In Venezuela, a country where chaos, misery, and apathy reign, there are terrorist groups called collectives, which, acting under the tutelage of the Chavista government, are in charge of controlling the main cities and neighborhoods of the country. These paramilitary groups maintain control of the areas and although they are civilians, they have been armed, trained, and psyched to shoot and whip the population. Its objective is to maintain political control of the communities, defend the government model, and cause fear.
Who are the collectives?
They are civil associations that act as vigilante groups, these armed groups have a leftist political ideology, they are citizens who represent the excrement of Venezuelan society, criminals for the most part who were already in prison and who maintain close ties with the Bolivarian revolution that was headed first by former president Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías and is currently led by Nicolás Maduro. Corrupt cops and cops who are still active are also part of these organizations. As the political conflict has intensified they have shown their role as executioners of the opposition population of the country.
Its activities include extortion, kidnapping, theft, drug trafficking, and assassinating Venezuelans who go out to peacefully protest against the Venezuelan government.
They are easy to identify, they act as an armed militia, they make their tours on motorcycles, they are hooded or with their faces covered and they carry long weapons anywhere and at any time of the day.
Where did the Chavista collectives come from?
The Chavista collectives emerged as a reference for the Cuban brigades (the Cuban model was an inspiration for Hugo Chávez in many of his projects) that were created by the Castro government to protect and maintain the revolution in the 1960s.
In Venezuela, the formation of the collectives began with the appearance of the Bolivarian circles promoted by then-President Hugo Chávez in 2002 to propagandize and disseminate the Bolivarian revolution. However, this group from its beginnings always expressed its hatred towards the Venezuelan opposition, one of its main followers was Lina Ron who promised to shoot and assassinate all opponents of the revolutionary government, her slogan was "with Chávez everything, without Chávez lead".
The groups were acting little by little in the most popular neighborhoods of Caracas such as Petare, Catia, and January 23. In 2004, the Unified Tendencies to Reach the Organized Revolutionary Action Movement (TUPAMARO) was founded, a far-left Marxist-Leninist, communist and anti-imperialist movement headed by José Pinto and conceived as the movement in defense of the Bolivarian revolution. . With the Tupamaros, the rise of the collective emerged with greater force and Chávez names them as "the armed wing of the revolution."
Armed and militarily trained collectives
In Venezuela, there are hundreds of collectives, but the most representative and feared in the Caracas neighborhoods are Los Tupamaros, Coordinator Simón Bolívar, The Three Roots, the pebble, the Revolutionary Movement of Carapaica Liberation, the Great Patriotic Pole, and the Alexis Vive collective. The government provided and endowed these groups with modern weapons, such as Russian rifles (AKs), tear gas bombs, communications equipment, motorcycles, surveillance systems, and even war tanks.
Being trained militarily by the Colombian guerrilla FARC, who maintain good relations with the Venezuelan government. Hugo Chávez financed them through social plans, as peaceful actors of the revolution. However, under that mask, the so-called collectives are criminal groups that combine their political activities with kidnapping, drug trafficking, robbery, extortion, and all the various forms of organized crime.
Maduro becomes president
With the arrival of Nicolás Maduro to the presidency in 2013, the so-called “Zones of Peace” were created and under that slogan full of love, one of the largest treaties by the government was hidden, which claimed that in exchange for the abandonment of arms by the groups, the government would not allow police interventions in their territories. Turning out, crime rates, homicides, theft, and extortion increased.
Role of the groups in protests and social demonstrations against the regime
Different protests against the government are generated daily in Venezuela, and during the demonstrations in 2014 and 2017, the war groups went out to massacre the Venezuelan civilian population who were in the protests. They were brutal executors of many young Venezuelans who have come out to protest against the Venezuelan government. For example, in 2019, during the entry of humanitarian aid to the country, when politicians and Venezuelan society opposed to the regime protected the borders of Colombia and Brazil, these armed groups were able to dissuade and prevent the entry of these even lead shipments. , which could not be done even by the national police.
In recent years, these antisocial groups have gotten out of control, which is why some groups have been unwilling to obey orders from the Venezuelan government. The police forces at the time have confronted these groups, and friction between the military high command and the groups reappeared with the arrival of Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. Despite being groups of criminals that were armed to protect the revolution, they act by their own laws, and in their war zones or neighborhoods, they maintain order and control.
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