Caracas Chronicles

#NowWhatVenezuela keeps you informed about what’s happening deep inside la patria—from headline-making events to underreported stories that provide the clearest picture of our reality. This digest is published weekly.

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The mystery of Major General Tremont and jet YV3217

Since June 3rd, a cloud of rumors, disinformation, and official propaganda has formed around the crash of a jet that took off from Maiquetía en route to Margarita. Theories about who the presumed victims were have many biting their nails and scrolling through Twitterzuela gossip about stolen cocaine shipments and betrayals to Diosdado Cabello. Every now and then, chavismo puts on a new show that only seems to feed the intrigue, without any official addressing the events in explicit terms.

The main character of this drama is Major General José Luis Tremont Jiménez. Here, we try to separate the wheat from the chaff—to sort out where the information is coming from and what we can conclude, at least for now.

For nearly two years, Tremont Jiménez has led the Comprehensive Aerospace Defense Command (CODAI), the CEOFANB branch responsible for controlling and monitoring the Venezuelan airspace. It’s not a minor position, and Tremont is clearly not just anyone. Before this post, he coordinated CEOFANB’s air operations—making him likely the person most familiar with what and who flies across the skies of Venezuela.

We know all this thanks to the X account of Domingo Hernández Lárez, the CEOFANB chief and one of the two most powerful men in Venezuela’s armed forces alongside Vladimir Padrino. The former hasn’t hidden his admiration for Tremont. In October 2022, he praised him as a man leading the military operation after the Las Tejerías tragedy. A month later, he wished him a happy birthday calling him the “warrior of the skies.” When Tremont was appointed to CODAI, Hernández Lárez referred to him as “an upright and loyal man” with the sacred mission of securing the nation’s airspace.

The saga appears to begin on June 4th, when the transport minister announced that the Citation C550 aircraft, registration YV3217, had gone missing the night before at 7:57 pm. The Venezuelan state launched a search operation, according to the statement, which said three passengers were on board. On June 5th, the National Institute of Civil Aviation (INAC, under the Transport Ministry) reported that the coast guard had found parts of the jet’s fuselage, human remains, and documents belonging to the two pilots.

That same day, the Instagram account Aviación Venezolana claimed to have “confirmed information” not reported by the authorities: that four of the five people on board were captain Charles Cordero and co-pilot Miguel Linares, as well as Milagros Salazar and Ana Karina Tremont Salazar—Tremont’s wife and daughter.

From that point, rumors began to circulate that regime insiders had brought down the YV3217 to eliminate Tremont and his family. The theory was that Tremont had broken ranks with the regime and the cartel embedded within the armed forces, and was trying to flee the country with his wife and daughter from Margarita. The most detailed version of this theory comes from Ibéyise Pacheco, who claimed that Tremont—the “most wanted man of the moment”—had stolen a massive shipment of cocaine, loaded it onto the jet, and planned his escape. But, according to her, neither Tremont, his wife, nor his daughter were actually on board. The crash, she alleges, was a ruse to disappear without a trace.

This theory was further fueled by a government spectacle on June 9th, announcing the seizure of 1,500 kilograms of cocaine in La Guaira and the arrest of eight fishermen. According to Pacheco, these men had come across the floating packages while out at sea in their fishing boats, near Maiquetía. She also tries to link the search for the missing cargo to a deployment of the National Guard in El Morro, Sucre state, where Maduro claimed they were searching for mercenaries and weapons infiltrated from Trinidad. However, according to El Pitazo, that operation started on June 2nd—before the YV3217 took off for Margarita.

On June 12th, the regime tried to put an end to the rumors and debunk Pacheco’s theory. Major General Tremont appeared in a video alongside Elio Estrada Paredes, the head of the National Guard, who spoke of a “cognitive war” and “journalists funded by drug trafficking” trying to sow doubt within the armed forces. “Here stands a soldier who will remain at his post,” says Tremont at the end of the video, calling himself “a man of faith.”

Madelein García, the Telesur reporter and prominent regime propagandist, echoed the same statement and referred to the painful loss of Tremont’s wife and daughter—marking the first time someone close to chavismo acknowledged that the two had died. On the daughter’s Instagram account, friends and acquaintances mourn her death in the comments under her final posts.

There’s no doubt that the episode is bizarre and many questions remain. There has been no official statement expressing condolences for Tremont’s family losses, nor has the state confirmed that his wife and daughter were on board. Neither Estrada Paredes nor Tremont commented on the crash itself, which remains the centerpiece of the story and the only development all sides agree on. There are no explanations, no evidence, and no clarifications—so it’s natural that speculation continues to build. The arrest of eight fishermen, now accused of being drug traffickers and allegedly found with 1.5 tons of cocaine, strains credulity. Their families have been telling local media that it was they who alerted police when they found the drugs and the plane wreckage floating in the water.

Chávez-era minister and chavista dissident arrested

After having his electricity cut off and being summoned to a Corpoelec office in Maracaibo, former minister and economist Rodrigo Cabezas was detained by SEBIN, CLIPPVE reported on Thursday night.

Cabezas has been critical of the Maduro regime since 2018, when he denounced the state’s denial of hyperinflation in this BBC Mundo interview. In 2016, according to open sources, he still sat on the National Council for Productive Economy and served as the ruling party’s international vice president. In recent years, he founded Zulia Humana, a regional movement that identifies as a progressive, humanist breakaway from chavismo. In 2024, Zulia Humana supported María Corina Machado’s campaign and Edmundo González’s presidential candidacy.

Cabezas served as Minister of Finance under Hugo Chávez from 2007 to 2008. Before that, he was a congressman—first in the now-defunct National Congress representing Zulia from 1990 to 1998, and then in the chavista-majority National Assembly from 2000 to 2006, where he chaired the Finance Committee.

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