The Final Chapter for Tren de Aragua Founder Larry Changa

Larry Amaury Álvarez Núñez, alias “Larry Changa,” is set to be tried on charges of criminal association and kidnapping in Chile after Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro greenlit his extradition. If convicted, it could be the final chapter in the criminal history of one of the three founding members of Tren de Aragua, Venezuela’s most infamous criminal export.

Changa, who was born in Maracay, Aragua state, in May 1977, started off stealing vehicles and auto parts across Aragua and the neighboring state of Carabobo in the late 1990s and was arrested for car theft in 2002. A conviction for homicide and aggravated robbery followed, landing him in Tocorón prison.

SEE ALSO: Larry Amaury Álvarez Núñez, alias “Larry Changa.”

Inside Tocorón, Álvarez fell in with two other inmates, Héctor “Niño Guerrero” Guerrero and Yohan “Johan Petrica” Romero. Together, the trio ran Tren de Aragua from behind bars, turning Tocorón into a gang-governed criminal fiefdom complete with a zoo and nightclub while extending the gang’s reach outside the prison walls, building a vast criminal enterprise involved in extortion, human trafficking, and smuggling.

SEE ALSO: Tren de Aragua: Fact or Fiction?

In 2015, Changa escaped Tocorón and vanished from view until resurfacing in Chile in 2018, where he spent the next several years building Tren de Aragua’s first Chilean faction. Changa allegedly led a structure—including a cell known as “the Piratas de Aragua”—that Chilean investigators say extorted, kidnapped, and murdered while laundering criminal proceeds through a network of businesses. 

Changa fled Chile in 2022. Despite being the subject of an Interpol red notice active in 196 countries, he remained free until Colombian police arrested him while driving a luxury vehicle in Circasia, a municipality in the department of Quindío in the heart of Colombia’s coffee district.