Álvarez, alias Larry Changa, sent the letter to the president, the Ministry of Justice, and the High Commissioner for Peace in his capacity as “founder” of the organization, which was born inside the Venezuelan prison of Aragua, known as Tocorón.
Álvarez was captured in Colombia last year and remains in a Bogotá jail.
In the letter, Álvarez asks to be appointed “Peace Manager, in order to facilitate rapprochement and build a viable demobilization route,” according to the document signed by his lawyers and distributed on local networks and media.
The letter also includes a request for a “temporary suspension” of Álvarez’s extradition proceedings while the parties explore peace talks.
Last August, the Colombian Supreme Court accepted his extradition to Chile, where he faces open cases for terrorism, arms trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping.
The Aragua Train is present in approximately eight countries in the region. In July 2024, the United States designated it “as a major transnational criminal organization,” which entails blocking all of its assets in that country.
The leftist Petro advocates a policy of “total peace” that aims to extinguish the armed conflict that continued in Colombia after the agreement with the defunct FARC guerrilla group in 2016.
However, the talks proposed by the Petro government have not made progress with the bulk of the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Gulf Clan cartel, or the Central General Staff, the largest FARC dissident group.
The historic Colombian conflict has left approximately 9.9 million victims, most of them displaced.
