The last thing that is known about plain train, is that this criminal organization is migrating to a small town between Guárico and Anzoátegui, called San Rafael de Laya, also known as 133. A pipe (number 26) of the 40˝ Anaco-Altagracia de Orituco gas pipeline passes through there. The criminal group has been following the trail of that gas pipeline precisely because they have been told that security organizations (civilians and military) would not shoot at those places where gas-carrying tubes run, since they could cause multiple explosions.
And it is so that criminal organization It maintains its central command and cells distributed in rural areas of the José Félix Ribas (Tucupido) municipality in the mountains of Altagracia de Orituco (Guárico), one of whose parishes is the town of San Rafael de Laya, according to investigations. The 133 made national news in 1981 when the gas pipeline that passes through the town exploded, leaving 56 residents dead.
From Altagracia de Orituco there is a road that connects to Guaribe and from there to San Rafael de Laya. But it is also reached by Guárico from Zaraza and Tucupido. On one of these roads, the shot corpse of Carlos Pirela Armas was located in May 2022, who was the leader of a cell of the Tren del Llano, dedicated to extortion against small and medium-sized agro-producers, according to complaints.
Research published at the time by Last News locate the organization plain train as a derivation of the so-called Banda del Picure, which owes its name to the founder José Antonio Tovar Colina and whose central base of operations was in the Concha de Mango sector, El Sombrero (Guárico).
Picure gained economic strength in 2008 due to the collection of vaccines from companies and workers who built the Tinaco-Anaco railway section. Of the 11 stations of this train, 4 passed through the towns of Guárico and El Sombrero-Chaguaramas was the longest stretch.
In 2014 the Banda del Picure divided and the organization of El Juvenal was born, commanded by one of his lieutenants, Juvenal Antonio Bravo Sánchez.
But El Picure goes against his former partner and sets up an operation to liquidate him. They make an appointment in June 2014, supposedly to make peace, at the farm located in El Toro, José Tadeo Monagas municipality (Altagracia de Orituco). The criminal summit was a failure, a large part of El Juvenal’s security ring was assassinated, while El Picure brought a large part of his rival’s weapons.
Malony’s play. At that time, Gilberto Malony Hernández (El Malony), was part of the structure of El Picure, but in a lower position. And it is there when El Malony entered into an alliance with El Juvenal to whom he promises to get weapons to repay what was stolen by El Picure. Malony put a single condition on Juvenal: that he liquidate the entire security ring that guarded Picure and thus leave the field free to seize that gang.
El Picure learned of the plans to liquidate him and asked his friend Juan Carlos Orribo Garrido, a businessman from Altagracia de Orituco, to help him. Orribo is currently criminally prosecuted as “a collaborator” of the Tren del Llano, according to file MP-245550-2021, to which we had partial access.
Precisely in 2014, Orribo bought a house in San Rafael de Orituco and invited rivals Picure and Juvenal to inaugurate it. But both criminals failed to make peace.
Malony observed that scene at the party that Orribo gave and prepared to fulfill the promise he made to Juvenal. He complied by rearming him and he in turn murdered the eight main members of the Picure security ring. He dumped the bodies in a garbage dump on the outskirts of Altagracia de Orituco, an event that occurred the first week of January 2015.
Later, El Malony ordered those bodies to be transferred to Sabana de Uchire, a town located west of Anzoátegui. Among those killed were Anderson Andry Solórzano Parra (El Morroco) and Duindi Eusebio Palma Ascanio (El Duindi), according to reports.
The Juvenal fell. Tensions are advancing between the two organizations that are disputing in Guárico and southern Aragua over the collection of vaccines from agro-producers. Government operations to capture Picure do not work because the subject allegedly has General Richard James de Sancho as an informant, who was Secretary of Citizen Security in Guárico when Ramón Rodríguez Chacín was governor.
According to investigations, in August 2015, military and police commissions were about to capture Picure in the town of Barbacoas, bordering Guárico and Aragua, but the subject fled because he received key information about the operation. Three months later, James de Sancho was removed as Secretary of Citizen Security, as published Last News. At that time, Governor Rodríguez Chacín denied that James was related to El Picure.
The following year, specifically on May 3, 2016, alias El Picure was shot dead, after confronting security organizations in El Sombrero. And in December 2017, they located the decomposed corpse of alias El Juvenal embracing that of his partner, on a farm located in the El Toro sector, José Tadeo Monagas municipality (Altagracia de Orituco). There they also found the bodies of Kelvin Jesús Peña (El Bombillo) and that of a brother of El Juvenal named Nolberto José Bravo.
As a result of these events, the Tren del Llano was born with alias El Malony at the helm. This subject surrounds himself with agro-producers, who help him to venture into agricultural and livestock work. This group of producers act as informants for El Malony. They are in charge of investigating the potential of each of the farms settled in the Orituco region that includes San Rafael de Orituco, San Francisco de Macaira, Sabana Grande, Libertad, Lezama, among others. But also, the strip that borders Anzoátegui that includes Guaribe, Valle de Guanape and San Rafael de Laya, the town where the criminal group is migrating.
The information obtained by producers allied with Malony was to later proceed to seize those farms through extortion or intimidation, as verified by the Public Ministry.
And in the interim, El Malony was touched by Colombian drug trafficking groups who asked him to design a safe route for the transfer of caches from the neighboring country. At the beginning of 2021, El Malony began to move to Sucre state, specifically to the town of San Juan de Unare, where he would have the opportunity to experience large-scale drug trafficking from that state to Caribbean islands.
Those plans were frustrated on 11/6/21, the day a police-military commission killed Malony and part of his staff, including Víctor Muñoz (El Boris) and Eduardo Bandres (El Salao).
Assume The Pipi. El Malony dejected, his cousin Oscar de Jesús Noguera Hernández, alias El Pipi, a bloodthirsty subject, was left in command of the Tren del Llano, to the point that he murdered his brother because he took four fingers from a soda bottle, according to testimonies.
A recent investigation by the Public Ministry determined that the Tren del Llano has among its ranks approximately 150 armed men and its operations centers are located in rural areas including Botalón, San Miguel, Orocollal, El Banco de Guanape, Tuira and other areas. neighbors of the Gunapito Recreational Park and Guatopo National Park.
The logistics of plain train includes all-terrain vehicles (4Runner, Machito, Hilux, Explorer, Super Duty) and high-capacity motorcycles, as well as others “similar to those used by security agencies.”
The Prosecutor’s Office document identifies the main partners of the criminal organization, including the llanera music singer Omar Labrador and the former president of Banco del Tesoro, Eneida Laya Lugo. Labrador is the cousin of the despondent Malony and served as his front man in various deals.
“This citizen associated with farm owners, then he sent the thugs to extort him and shoot the property, in order to intimidate them until they ended up selling the property at a low cost, and even on some occasions not even at all. they were paid”, says the investigation of the Public Ministry where they indicate that Labrador was arrested in June 2022 in El Rosal, Chacao (Miranda).
Regarding former minister Eneida Laya, the Prosecutor’s Office indicates that “she was in charge of granting her credits through the Banco del Tesoro for the purchase of several vehicles that were later used by members of the Tren del Llano identified as Tutu, Belisario, Mataguaca and El Toto de la Llanura (José Velásquez), the latter transported amounts of money to Malony”.
The Prosecutor’s Office also identifies Lizandro Javier Zerpa Quintana as one of those in charge of evaluating and persecuting “the victims before they are kidnapped, murdered.” Zerpa fled to Colombia from where he plans to fly to Spain and present himself as politically persecuted, according to a judicial source.
Actors
Oscar Noguera Hernandez. Current leader of the criminal organization Tren del Llano. She has threatened revenge because some of her associates have been shot down. “I don’t like peace, I like war,” she says on her networks.
Oscar Zaramera. This soldier, the cousin of another partner of the Tren del Llano, is being prosecuted for allegedly providing grenade launchers to said gang, material stolen from the weapons parks of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Oswaldo Cheremos. Arrested in October 2022 and presented as a “member of the Tren del Llano criminal gang,” reported General Domingo Hernández Lárez.
Luis Espinoza. In charge of acquiring the telephone lines used by criminals to commit extortion crimes. In addition, he owns land granted by antisocials.
Jose Alberto Velasquez. It was in charge of supplying and financing the logistics for criminals, which included weapons and alerting them at the time of the presence of security agencies.
last actions
+ two operatives have been deployed in Guárico to counteract the action of the Tren del Llano: Trueno and Pedro Zaraza. In April of last year, they launched Operation Thunderbolt, with military and police agents scattered throughout Altagracia de Orituco.
+ the Thunderball partially broke the logistical apparatus of the Tren del Llano, according to what Pedro Solórzano, mayor of Altagracia de Orituco, told Últimas Noticias.
+ Last April 26 they killed Cristóbal Laya Itriago (El Jobo), during a confrontation that occurred in the Tricentenario sector, Altagracia de Orituco. The deceased was one of the main drug distributors of the criminal group, according to reports.
+ On April 13, members of a Tren del Llano cell gave death of two sergeants: José Herrera Escobar, attached to Army Battalion 913 and Renzo Nazaret Aranguren Sequera Renzo, belonging to the National Anti-Extortion and Kidnapping Command (Conas) 34. The soldiers were attacked when they were chasing criminals through a rural area between Tucupido and San Rafael de Laya .
+ some criminal organizations have been captured by political groups and US agencies interested in creating chaos in Venezuela, as happened in Petare days before Operation Gideon, aimed at the overthrow of President Nicolás Maduro, according to their mentors.
