The military deployment began on Monday, November 4th, when more than 2,500 police and military officers moved to the south Bolívar State, having as their destination the Eastern Penitentiary Center, better known as “El Dorado” prison, where they broke in the early hours of Tuesday, November 5th.
By Pableysa Ostos/Corresponsalía lapatilla.com
The penitentiary center is surrounded by the Cuyuní River, and less than 200 meters away you can see the town of “El Dorado”, in the deep south of Bolívar State, which is clearly a mining town. Although the prison has land access, the only ones who can enter the area are security agencies.
The El Dorado prison is made up of several areas: Casa Amarilla, Precursor I and II and Maximum Security, whose conditions, according to the Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP), are precarious and inhumane.
El Dorado houses detainees from several states of the country and is a closed regime, that is, its control is in the hands of the Ministry of Popular Power for the Penitentiary Service (MPPSP) and there is only the presence of officials of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB). The penitentiary center was built in 1944 with an installed capacity for 350 people, but currently houses more than 2,000 prisoners.
The officers took over the prison and carried out an “exhaustive” search under an operation that Nicolás Maduro’s regime named “Gran Cacique Guaicaipuro” (Great Chief Guaicaipuro).
According to a video released by Julio García Zerpa, Minister of Penitentiary Services, more than 300 knives, two rifles, two revolvers, seven pistols, a submachine gun and a fragmentation grenade were found with the prisoners at the site, while on some of the walls of the prison they found packages of suspected marijuana and alcohol. They also seized 400 cell phones, satellite internet antennas, 200 meters of cable and a few routers.
Links with organized crime
Zerpa said that leaders with links to the mega-gang “El Tren de Aragua” and “Tren del Llano” operated within the prison.
“We had been carrying out intelligence work on different groups, including Tren de Aragua and Tren del Llano, which have been linked and have taken over this area for crime. This will no longer be another nest for organized crime,” added the minister.
He added that at least 1,404 inmates will be transferred to other facilities to evacuate the prison and thus restore the deteriorated infrastructure of El Dorado. “Then it will be put back this service under an extremely strict regime, as we have been building it,” explained Zerpa.
The journalist Eligio Rojas published on his social networks that during the intervention were detected: 17 negative leaders who are part of the “pranato” (gang heads or leaders), three guards who rented cell phones to the prisoners and two soldiers, who tried to bring a fragmentation grenade into the prison.
They hold the State responsible
The Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) pointed out that: “… a quantity of weapons was seized, when in reality it is the authorities themselves who facilitate the entry of this weaponry. The responsibility for this problem is shared: the GN controls access and allows smuggling, and officials from the Ministry of Penitentiary Services allow the circulation of weapons in the facility,” reported the nongovernmental organization on its account on the social network X.
For the NGO, a reform is necessary that includes the progressive withdrawal of the National Guard and that the Ministry in charge assumes full control of the security and management of the country’s prisons.
“As long as these double commands exist, where the captain of the GN reports to his commander, and the director to his minister, the flow of weapons and corruption will continue uncontrolled,” the NGO pointed oUt.
The organization also denounced that “their daily diet is based on cooked flour balls, arepa or yuca. Although there is permission for relatives to bring them some raw foods, not all prisoners receive them, because visits are limited,” according to testimonies from the relatives of the prisoners, who stated that they consume untreated water from the Cuyuní River.
“They have no access to medical care and, as if that were not enough, cases of tuberculosis and malaria are common. There are also cases of extreme malnutrition, and many suffer from stomach and skin diseases,” they added.
