CARACAS, Venezuela — When 11,000 soldiers and police officers stormed Venezuela’s Tocorón prison this month, they discovered a professional baseball field, swimming pools, children’s play equipment — even a small zoo, with monkeys and flamingos.
They also found concrete tunnels in and out, just like in the onetime Mexican prison home of the Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. And 200 women and children, living on the grounds. What they didn’t find was Tocorón’s most notorious inmate: Héctor “El Niño” Guerrero.
Guerrero, 39, heads Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization spawned in the prison that has spread across Latin America with the Venezuelan diaspora — its principal victims.
