The arrest of Nicolás Maduro marks a new chapter for organized crime in Venezuela. The country’s slew of criminal groups will have to adjust their operations and alliances amid a political shakeup that is certain to have impacts across the underworld.
These five criminal organizations are some of Venezuela’s most prominent and powerful and will likely play decisive roles in the country’s organized crime scene going forward.
The Cartel of the Suns is not so much a “cartel” as a catchall term for widespread corruption among the Venezuelan military and political class. Maduro nurtured this system, allowing security forces and political actors to line their pockets with illicit income to ensure their loyalty to his regime.
Maduro’s removal will not end this system of criminal corruption, especially since all of the other key players remain in power. But his exit could spur internal realignments.
Delcy Rodríguez has ascended from her post as vice president to become the president of Venezuela. She will have the complex task of balancing US pressure to clean up the government with the need to keep the loyalty of other power brokers, especially those with control of the security forces like Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino.
ELN
The National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) is a Colombian guerrilla group that has established deep roots in Venezuela thanks in large part to its symbiotic relationship with Maduro’s government.
Maduro gave the group safe haven from Colombian security forces in exchange for the guerrillas’ help controlling criminal economies like drug trafficking and illegal mining that the regime needed to grease the wheels of corruption. The leftist group also acted as a political ally and a deterrent against a military incursion from neighboring Colombia.
The ELN has become the most important criminal actor along the Venezuela-Colombia border and will likely maintain its mutually beneficial relationship with the Venezuelan government under Rodríguez. With over half a century of experience fighting the US-backed Colombian military, the ELN would prove an important ally in the case of a larger US invasion.
FARC Dissidents
The FARC dissidents are other Colombian guerrillas who operate in Venezuela, so named because they rejected a 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and their parent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC).
The dissidents have been losing ground recently to the ELN, as Maduro seemed to favor the latter group in the years leading up to his arrest. His government ousted one ex-FARC faction from its stronghold in the state of Apure in 2022 and helped the ELN take over the key coca-growing region of Catatumbo from another ex-FARC faction in early 2025.
Rodríguez will likely follow Maduro’s strategy of consolidating relations with the ELN while using government operations against the FARC dissidents to bolster her anti-crime credentials.
Tren de Aragua
Tren de Aragua became world-famous under Maduro, as US President Donald Trump insisted — contrary to the conclusions of most of his own intelligence agencies — that the Venezuelan government was aiding the gang’s expansion in the United States.
In reality, by the time Trump began making those claims, Maduro had already turned against the gang. Venezuela’s South American neighbors had been pressuring his government to contain the gang, which spread around the region by following migrants leaving Venezuela’s deteriorating political and economic situation.
Although Tren de Aragua has been somewhat debilitated by the region-wide law enforcement focus on it, the gang remains a key target of the United States, both at home and abroad. The group’s leader, Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño” Guerrero,” is still at large but was charged in the US indictment alongside Maduro, raising the possibility that he may become a bargaining chip in negotiations between the two governments.
Las Claritas Sindicato
Las Claritas Sindicato is one of the most important criminal groups involved in illegal mining in Venezuela, which serves as a major source of corruption revenues. It operates primarily in the gold-rich state of Bolívar in southern Venezuela.
The mining gang has a longstanding relationship with the Chavista government, which deepened under Maduro’s leadership. It has survived local political shifts and armed offensives both from security forces and rival armed groups.
Las Claritas Sindicato and other mining gangs also figure into the Venezuelan government’s dispute with Guyana over the Essequibo region, which borders Bolívar. This makes them important players that Rodríguez’s government will more likely work with than against.
