Colectivo (Venezuela)
Based on Wikipedia: Colectivo (Venezuela)
The Motorcycle Gangs That Keep a Dictator in Power
Picture this: thousands of masked riders on motorcycles, without license plates, armed with assault rifles and grenades, roaming the hillside slums of Caracas. They answer to no police. They decide who eats. And when protests threaten the government, they become its iron fist.
These are Venezuela's colectivos.
The word itself is deceptively innocent. In Spanish, "colectivo" simply means "collective"—a community group, a neighborhood organization, people coming together for a shared purpose. Some colectivos really did start that way, running after-school programs, organizing puppet shows for children, even helping neighbors kick drug habits. But something darker emerged from these roots.
Today, colectivos are armed paramilitary groups that operate as enforcers for Venezuela's authoritarian government. The United Nations has concluded they've committed crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court believes there's reasonable basis to investigate them for the same. Venezuela's own opposition-led National Assembly has designated them as terrorist organizations engaged in state-sponsored terrorism.
How did neighborhood watch groups become death squads?
Born from Guerrilla Warfare
The story begins long before Hugo Chávez rose to power. Venezuela's colectivos trace their origins to the 1960s, when urban guerrilla movements fought against the government in cities like Caracas. These were leftist militants—ideologically driven, operating in the shadows of poor neighborhoods, committed to revolutionary change through armed struggle.
When Chávez became president in 1999, he saw an opportunity. These former outlaws could become allies. He created what he called "Bolivarian Circles"—named after Simón Bolívar, the South American independence hero whose legacy Chávez claimed as his own. Bloomberg has described how Chávez "brought the former outlaws into the socialist fold."
The arrangement was straightforward. The colectivos would support the Bolivarian Revolution. In exchange, they'd receive weapons, motorcycles, communication equipment, and funding. Some members got government jobs, which gave them legal access to even more firearms. By 2006, the groups were brought formally under the government's community councils and given arms and money from the state.
Diosdado Cabello, who served as Chávez's chief of staff and remains one of Venezuela's most powerful political figures, was instrumental in building these organizations. He maintains close ties to them to this day.
The Neighborhoods Police Cannot Enter
To understand colectivos, you need to understand the geography of Caracas. The Venezuelan capital sprawls across a valley, but its poorest residents live in the hills that rise steeply on all sides—in makeshift neighborhoods called barrios that climb impossibly up the mountainsides. These labyrinthine communities, with their narrow passages and improvised construction, are effectively impenetrable to conventional policing.
Chávez made a fateful decision. In 2011, he eliminated the Metropolitan Police entirely in certain areas, turning security over to the colectivos. The armed groups became the only law in neighborhoods where formal authority feared to tread.
By 2017, colectivos operated in sixteen Venezuelan states, controlling roughly ten percent of the country's urban areas. The 23 de Enero neighborhood in Caracas alone—a legendary stronghold of leftist politics—contained forty-six different colectivo groups as of 2018.
What does "control" mean in this context? It means the colectivos decide who receives government food assistance—a life-or-death power in a country wracked by shortages. It means they conduct surveillance on residents. It means they punish criminals according to their own judgments. And crucially, it means they report everything to the authorities, serving as an intelligence network that reaches into every corner of poor communities.
The 2002 Coup That Changed Everything
The colectivos might have remained a minor phenomenon had it not been for a single traumatic event: the coup attempt against Chávez in April 2002.
For roughly forty-eight hours, Chávez was removed from power by elements of the military and business community. But massive demonstrations by his supporters—including colectivo members—and resistance from loyal military units brought him back.
This experience transformed Chávez's thinking about security. He realized he couldn't fully trust the military. He needed a parallel force, one whose loyalty to him personally was unquestionable. The colectivos would be that force.
According to the crime analysis organization InSight Crime, colectivo power began expanding dramatically after 2002. Chávez wanted a security apparatus independent of the traditional military structure, one that could counteract opposition demonstrations. The colectivos fit perfectly into this vision.
From Community Work to Political Violence
The transformation wasn't instantaneous. Throughout the 2000s, colectivos maintained dual identities. Some genuinely helped their communities—running childcare centers, drug rehabilitation programs, sports leagues. They encouraged political participation, going door to door before elections to ensure turnout. A rule emerged: every colectivo member had to bring ten people to vote.
But the darker side grew steadily more prominent.
In 2007, masked gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on students returning from a peaceful march in Caracas. Eight people were injured at the Central University of Venezuela, including one struck by a bullet. This was an early warning of what was to come.
By 2009, the La Piedrita colectivo felt bold enough to attack Globovisión, an opposition television station. Several dozen motorcyclists wearing red berets surrounded the facility, overwhelmed security guards, and stormed inside while throwing tear gas canisters. Chávez condemned the attack, and pro-government leader Lina Rón served three months in jail. But the message had been sent: opposition media could be reached.
That same year, colectivos tear-gassed the Vatican's representative in Venezuela after Chávez accused the Roman Catholic Church of meddling in his government. Even diplomatic immunity provided no protection from the armed groups.
The 2014 Protests: Impunity Revealed
When Hugo Chávez died of cancer in 2013, his handpicked successor Nicolás Maduro inherited both the presidency and the colectivos. The following year, Venezuela exploded in protests against the new government.
What happened during these demonstrations revealed the true nature of the relationship between the colectivos and the state. Human Rights Watch documented case after case of government security forces allowing colectivos to attack protesters, journalists, and suspected opposition supporters while uniformed officers stood meters away. In some instances, the two groups worked side by side.
"In some cases, the security forces openly collaborated with the pro-government attackers."
The Civil Association for Citizen Control calculated that more than half of those killed during the 2014 protests died at the hands of colectivos rather than official security forces.
In one particularly brazen attack, armed colectivos descended on Fermín Toro University after student protesters gathered there. They intimidated demonstrators, shot one student, then broke in, looted the facility, and burned approximately forty percent of the buildings.
When armed groups in Maracaibo threatened to rape residents of an apartment complex, the National Guard refused to intervene.
President Maduro's response was schizophrenic. He thanked the motorcyclists for defending against what he called a "fascist coup d'etat... being waged by the extreme right." At the same time, he claimed that armed groups "had no place in the revolution." His vice president Jorge Arreaza praised the "exemplary behavior" of motorcycle colectivos loyal to the Bolivarian Revolution—then promised the government would disarm all irregular armed groups.
Nothing changed.
The Death of Robert Serra
One murder in 2014 exposed the complexity—and the danger—of the colectivo phenomenon. Robert Serra was a rising star in the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, known as the PSUV by its Spanish initials. He served as a mediator between the government and the colectivos, a bridge between the formal political structure and the informal armed groups.
On October 1st, 2014, Serra was stabbed more than thirty times in his heavily guarded home.
The Venezuelan government immediately blamed the opposition. But many observers suspected an "inside job"—evidence that the governing coalition had become "more factionalized since the death of Hugo Chávez," with different ideological camps and interests clashing beneath the party's surface.
A week after Serra's death, Venezuelan police raided the headquarters of a colectivo called Shield of the Revolution. According to José Odreman, leader of the 5 de Marzo colectivo and a close associate of Serra, one colectivo member was "shot dead in his sleep" during the raid. Three police officers were reportedly taken hostage in retaliation.
Before he himself was killed shortly afterward, Odreman made statements suggesting government involvement in Serra's death. He publicly addressed Security Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres: "I lay full responsibility on you of what might happen to me. Enough comrades have been sacrificed."
The incident revealed that colectivos were not merely tools of the government—they were players in internal power struggles, capable of both threatening and being threatened by factions within the state.
Following the Money
How do colectivos sustain themselves? The funding streams reveal much about their nature.
Initially, the Bolivarian government funded them directly. Some groups still receive government contracts to distribute food packages—the CLAP boxes that have become a lifeline for hungry Venezuelans during the country's economic collapse. This gives colectivos enormous power over their communities. They decide who eats.
But as Venezuela's economy disintegrated, colectivos diversified. They turned to drug trafficking, exploiting Venezuela's position as a transit point between cocaine-producing Colombia and markets in North America and Europe. Some personnel from Venezuela's intelligence agencies—including the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence and the Bolivarian Intelligence Service—are reportedly members of colectivos, blurring the line between official and criminal.
Extortion became another revenue source. So did black-market food sales—taking goods meant for distribution and selling them at marked-up prices to desperate citizens. InSight Crime describes most colectivos today as "criminal gangs with immense social control" who "work alongside the security forces, often doing their dirty work for them."
A small number maintain genuine community and cultural functions. The rest are armed organizations whose loyalty can be purchased.
The Iranian Connection
One fascinating detail emerges from the history of colectivo organization. When Hugo Chávez prepared for the 2012 presidential election—an election he ultimately won shortly before his death—he created something called the Immediate Mobilization Networks, known in Spanish as the Fuerzas Inmediatas de Movilización.
These were paramilitary units designed to keep Chávez in power if he lost the election. Their objectives included breaking up opposition rallies before they could gather momentum, identifying and tracking opposition leaders, organizing street protests, and controlling territory. About 3,800 members were organized into small cells of five to seven people each.
The model? Iran's Basij.
The Basij are a paramilitary volunteer militia in Iran, part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They were decisive in crushing the massive protests that followed Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election—the so-called Green Movement. Basij members attacked demonstrators, identified protest leaders for arrest, and helped the regime survive what looked for a moment like it might become a revolution.
Chávez studied their methods carefully. His Immediate Mobilization Networks used sophisticated encrypted communications and were designed to operate the same way. Venezuelan Army sources reported that approximately 8,000 AK-103 assault rifles—Russian-designed weapons manufactured in Venezuela under license—were distributed to these groups.
The lesson was simple: authoritarian regimes survive by building parallel security forces whose loyalty is guaranteed by ideology, money, or both.
Crimes Against Humanity
Between 2014 and 2017, according to a report from the Organization of American States, colectivos murdered at least 131 people during anti-government protests. This figure represents only confirmed killings during demonstrations—it does not include the violence committed during normal operations, the intimidation, the people who simply disappeared.
The international community has reached clear conclusions.
In September 2020, the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela presented its findings to the Human Rights Council. The conclusion was unambiguous: Venezuelan authorities and colectivos had committed "violations amounting to crimes against humanity." The investigators found "reasonable grounds" to believe that most violations were "part of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population... in furtherance of a state policy."
Three months later, the International Criminal Court's Office of the Prosecutor announced that there was "reasonable basis" to believe that since at least April 2017, "civilian authorities, members of the armed forces and pro-government individuals have committed crimes against humanity."
The European Parliament called on the Venezuelan government to "immediately disarm and dissolve the uncontrolled armed pro-government groups and end their impunity." The United States Secretary of State accused Venezuela of deploying "armed vigilantes" against its own citizens.
None of these statements changed anything on the ground.
The Evolution of Loyalty
Alejandro Velasco, a professor of Latin American Studies at New York University who has spent years studying colectivos, observed something important in 2019.
"They have all the trappings of a paramilitary repressive force."
But he noted something else—a shift in what motivates colectivo members. In the beginning, many were genuine believers in chavismo, the political ideology that Chávez promoted. They saw themselves as defenders of a socialist revolution, protectors of the poor against a wealthy elite that had long exploited them.
That ideological commitment has faded. Today, Velasco says, it's "more about power than supporting chavismo or a leftist ideology."
This is a dangerous transition. Ideological true believers can be reasoned with; they operate according to principles, however warped. But when armed groups care only about maintaining their power—their control over territory, their revenue streams, their impunity—they become something closer to pure criminal organizations. The political justifications become window dressing for robbery, murder, and domination.
The Blackouts of 2019
In March 2019, Venezuela suffered catastrophic nationwide blackouts. The electrical grid, starved of maintenance and investment during years of economic mismanagement, simply collapsed. Much of the country went dark for days.
This was the moment when the opposition believed the Maduro government might fall. Juan Guaidó, the head of the National Assembly, had declared himself interim president with the backing of the United States and dozens of other nations. Protests surged. The military's loyalty seemed uncertain.
Maduro called upon the colectivos.
They answered. In neighborhoods across the country, armed groups patrolled dark streets, enforcing curfews and intimidating anyone who might think of joining demonstrations. They became, in those desperate days, the visible embodiment of regime power when the lights went out.
The government survived.
A Parallel State
What are colectivos, ultimately? They exist in a gray zone between several categories we normally keep separate.
They are community organizations—or were, once. Some still run cultural programs, organize neighborhoods, provide services the state cannot or will not deliver.
They are political enforcers. They intimidate voters, attack opposition rallies, threaten journalists. During elections, they surround polling places on their motorcycles, creating what international observers have called an "intimidating climate."
They are criminal enterprises. They traffic drugs, extort businesses, control black markets for food and medicine.
They are intelligence networks. They watch their neighbors, track dissent, report to the authorities.
And they are death squads. When the government needs violence but wants deniability, the colectivos provide it.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has tried to capture this multiplicity, describing colectivos as "pro-Government armed groups" that "decide who receives government assistance and perform surveillance and intelligence activities for the authorities [and have] intimidated, threatened and attacked people perceived as opposed to the Government."
Perhaps the most chilling aspect is how openly this operates. Colectivos ride through Caracas without license plates, their members masked, carrying weapons everyone can see. They are simultaneously hidden and obvious, operating in plain sight because they know no one can stop them.
Lessons for Authoritarianism
Venezuela's colectivos offer a template that other regimes have studied and, in some cases, replicated. The model has several advantages for would-be dictators.
First, deniability. When uniformed soldiers shoot protesters, the government owns those deaths. When masked motorcyclists do the same work, officials can distance themselves—even while praising the groups behind closed doors.
Second, penetration. Formal security forces can't go everywhere. They're too visible, too structured, too accountable to their own chains of command. Colectivos, by contrast, live in the neighborhoods they control. They know everyone. They see everything.
Third, flexibility. Colectivos can be mobilized for elections, protests, blackouts—whatever the crisis demands. They can shift between community work and political violence as circumstances require.
Fourth, self-funding. As government resources dwindle, colectivos sustain themselves through crime. They're not a drain on the treasury; they're a profit center.
Fifth, fragmentation. Dozens of separate groups mean no single leader can become a threat to the regime. If one colectivo becomes troublesome, it can be set against another. The assassination of Robert Serra and its aftermath showed this dynamic in action.
The Future of Venezuela's Armed Collectives
What happens to colectivos when—or if—Venezuela transitions away from authoritarian rule?
The question has no easy answer. These groups have weapons, territory, income streams, and organizational structures that won't simply evaporate. In other countries where similar paramilitary forces emerged—Colombia's paramilitaries, for example—demobilization proved extraordinarily difficult. Many former fighters drifted into pure organized crime.
Some Venezuelan opposition figures have imagined negotiated transitions in which colectivo members receive amnesty in exchange for disarmament. Others insist that those responsible for crimes against humanity must face justice, whatever the political complications.
For now, the colectivos remain what they have become: armed gangs masquerading as community organizations, criminals wrapped in ideological rhetoric, the violent foundation of a government that has lost any legitimate claim to power. They are, in the words of Amnesty International, "armed pro-government supporters who are tolerated or supported by the authorities."
Tolerated is perhaps too gentle a word. They are created, funded, armed, deployed, and protected. They are the regime's enforcers, its eyes and ears, its fist. And until the regime itself changes, they will remain exactly what they are.