such as trains, Ninja's,
Speaker 3: slot machines, double swords, shields, ogre, face mask and crowns.
Speaker 3: Members also use South American slang and Arabic language terms
Speaker 3: to mask their identities on social media. They've cited the
Speaker 3: NYPD tattoos featuring Michael Jordan, fucking ninja emojis. You're tolding
Speaker 3: me that that's that's a TDA sybol. That's not just
Speaker 3: something people use.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, man, this is like, I mean, there's a
Speaker 4: large Arab or population of Arab descent in Venezuela.
Speaker 2: That's where these slangs come from.
Speaker 4: Like, people use emojis, particularly in this context because their
Speaker 4: education has not been the best, right, Like, the access
Speaker 4: to to literacy is less than it would be in
Speaker 4: other contexts. So like sometimes they use emoji, so they
Speaker 4: just use them because it's funny. But like the notion
Speaker 4: of like and yeah, people will use slang. People will
Speaker 4: spell shit the way they say it. Sometimes when I'm
Speaker 4: talking to Venezuelan people, you know, if I'm if I'm
Speaker 4: talking to a source and they I sometimes I have
Speaker 4: to read it aloud to help me understand what they're saying.
Speaker 4: That it's very common to people in Venezuela. There's nothing
Speaker 4: to do with being a member of a gang whatsoever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean there's a lot of that in
Speaker 3: terms of like the fact that the Chicago Bulls and
Speaker 3: Michael Jordan are popular among immigrants, right, Like that that's
Speaker 3: particularly Venezuelan immigrants, and a lot of it comes from like, well,
Speaker 3: a lot of Venezuelan immigrants tend to like these things
Speaker 3: in media, tend to like these musicians and get tattoos
Speaker 3: that reference these things in popular culture or these things
Speaker 3: you know that different Venezuelan artists have put out. And
Speaker 3: that's I mean, it's certainly not a sign that like, oh,
Speaker 3: these things signal membership and this criminal organization and more
Speaker 3: they're just targeting Venezuelans and these things are more common
Speaker 3: among Venezuelans, but not certainly not exclusive to that group.
Speaker 3: When you when you're saying that like a Michael Jordan's
Speaker 3: shirt or tattoo is a symbol of membership in a criminal,
Speaker 3: criminal organization, well, I guess like a third of my
Speaker 3: high school were criminals. I mean they were, but not
Speaker 3: in this way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, ye, Like these are very common, like the Jordan logo,
Speaker 4: I don't know what it's called, the jumping Jordan logo.
Speaker 4: Not a big sports where fan myself, but like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's very common. It's because people buy fake designer apparel
Speaker 4: all the time. Like you will also see people tons
Speaker 4: of people with Louis Viton items. They're not real. That
Speaker 4: does not indicate membership in any gang. It's just kind
Speaker 4: of an aspirational thing that you can buy any almost
Speaker 4: anywhere in Venezuela because no one's going down there to
Speaker 4: enforce copyright laws. Like it's not it doesn't indicate any affiliation.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it indicates like an interest with the United States, right,
Speaker 4: like like that these are where these things come from,
Speaker 4: and this is a place where these people would like
Speaker 4: to go. I also saw a guy cross a Darien
Speaker 4: glap in Nike Alpha flys, like the super Fast Marathon
Speaker 4: running shoes with the giant carbon plated spring. Like this
Speaker 4: is not like indication of anything other than that, like
Speaker 4: this person thought those were cool and they purchased them. Yeah,
Speaker 4: are you familiar with this Cartel de lo Solis thing?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: Okay, so like the Cartel del Solis, the Cartel of
Speaker 4: the Sun of the Sun's I guess it's another organization
Speaker 4: which the US is alleging that Maduro is is like
Speaker 4: head of right that, like it's a vertically organized organization
Speaker 4: and that like Maduro is literally the chief of it,
Speaker 4: And I guess I just want to say, like the
Speaker 4: same shit applies, right there are gangs all over Karrakas,
Speaker 4: as well as names we haven't mentioned. What you've got
Speaker 4: here is state failure, right Like in Venezuela, the state
Speaker 4: has failed to provide people with services and it does
Speaker 4: not always enjoy a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Speaker 4: You also have massive corruption, So it is absolutely the
Speaker 4: case that people smuggling drugs through Venezuela will be able
Speaker 4: to buy off certain officials, right, particularly like military commanders
Speaker 4: and people who have control over transit and border areas.
Speaker 4: It doesn't imply like a vertical structure per se. To
Speaker 4: be clear, like I don't think my Dado should be
Speaker 4: in charge of Venezuela. I think that my duadal regime
Speaker 4: is bad for Venezuela and bad for the world. But
Speaker 4: like it's very oversimplified to see it like straight up
Speaker 4: as like a narco regime, right that, Like, there is
Speaker 4: more to it than that. This is the country that
Speaker 4: hits on masses of oil. This is a country that
Speaker 4: has been incredibly corrupt from an incredibly long time now,
Speaker 4: and you're always going to see these organizations creeping into
Speaker 4: the government. Right when the government can't even pay its
Speaker 4: own people will guarantee them a decent and dignified quality
Speaker 4: of life like. That doesn't mean that it is okay
Speaker 4: to just kill like First and foremost, I would imagine
Speaker 4: that if we go with the government story that the
Speaker 4: boats that they struck were carrying drugs, right, it is
Speaker 4: unlikely that people who are carrying those drugs or anything
Speaker 4: other than poor desperate young men who wanted a chance
Speaker 4: at a better life and or were intimidated into doing this, right,
Speaker 4: And maybe some of them chose to do this because
Speaker 4: they thought this was the way they could get money
Speaker 4: and the progress in a place that does not for
Speaker 4: them many opportunities. These are not the people who are
Speaker 4: in any way like making the calls, making the decisions, right,
Speaker 4: and so killing them isn't going to do very much
Speaker 4: because there is a massive supply of poor desperate young
Speaker 4: men in Venezuela, and it's not going to change anything
Speaker 4: to kill fourteen fifteen of them, other than it will
Speaker 4: obviously it's a tragedy for those families, right, there's people
Speaker 4: who lose their children or whatever. Yeah, and so like,
Speaker 4: I don't know until we solve the situation that life
Speaker 4: is untenable for people in Venezuela, Yes, there will be
Speaker 4: crime there, and yes, people from there will want to
Speaker 4: come to the United States.
Speaker 2: Both of those things make sense.
Speaker 4: That does not mean that people coming to the United
Speaker 4: States are coming to the United States to do bad things.
Speaker 4: The vast majority of them are coming to the United
Speaker 4: States to escape bad things. We've had so much discourse
Speaker 4: about Venezuelan people and crime, even in the you know,
Speaker 4: this has begun, I think in Chicago in the Biden administration,
Speaker 4: I have not seen journalists of whatever political stripe talk
Speaker 4: to Venezuelan people about this. Right, Like, with very few exceptions,
Speaker 4: it's very easy to find Venezuelan people, especially you know,
Speaker 4: if you if you work at the border and you
Speaker 4: do border reporting. But even still, you know, lots of
Speaker 4: these Venezuelan people went to Denver, some of them went
Speaker 4: to Chicago, some of them went to the Springs in Colorado,
Speaker 4: many of them went to Texas. They went to all
Speaker 4: kinds of places when they came to the United States. Right,
Speaker 4: if you speak Spanish, it's not hard to find these
Speaker 4: people and ask them what's it like in Venezuela, why
Speaker 4: did you come here? And then perhaps you can you know,
Speaker 4: establish a picture of yeah, it's pretty shit, right, people
Speaker 4: work hard every day and don't make enough to feed
Speaker 4: their family, if their kid is sick, if their elderly
Speaker 4: parents can't work and need support, it's really hard to
Speaker 4: do that. That is why they want to come to
Speaker 4: the US. That is why often young men want to
Speaker 4: come to the US right because the world as it
Speaker 4: is gives them the highest level of economic opportunity, and
Speaker 4: so the family will send them to the US such
Speaker 4: as they can earn enough money and they hope one
Speaker 4: day to bring their families here. Sometimes you also see
Speaker 4: people bringing their very young children because they realize there's
Speaker 4: no future for their children in Venezuela, so they make
Speaker 4: the choice to try and come to somewhere which once
Speaker 4: promised a future for hard working people and doesn't really anymore.
Speaker 4: But like it just it pains me so much to
Speaker 4: see this discussion of Venezuela without Venezuelan people, most of
Speaker 4: whom I found to be wonderful, Like I spent a
Speaker 4: good amount of time in Venezuela and even longer with
Speaker 4: Venezuelan people, and they have a great affection for them,
Speaker 4: like they've been nothing but kind to me, even now,
Speaker 4: like a year after it's in the Darien Gap. I
Speaker 4: get text all the time from Venezuelan people, the majority
Speaker 4: of them not asking for help, just asking how I
Speaker 4: am asking? Do I know what happened to the Bolivian girl?
Speaker 4: Do I know what happened to the Zimbabwean women? Like
Speaker 4: genuinely concerned, even amidst like a really shit situation for them,
Speaker 4: concerned for the well being of other people. And I
Speaker 4: just wish instead of talking about yeah, there are hundreds,
Speaker 4: maybe thousands of Venezuelan people who are involved in moving
Speaker 4: drugs to United States, we could talk about the millions
Speaker 4: of people who just want to work hard and have
Speaker 4: a decent life and who are being denied a chance
Speaker 4: to do that at home, and are now being denied
Speaker 4: a chance to do that here as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's about it for our episode today.
Speaker 2: Until next time, folks, I don't know rest of luck
Speaker 2: out there? Yeah it could happen.
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