Venezuela today, we believe, is a hybrid state, where the line between governance and criminality has blurred, and in
some cases, disappeared altogether. InSight Crime’s latest investigation explores this concept and offers a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between the Venezuelan state and organized crime.
The conclusions of Rise of the Criminal Hybrid State in Venezuela are the end-product of five years of investigations and analysis aiming to uncover and understand how organized crime intersects with the government led by President Nicolás Maduro.
This journey began in 2018, when InSight Crime asked a different question: is Venezuela a mafia state? We concluded that it was, for reasons ranging from criminal penetration of state institutions to the kleptocratic system enacted by the country’s ruling elites. But it was our investigations into how the state was devolving power and governance functions to armed groups such as the colectivos and the prison gang bosses known as pranes that planted the seeds for the hybrid categorization.
In 2021’s Battle for Apure series, we investigated another element of the budding hybrid state as we explored how ex-President Hugo Chávez had incorporated Colombian guerrilla groups into his military and geopolitical strategies, while turning a blind eye as they partnered with burgeoning state-embedded criminal networks to run illicit economies.
Shortly after, we published Maduro's El Dorado: Gangs, Guerrillas and Gold in Venezuela, which exposed how politicians, security forces, and armed groups had combined to turn the country’s mining industry into its premier hybrid economy, controlled in coordination by the state and organized crime….
Read more: InSight Crime