The recent warnings from Trinidad and Tobago’s Defense Minister, Wayne Sturge, about the increasing presence of the Tren de Aragua in local organized crime extend far beyond mere internal security concerns. For geopolitical analysts, this situation is a clear symptom of the asymmetric war draining Latin America: the erosion of sovereign states through transnational criminal networks.
The Tren de Aragua, an organization born and strengthened in Venezuelan prisons with the apparent consent of the Chavista regime, is not an ordinary gang. It has transformed into a hybrid paramafioso structure, a kind of informal arm serving the Venezuelan state. Its ties to Mexican cartels, FARC dissidents, and human trafficking networks grant it alarming power and reach. Its expansion into countries like Colombia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and now Trinidad and Tobago is a calculated strategy: to project chaos, gain territorial control, and co-opt weak institutions through fear and corruption.
Asymmetric Warfare: Invisible Weapons, Real Damage
In the 21st century, wars are not always waged with tanks and missiles. Asymmetric warfare manifests through covert operations, criminal infiltration, the instrumentalization of migration, misinformation, and gradual institutional decay. In this grim context, the words of Minister Sturge acquire a deeper significance. The violence ravaging Trinidad and Tobago is not a spontaneous phenomenon or purely domestic; it is potentially part of a larger plan extending beyond its borders.
Sturge’s description of the Tren de Aragua as a group “that doesn’t want to be called a cartel, but essentially acts like it” may underestimate the strategic nature of the adversary. It isn’t just organized crime. It is a mercenary structure functioning to serve authoritarian state interests, particularly those of Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which seems to find in regional chaos a strategy for survival and influence expansion.
Destabilization as a Regional Power Strategy
The case of Trinidad and Tobago is particularly sensitive. Its geographical proximity to Venezuela and its strategic position in the Caribbean make it an ideal target for silent penetration operations. The presence of these Venezuelan criminal networks on its territory could pursue multiple objectives for Maduro’s regime:
Export its own internal crisis, alleviating social pressure within Venezuela.
Disuade international pressure by generating instability and chaos in neighboring countries.
Develop regional illegal economies that serve as sources of funding and support for its power.
Build a corridor of alliances with corrupt or co-optable actors across the Caribbean region.
When Minister Sturge speaks of a “new level of violence” and a “power leak in the penitentiary system” that hampers control over criminal leaders behind bars, he describes a scenario suggesting that Trinidad and Tobago may, unknowingly, be turning into a theater of operations for an undeclared war. A war where the enemy does not use tanks but containers filled with drugs, trafficking networks, hitmen, and phones from prison.
Maduro’s regime has been widely condemned for transforming Venezuela into a functioning narcostate, where the state, military, and judicial apparatus reportedly collaborates with or tolerates drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking. In this context, the Tren de Aragua would act as an informal armed wing extending that logic outward.
The Logic of the “Exportable Narco-State”
Sturge’s allegations about corruption in entry ports and obstruction in the use of scanners echo the progressive institutional capture, a distinctive tactic of hybrid criminal networks. The strategy is not a military invasion, but rather silent infiltration to corrupt and control critical nodes: prisons, ports, borders, and police bodies.
Trinidad and Tobago stands at a crossroads. Recognizing that it is not facing a simple criminal escalation, but an asymmetric and transnational threat requiring a comprehensive and coordinated strategy on both regional and international levels is imperatively. The request for “patience” from the population, while understandable, falls short in light of the magnitude of the challenge. Decisive and urgent action is needed.
What is at stake is not just public safety, but the sovereignty and institutional stability of the nation. In this new type of war, enemies do not wear uniforms nor fire from trenches, yet they advance every day, neighborhood by neighborhood, container by container, prison by prison. And they do so, often, under the shadow of a regime that from Caracas continues projecting its chaos outward as a tool of power.