The Relationships that bind the ELN to Venezuela

Evidencity’s work in illicit networks got off to an unexpected start this week with the recent news of Nicolas Maduro’s arrest and capture. Candidly, our team read the news with mixed emotions. Many of our current and former employees and their families are either Venezuelan or deeply engaged with the Venezuelan diaspora, so we join them in celebration but look forward with an amount of concern over what’s next.

Against this backdrop, we took another look at the Ejercito de Liberación Nacional (ELN), a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Given the news swirling about Venezuela’s future, we thought it prudent to review our Illicit Network Intelligence on this multi-national criminal organization.

The ELN in 2026 is a Colombian-Venezuelan network of security professionals, politicians, business associates, logisticians and low-level operators, some of whom are forced to work. Though its historical roots are Colombian, the ELN has evolved over the decades from an idealistic Colombian revolutionary paramilitary group to an international criminal organization, leveraging control of territory to make money on the licit and illicit movement of people and product, mostly across and through Colombian and Venezuelan territory, specifically along the Colombian-Venezuelan border. 

The ELN has limited international reach but within Colombia and Venezuela the organization manages a broad financial and logistics network that extends along the Venezuelan-Colombian border. It has confirmed presence in the following Venezuelan states: Zulia, Táchira, Apure, Amazonas, Monagas, Bolívar, and Anzoátegui. Reportedly, the organization operates hand in glove with the Venezuelan military and other public security forces like siblings: sometimes they fight but they mostly get along.

After reviewing what we have on this group in our Illicit Network Intelligence dataset, we’ve pulled out some of the more interesting individuals and relationships that tie the ELN to Venezuela.

Venezuela’s Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, who is considered a close supporter of Nicolas Maduro and Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, works closely with a Coronel in the Venezuelan National Guard (GNB). His name is Alexander Enrique Granko Arteaga. As head of the Directorate of Special Affairs (DAE) of the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), Granko Arteaga reportedly works closely with Minister Cabello.

In 2022, Col. Granko Arteaga was identified by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela as one of the regime's most systematic perpetrators of torture, arbitrary detention, and forced disappearances. He is also one of the primary liaisons between the Venezuelan government and the ELN.

In mid-2025, José Bladimir Bigott Portela, aka El Mencha, who is an ELN commander for theFrente Oriental Domingo Laín Sánz ran for a municipal council seat in the small town of Elorza in the Venezuelan border state of Apure. Regional news outlet, Infobae, picked up on the news that Bigott’s campaign was unique because he was locally known to be an ELN leader, yet for a time he had the public backing of Venezuela’s leading political party, the PSUV, until the party’s local leadership decided the ELN leader was too much of a liability for the party brand.

Mr. Bigott Portela and his associate, a man known as El Ojón (Big Eyed), ran an extortion ring with local DGCIM operators, who would detain locals and release them once cash payments were secured. When a disagreement surfaced and El Ojón was arrested by some of the same DGCIM team who he had worked with, Mr. Bigott Portela was left alone due to the direct intervention of Grako Arteaga. The two men might have even been friends. Grakeo Arteaga had donated to Mr. Bigott Portela’s campaign a white Toyota Hilux.

Internal DGCIM reports from March 2024 further confirm Col. Grako’s relationship with the ELN, documenting Grako’s name as it consistently surfaced in field reports on drugs trafficking from the Sierra de Perijá to the Caribbean, a known ELN trafficking route. Though Grako was briefly detained he eventually returned to his position. One of the DGCIM generals associated with the report was imprisoned, and all subsequent investigations were dismantled.

Meanwhile, the relationship between the ELN and the Governor of the Venezuelan state of Táchira further details how the Venezuelan government, from national to local, maintains operative and lucrative ties to the former revolutionary organization.

In 2021, Venezuelan politician Freddy Bernal won the election for the governor’s seat in Tachira, after having been appointed by Nicolas Maduro as the “protector of Tachira” in 2017. During the election, the ELN provided support through voter intimidation, opposition suppression, and forced voting. After six years of territorial control in Táchira, the ELN was well positioned to facilitate a win for their chosen candidate.

Now entering their sixth year of business, the ELN-Bernal relationship continues today whereby the ELN provide border control services, monitoring and “taxing” of smuggling routes, political enforcement, and kickbacks on revenue generated from cocaine smuggling and extortion.

In exchange, Bernal provides political protection and a degree of impunity for ELN leadership and operators, some coordination with the broader public security forces, access to state resources for fuel and some machinery, and a safe haven from Colombian government authorities.

For an in-depth review of the ELN's presence in Venezuela, see InSight Crime's excellent work in afive-part series.