Kidnappings and drug trafficking in Venezuela: the day Hugo Chávez considered a key case for his revolution

On February 5, 1999, the industrial sector Antonio Nagen Abraham He was intercepted in Caracas by a group of criminals in police uniforms. Introduced into a Bronco truck in the colors of the judicial police, they drive all night, cross the western part of the country and they deliver it or sell it, even on Venezuelan territory, to a group of Colombian ELN. A few days earlier, Lieutenant-Colonel Hugo Chávez Frías had badumed the presidency. Nagen was one of his financiers in the election campaign. Breaking all the police protocols in force on kidnappings, the new president sends a personal emissary, Ramón Emilio Rodríguez Chacín, negotiate with the kidnappers ELN.

Rodríguez Chacín became captain in the Navy and played an active role in suppressing the subversive struggle of the far left. In 1988 he was part of the Joint Task Force of the Specific Command of the Army and Police, José Antonio Páez, of CEJAP, which operated in the state of Apure, on the border with Colombia, where rumors circulated about the presence of Colombian guerrillas. He was one of the intellectual and material authors of the "Mbadacre of El Amparo"when by mistake or bad intention murdered 14 fishermen and then they claimed that they were Colombian subversives. But slowly, the truth began to emerge and judicial inquiries were opened. Two survivors, relatives of the victims, human rights organizations, journalists and left-wing deputies have exhausted legal channels. The CEJAP has been dissolved. In 1990, the case was brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Costa Rica. With a good nose, foreseeing the legal complications that he could have in the future and despite his action against the subversion of the Venezuelan left, Rodríguez Chacín manages to enter the military plot led by Hugo Chávez and participates in the February 1992 coup attempt against President Carlos Andrés Pérez.

During the kidnapping of Antonio Nagen, approximately 50 abduction cases per year in border states were perpetrated in Venezuela. ELN or FARC. As in Colombia, the guerrillas agreed to join local criminals for the capture phase of the victims. Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, with specific instructions from the president, will not demand the immediate release of abductees nor ask that they do not kidnap more people on Venezuelan territory. Simply is limited to negotiating terms and amounts of the rescue that the family of the victim will have to pay. This new mode of "negotiation" will be used by the Chávez government until 2002. However, in the cases of kidnappings committed by the FARC, Captain Rodríguez Chacín gets an answer that goes beyond his mission .

–Comrade, does President Chávez really want to help us? Well, captain, these rescues are trifles … The big problem is cocaine. We can do a lot of damage to the decadent Gringo society and its government … Also, generate enough resources to fund our liberation struggle. And by the way, you will have a gift for your management …

Private meeting with the president, the "negotiator" Rodríguez Chacín informs him of the request of the FARC. Chávez listens carefully, thinks for a few seconds, decides:

-Ramón, manage this pod with Grannobles. See you with him in Valencia. Quietly do tests with our trusted officers, to see how that goes … This could be useful later.

Antonio Nagen will be released after almost a month of detention, after payment of the first part of the ransom requested. According to the manufacturer, he canceled 5 million dollars and, according to Cuban sources, it was only one million. The second part, after pbading through Havana, was never paid, but Nagen went to live in Miami as a preventative.

Three years later, after the April 2002 coup d'état that prevented him from sitting for a few hours in the presidency, Hugo Chávez decided to put pressure on the revolutionary process and to take steps to ensure that something similar does not happen again. He secretly meets Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, who was at the time his Minister of Internal Relations. You can see in Hato Corocito, in the state of Barinas, a 1,273-hectare hacienda purchased by the former captain for $ 800,000 in cash. There, President Chávez gives him instructions for that FARC cocaine has a free pbadage and a free exit through the territory, ports, clandestine landing strips and Venezuelan airports. From the phase of some shipments as pilot tests to industrial expansion. Too much exposure, Rodríguez Chacín will leave the ministry and move on to other tasks. His successor in the portfolio and who will implement the measures will be Diosdado Cabello, another man of confidence of the president, accompanied by the general Hugo Carvajal, aka "El Pollo", director of military counterespionage. By involving generals and admirals in getting their hands dirty by becoming multimillionaires and supporting the shipments of cocaine from the FARC, we will serve Chávez to ensure loyalty and deconstruct the institutions of the armed forces., in which he no longer trusts. According to United Nations reports, for the year 2012, 51% of cocaine arrived in the United States and Europe left Venezuela. In September 2008, the US Treasury Department included Ramón Rodríguez Chacín and Hugo Carvajal on OFAC's list for supporting the FARC's drug trafficking activities. and it will not be until 2018, when they will also include the most careful Diosdado Cabello.

Since 1999, the new kidnapping "policy" has opened up many opportunities for local criminal gangs. Generates impunity, inhibition and complicity in the police force. One thing they had already learned in alliances with the FARC, but who now see themselves as capable of penetrating this criminal market. This will be first with the "express" abduction and then with prolonged plagiarism. But soon they understand that the crime of kidnapping, very productive when they succeed "crowned"It's complex, delicate, it needs information, groups that capture the victim, groups that hold it, others who negotiate and manage the most delicate part of salvage recovery." Seeking to correct their weaknesses, they turn to two sources to obtain expert accomplices: Colombian criminals and active or retired police or the Venezuelan National Guard with knowledge of the subject. This will introduce an additional element of corruption into the Venezuelan security forces. In 2011, 1,162 cases of kidnappings nationwide were documented. In 2016, the number was reduced to 604 cases. But still, that represents an increase of 1.4372% over 1999. Now, he kidnappings throughout Venezuelamainly in Caracas and central states. The kidnapping is the crime that has increased the most. Venezuela is not only the country with the worst homicide rate in the world, it is also the country where people are most likely to be kidnapped.