When Tren del Llano Went to War: Stolen Elections and Vengeance in Venezuela

This article is part of a series produced by InSight Crime and the Venezuelan human rights organization Defiende Venezuela. Explore the full investigation here.

The video began circulating in late July 2024. In the center stands a man dressed all in black. He clutches a pump-action shotgun and has an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and ammunition belts crisscrossing his chest. Behind him, shadowy figures circle, brandishing more rifles and shotguns.

Low light and low resolution. Beneath the brim of his black hat, the man’s face is a featureless blur. When he speaks, he rocks from side to side. As he builds momentum, he takes one hand off his weapon to jerk his arm back and forth as if rapping.

This video, he says, is a message for the military and the police. His gang is not looking for violence, but if the security forces don’t return to their barracks, then his men will use everything they have to attack soldiers and officers across the Venezuelan state of Guárico.

“Don’t touch the people. Respect the people. Respect their decision!” he spits.

The speaker is Óscar de Jesús Noguera Hernández, better known as “Óscar del Llano,” “El Pipi”, or “El Diente”—the Tooth—leader of the Tren del Llano gang. And at the time of recording, he had just led his unit in an armed takeover of a school in San Francisco de Macaira that was being used as a voting center. Macaira is a small town of just a few thousand people, but El Pipi was speaking to a crisis rumbling all across Venezuela. 

Days earlier, President Nicolás Maduro defiantly declared victory in an election no one believed he had won. Not the political opposition, not independent observers, and not the majority of Venezuelans. When protests against the theft of the election began, the Maduro regime responded with brutal repression. Marchers were beaten on the streets. Political opponents were dragged from their homes and workplaces and disappeared into the depths of the Helicoide, the notorious prison that had become a symbol of Maduro’s authoritarian reign.  

Tren del Llano’s assault on the voting center was a remarkable criminal intervention in a political crisis. But the story behind it—told to InSight Crime by sources close to the gang, as well as by its victims, security forces, officials, residents, and journalists in its territorial heartland, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals—was as personal as it was political. It is a tale of loss, vengeance, and family. Of two cousins—El Pipi and Malony—who built a criminal organization that provoked the fury of the Maduro regime. 

The Train on the Plain

Tren del Llano first emerged in the late 2000s out of corrupt labor unions in Guarico, a state in central Venezuela characterized by sweeping plains, rolling hills, small towns, tiny villages, and a smattering of minor cities.

Its evolution into what is known in Venezuela as a megabanda—or mega-gang—began with José Antonio Tovar Colina, alias “El Picure.” Under El Picure’s leadership, Tren del Llano got into robberies, cattle rustling, and, above all, extortion. They also waged war against all and any enemies, exterminating rival gangs and attacking security forces. 

SEE ALSO: Police Vendetta Ends ‘Myth’ of Venezuela Crime Boss

By 2014, El Picure had earned a place on Venezuela’s most-wanted list. But by 2016, he was dead, killed in a shootout with security forces, who posted a photo of his half-naked, blood-stained body as a social media trophy. Into the power vacuum stepped Gilberto Malony Hernández, better known as simply “Malony.”

Photos of Malony show a serious-looking man, slight and skinny. As he poses for classic gangster photos in sunglasses and brandishing an assault rifle, he wears neither a smile nor a snarl. 

One local businessman who met Malony when he was summoned to a meeting at his camp described him riding a large motorbike flanked by an escort of bodyguards, wearing a gold chain.

“Malony was well-dressed. He wore designer clothes, as did his inner circle, but his soldiers were walking around in flip-flops,” he said. 

Malony grew up in the town of Altagracia de Orituco. Sources close to him told InSight Crime that in his teenage years he was diagnosed with bipolar and antisocial personality disorder, although InSight Crime could not obtain the medical records to confirm this.

As a youth, he gained notoriety as a violent criminal, residents from his hometown told InSight Crime. In his youth, he spent spells in a number of different prisons before joining Tren del Llano thanks to a connection in the Bolivarian Workers Union (Unión Bolivariana de Trabajadores – UBT), according to the sources close to him. 

However, those sources said, he stayed away from drugs and claimed to be an Evangelical Christian. When he took over the gang leadership after El Picure’s death, Malony had a different vision for Tren del Llano, one based on two central pillars: extortion and governance. But it was a vision that at times pulled him in different directions, torn between his need to be a predator and his desire to be a benefactor.  

Extortion became the lifeblood of the gang’s operations. Wealthy individuals and their families were kidnapped for ransom. Small businesses scrabbled to put together money to meet their demands or folded, while bigger businesses coped. 

“The farmers that keep planting now include vacuna payments in their costs, as if it were just another purchase, like diesel,” said an owner of a local agricultural business.

Malony took on a patriarchal role in the community. Under his leadership, Tren del Llano banned robberies, punished domestic abusers, helped people in need of medical care, funded local services and businesses, and threw community events, from soccer tournaments to cockfights.

“He said he wanted to be like a Robin Hood,” one of the sources close to Malony said. “He would say, ‘I want people in Altagracia to be able to walk in the streets with their phones out, that in Altagracia no one will touch you.”

Malony’s position as a patriarch also extended to his family, some of whom he brought into his inner circle. Among them was his young cousin, the man who would go on to provoke the fury of the national government, El Pipi. 

Locals remember El Pipi getting into drugs, guns, and violence at an early age. They tell stories of his violent past: a jailbreak engineered by shooting himself to get moved to a hospital; an accidental fratricide as he shot at his brother to ward off his attempts to stage an intervention over his drug use. But InSight Crime could not confirm where the line between fact and myth lies on any of them.

SEE ALSO: Tren del Llano Profile

Malony, the sources close to him said, was the only person El Pipi ever respected.

From early on, El Pipi represented the dark side of Tren del Llanos’ social control. Despite the benefits communities often received, residents understood that the order and services Malony’s gang brought came at the point of a gun.

“Every December and Children’s Day he forced us to give presents, demanding a specific quantity for the boys and girls, and if you refused, there were grave consequences,” remembered the owner of the agricultural business. “When one rancher didn’t comply, they killed four of his cows and stole his truck.

“Living here is a constant stress,” the source added.

Malony directed operations from a rural compound known locally as the “Casablanca,” or White House. Locals described how the site became a community hub, used to stage festivals and events—as well as wild parties with drugs and sex workers. 

At the Casablanca, Malony not only received businesspeople and officials; he was also joined by local politicians, according to the sources close to him.

“The politicians wanted his support to win votes. He decided who to support as mayor, deputy, or legislator,” said one of the sources.

Sucre: A Step Too Far

By the end of the decade, Malony had built Tren del Llano into one of the most formidable criminal organizations in central Venezuela. But his eyes were drifting northeast, to the coastal state of Sucre.

He was troubled by his internal conflicts over running a predatory gang in the area where he grew up, the sources close to Malony told InSight Crime. 

“Before leaving for Sucre he said to us, ‘I can’t be in Altagracia; everyone is my friend. I can’t keep taking from my friends so I’m leaving here,’ and that was our goodbye,” said one. “I asked him if he was prepared for what was to come and he answered ‘Christ is coming soon, and I am a man of God, not the Devil,”

But while Malony left Guárico, Tren del Llano and its vast extortion networks did not. And Sucre offered much more than a new start. It was the chance to gain a foothold in the most lucrative criminal business of all, a business that had long remained out of reach for even the most powerful of Venezuela’s megabandas: the transnational drug trade.

The first reports of Tren del Llano’s arrival in Sucre began to filter out in late 2020. The gang targeted the Paria Peninsula, a long finger of land extending into the Caribbean Sea toward the island of Trinidad. Paria is known for its stunning beaches, jungle-capped mountains, small fishing towns—and smuggling dispatch points used to funnel cocaine, marijuana, arms, and migrants through the Caribbean.

SEE ALSO: US Drone Strike Highlights Sucre’s Role in Venezuela’s Cocaine Corridor

These smuggling routes were controlled by a volatile mix of local gang bosses and a faction of Venezuela’s most notorious megabanda, Tren de Aragua. Like Tren del Llano, they were heavily armed, violent, and exerted tight social control over local communities.

Tren del Llano arrived in the area and offered their rivals a choice: join us, leave, or die, according to locals speaking to InSight Crime at the time.

In a matter of months, Malony established Tren del Llano as a dominant power in some of the most strategically important criminal territories on the northern coast. But his victory was short-lived.

On November 7, over 500 security officials backed by helicopters and armored vehicles assembled in Sucre. In the early hours of the next day, they launched a hunt-and-kill operation against Malony and his gang. The fighting went on for hours. Media reported that up to 19 gang members were killed, Malony among them. But the government never confirmed the number of dead. And it never returned the bodies to their families, the sister of one of the gang members killed told InSight Crime.

“They buried them in a mass grave,” she said. “This was a massacre.”

There were many rumors and few facts when it came to explaining what provoked the slaughter. Early reports cited in local media suggested the attack came after the gang had opened fire on a helicopter belonging to an intelligence agency. But InSight Crime’s sources in the region at that time and those in Guarico offered different versions. Some said Tren del Llano had hijacked a cocaine load from the military or taken over a smuggling route from a local trafficker with influence in the region. Others said they had stolen a bulk cash shipment destined for a senior local official. 

The gang responded to the killing spree with a show of force—on social media. In the weeks that followed, videos circulated showing similar scenes: masked men with long guns pointing to the sky. And they had the same message: Tren del Llano lived on and was prepared to fight on. One, though, was directed at the people of Sucre. The other, to Guarico. 

Only one would prove to be true, as the gang disappeared from Sucre and retrenched in its homeland. The security forces followed, and the people of Guarico would pay the highest price. 

“After this, our lives have been pain and more pain. Since 2021, we have just received blow after blow,” said the sister of the gang member killed in the operation.

The New Generation

After Malony’s death, the line of succession was unclear, and the gang began to break up into factions.

In May 2022, one possible successor to Malony was found dead. Local media reported he had been killed by his own men. But soon after, a new leader emerged who would take command of the largest faction of Malony’s network: El Pipi.

El Pipi had adored Malony. But for the people of Guarico, the contrast between the two men was stark. The change in leadership intensified the fear that was already part of their daily lives under Tren del Llano.

“He is a violent person, without feelings,” a local journalist told InSight Crime. According to the people around him, they always have to be alert to his mood because if he is bored or irritated, he might kill someone. “There is no control over his violence.”

A family member of a Tren del Llano member, who had a run-in with El Pipi as a teenager, was more direct.

“He’s a psychopath,” she told InSight Crime.

El Pipi not only inherited Tren del Llano but also the state persecution that had claimed the life of Malony.

In April 2022, around 800 police and soldiers descended on Guárico with orders to hunt down Tren del Llano gang members in the first of what would become a rolling series of “mega-operations.” 

For months, the security forces terrorized communities in a wave of arbitrary detentions, beatings, torture, sexual abuse, robbery, and extortion. They targeted anyone with any sort of relationship to a gang member, past or present, including people who had unwittingly aided or been forced to collaborate with them. They also went after people who had a criminal record or just because they lived in poor neighborhoods considered gang strongholds.

SEE ALSO: When Terror Swept Through Guárico, Venezuela

Within the year, the security forces returned for a new deployment. The approach—blunt force and abuses aimed more at the community than the gang—was the same. And so were the results. 

Many of the relatives of Tren del Llano members that spoke to InSight Crime reported being beaten, robbed, and extorted and said officials detained family members who had nothing to do with the gang.

“I’m traumatized by what I lived through in 2022,” the family member of a gang member told InSight Crime. “They beat me in that operation. They were very violent.”

The gang was left scattered but intact. Gang members retreated to hideouts in the hills and began operating in small, agile cells. Their extortion business became more clandestine, as the gang began sending women, children, and the elderly to make their demands and pick up payments to avoid suspicions, local police told InSight Crime.

El Pipi’s Criminal Counter-Revolution

El Pipi and Tren del Llano survived by maintaining a low profile. But all that would change with the July 2024 social media video that would make him a figure of national infamy. 

The turning point, for Guárico, Tren del Llano, and for all of Venezuela, came when around 12 million Venezuelans turned out to vote in presidential elections. Opposition and independent observers claimed a large majority did so for the challenger, Edmundo González. But the government of Maduro declared victory anyway while refusing to release the tallies.

The country erupted with mass protests. And the government responded with brutal repression. Security forces and the pro-regime paramilitary groups known as colectivos descended on marches, beating and even killing protesters. Thousands were arbitrarily detained on vague charges, while opposition politicians, activists, and anti-government critics were disappeared by intelligence agents as part of the chillingly named Operation Tun Tun (Knock, Knock).

The anger was felt keenly even in the small towns of Guárico. And even by its violent, hardened gangsters.

El Pipi took action. He led a squadron of Tren del Llano members, who surrounded the school being used as a voting center in San Francisco de Macaira. Videos show them as they advance through the trees, rattling off bursts from rifles. Residents reported hearing gunfire and the explosions of grenades.

The gangsters disarmed and tied up military guards, then filmed themselves tearing down government political posters. And El Pipi, flanked by his fighters, filmed the war cry that would be heard around Venezuela. 

What pushed him into taking such drastic action remains unclear. But sources close to Malony, who have known El Pipi since he was a child, believe it was more personal than political.

“I can’t say what was in his heart, but what I see there is the question of the hatred he had for the government [because of Malony’s murder],” one said. 

“The person he loved was Malony—and no one else. He was like a brother to him,” the source added. 

El Pipi may also have been trying to step out of Malony’s shadow and show he was not cowed by the government’s operations, they said.

“As a leader, he had to front up,” one said. 

“Everyone was saying, ‘If Malony were here, none of this would have happened,” another added.

If El Pipi’s intentions were to spark a gang-led rebellion against the government, then he failed. Instead, that video would provoke the fury of the regime and a military operation against Tren del Llano that would dwarf what had gone before.