The streets of Peru They have a before and after since they started committing crimes foreign bands organized crime, especially Aragua Train, whose networks expanded by Tacna, Arequipa, Lima, La Libertad (Trujillo and Pataz) and Lambayeque (Chiclayo).
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This criminal network, according to the Police, operates both under its original name and under franchises and different cells that send money remittances to the leaders of the organization: The Gallegos, Alayón Dynasty. Children of God, Cota 905, Poor Guerrilla, PHS (Puro Hermanos Sicarios or Pura Underworld Seria), among others.
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Its presence in the main cities of the country has influenced the homicides became more violent and other crimes resurfaced, such as hitman, kidnapping, illegal mining, money laundering and the extortion. Victims of human trafficking also multiplied to sexual exploitation.
The authorities have dealt several blows to the Aragua Train in Peru starting in 2022, although it is a gang that, it has been shown, rearticulates quickly. Until October of last year, of the 5,791 foreign criminals in Peruvian prisons 4,366 were Venezuelans. Despite its rapid expansion, by June 2024 the PNP reported that it had detained 520 ‘llaneros’ related to the Aragua Train and its tentacles. Today that number exceeds a thousand.
Some police reports to which The Republic had access suggest that the TdA may have arrived in Peru back in 2016, but the gang did not attract the attention of the authorities until August 2018, with the capture of Edison Agustín Barreraalias ‘Catire’, who was working to establish a base in Lima of the Damned from the Aragua Train.
Thus, the TdA quickly became one of the most infamous criminal groups in the country, becoming a security priority not only for Peru but for the governments of the region. USA has designated it as a terrorist organization and accused him of orchestrating an invasion.
However, the now captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro He assured that his government has eradicated the Aragua Train in his country of origin. So, what is the truth about the band? Is it a expanding criminal power or just a successful criminal organization?
These questions were addressed in the article “Tren de Aragua, between reality and fiction”, by the Investigative Unit of Venezuela published by InSight Crime on August 17, 2025.
VARIETY OF AGGRAVATED CRIMES
The truth is that, as demonstrated by the documents obtained by The Republic, This group is responsible for homicides, human trafficking, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, sexual exploitation of minors, illegal mining and extortion.
The murder on January 9, 2020 in the Risso shopping center, Lince, in Isaac Hilario Huamanyalli (49), was a voice of warning about the transnational capabilities already developed by the TdA that he then directed Hector Guerrero, known as ‘Warrior Boy’, from the Tocoron prison.
This crime was related to the sexual exploitation of women and girls, especially Venezuelans, who had to migrate through the social conditions and policies of their country.
Audios intercepted from this mega-band, as well as the raw testimonies of migrant women trafficking victims and statements from detainees in Peru allowed the Special Prosecutor’s Offices against Organized Crime to detail how the criminal network operates against this crime.
The operation begins in Venezuela, but expands strongly throughout Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Peru has been used by this criminal organization as a center of operation and distribution of women who are then exploited in different regions. The Republic had access to testimonies from women who have been trafficking victims who tell their stories, their fears and hopes.
Some migrants were initially forced to transport ketamine, an anesthetic drug with hallucinogenic potential widely used in the preparation of tusithe misnamed ‘pink cocaine’, found in different bunkers raided in Lima.
Then they began to force women into prostitution. The cells that subjected them had a high firepowerlike rifles and grenades, remembers the general Victor Revoredowho at that time was in charge of the Homicide Division.
The Aragua Train began to bring young women from 18 to 20 years old. Adolescents aged 15 and 16 were also found. They arrived in Tumbes, Piura and Lima, there, they were installed in the ‘houses of terror, and then they were transferred to good areas where they were forced to prostitute themselves under threat.
They told them that their move to Lima had cost them 15 or 20 thousand soles, and that they were under his coverage until they finished paying him.
Exploiting vulnerable women and girls became a big business for the Aragua Train and its tentacles that also found in Peru a quarry to recruit the labor they needed for their operations.
THE PLANS OF THE ‘WARRIOR BOY’
In various districts of Metropolitan Lima they occupy facades to conceal their activities. For example, they purchase a motorcycle taxi or linear motorcycles to rent to unemployed Venezuelan immigrantswho entered irregularly and who use them to work as delivery.
Among their conclusions, the FECCOR and the PNP determined that the members of the Aragua Train transfer amounts of up to 4 or 5 million soles annually to the leaders in Venezuela through collaborators.
For example, ‘Los Gallegos’ was a direct arm established, initially, in Lima, which through its leader known as ‘Armando’, through a subject called ‘H and D’, leader of illicit activities in Peru, was in charge of accounting and sending money to the ‘Warrior Boy’ when he was in Tocorón prison.
YOU CAN SEE: Members of the Aragua Train are condemned for trafficking in women in Arequipa: they were recruited from Venezuela with false job offers
This in turn was in charge of supplying the logistics, authorizing the expansion plansordering contract killings, among other acts necessary for territorial expansion in Peru.
“THEY DESTROY THE REPUTATION”
“Honest Venezuelans are the vast majority.” The president of the NGO Unión Venezolana, Óscar Pérez, warned that the presence of ‘The Gallegos’ in Peru – a faction of the Tren de Aragua – harms Venezuelans who dedicate themselves to honest work and live peacefully in our country.
He indicated that the bad elements that have arrived in Peru in the Venezuelan migration not only affect the locals, but also them, because Not only are they victims of criminals, they also destroy reputation of Venezuelans who end up being stereotyped.
Violence must be rejected wherever it comes from, even from people who are fed up with being subjected to quota collection, extortion. Honest Venezuelans, like Peruvians, are the majority.
