How irregular armed groups become the landowners of Venezuela through drug trafficking

“I have been threatened to sell my property, otherwise I will be forced by the National Liberation Army (THEREAFTER). They have asked the same from other producers in the area in different ways, ”he revealed to the organization Funds a producer from El Nula, municipality of Páez, Apure state, whose testimony is part of the report “Irregular armed groups are becoming the major landowners of Venezuela.”

According to confidential information obtained from FundaRedes, in southern Apure FARC dissidents recruit indigenous people who organize and rob farm owners and infiltrate properties later destined to grow coca and set up clandestine tracks dedicated to drug trafficking, sometimes used in conjunction with major international cartels ”.

At the end of January, a report from the National Guard in Apure State reported the arrest of two Mexican citizens and two Venezuelans, alleged members of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, led by Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, a drug trafficker who has been arrested in the United States. But according to informants, it is not the first time that the authorities have detained members of transnational criminal organizations linked to the Colombian guerrillas in that plain. “

Research has established that how irregular groups operate varies from region to region, depending on who runs the area and the economic interests that predominate in the group that the law imposes. “In certain regions of the northern part of the Táchira the irregular occupy part of the production units and oblige the owners to live with them in the properties where they set up camps and conduct their activities ”.

“In the South of Táchira and the Alto Apure Informants from our organization confirm that the guerrillas of Colombian descent directly affect the economies of those areas and have even acquired farms as part of money laundering activities as a result of drug trafficking: ‘They use front men, and they are equally Venezuelan nationals themselves. the negotiations, which are usually in Colombian pesos, “a witness told FundaRedes activists.”

Land for drug trafficking

Fundaredes, whose CEO is a professor Javier Tarazona, stresses that “the presence of irregular armed groups of Colombian descent and criminal gangs in the border areas between Venezuela and Colombia covers an increasing number of areas, according to complaints from owners of farms and estates who have occupied and displaced their land under threat”.

“Locals and whistleblowers have seen large areas used as clandestine airstrips or as coca and marijuana plantations.In some cases, these criminal organizations use figureheads to invest the resources of drug trafficking and smuggling into land acquisition, which is why in recent years they have become the major landowners of Venezuela under the knowledge, and even in some cases, complicity of the authorities. ”.

In Zulia, according to the FundaRedes report, residents of Cano Motilón Y Caño del Medio, Catatumbo Municipality Zulia state, denounced that in August 2020 several producers had been expelled by irregular armed groups.

“This situation has also occurred in some municipalities in the mountainous region of the state of Táchira, where residents denounce the recent arrival of armed men to take control. ‘Two years ago a farm was removed from my compadre La Pajuilera, in the border of the municipality in an intermediate point between Colón, Michelena and Seboruco, they operate from there. He tells me that they are huge battalions of 300 or 400 people ‘, a resident of the sector told FundaRedes activists ”.

The antecedent

On December 8, 2010, the then president Hugo Chavez announced the intervention of 43 farms in the south of Lake Maracaibo, totaling about 20,200 hectares of productive land as part of the measures to deal with the emergency caused by the rains in several states of the country and framed in the “Fight the latifundio”For this purpose troops of the Venezuelan army were mobilized ”.

These expropriations, which were in fact confiscations, were in open violation of the constitution. The process of illegal occupation of lands formerly devoted to agricultural production and now serving drug trafficking and crime affected the food supply for Venezuelans, one of the direct causes of the food crisis in the broad spectrum of the complex humanitarian emergency that Venezuela is suffering ”.

“In Barinas, the land in conflict covers more than 680,000 hectares, which corresponds to more than 20% of the entity’s productive area, their profession has seriously affected the production of products such as meat, rice and maize ”.

“In Bolívar, FundaRedes activists have obtained information that even promotes the government occupation and purchase of land using front men, especially in the south of the state, and that the few farm owners who stay armed or pay expensive vaccines ”.

“The violation of property rights in rural areas starts with the invasion of farms disguised in some cases after actions promoted under the banner of the demand for landless farm workers. Processes that, in the long run, are only intended to leave the real owners without control of their properties ”.

Guerrilla and Politics

FundaRedes went to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Táchira and the Office of the Attorney General on December 8, 2020 “to formally denounce the violation of property rights, undermined by irregular armed groups of Colombian descent in several states of the country as a result of the Venezuelan state’s failure to protect its legitimate owners ”.

Also on January 26, 2021, he accompanied the citizen Marco Aurelio Becerra, a resident of the municipality of Córdoba, Táchira state, to report to the prosecution that in La Blanquita, in the Santa Isabel sector, an unidentified guerrilla group is invading farms, recruiting minors, demanding payments and that its members to wear. He points out that there are men from the ELN, but also collectives who train the guerrilla fighters.

Becerra said that “the La Blanquita City Council, which was the one who brought these people to the area, are involved in this issue because they even work with them … We already have deadSeveral have been shot, shot and even decapitated on the road; In the neighborhood there are commandos of the National Guard and they do nothing, the irregulars circulate freely armed with guns and there is no one to stop them ”.

Becerra told the local media that: “This armed group is led by “Carlos de Guerrillo”, whoever gives orders to the municipal council and thereby demands certain payments from the community is already talking about charging the water in foreign currency ”.

He assures him that a year ago with the permission of the National Land Institute (INTI) they took a farm called “Palermo” that had been owned by his family for 100 years: ‘They randomly took a farm from us, in consultation with (the former governor of the state of Táchira, José Vielma Mora, because the one who took the farm from us is a friend of his. Vielma Mora had cattle on that farm and robbed us of it, a farm with its own land documents. ”He confirms that the friend of the former regional president is a protege of the Colombian guerrilla.

Becerra was forced to leave the place and move into another estate, where irregular armed groups also roam through him. During a trip to San Cristóbal he was threatened and when he went to Zone 21 of the GNB to formalize the complaint, an official told him there was nothing they could do ”.

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