"We play rugby to transform lives": the sport that dismantled 11 criminal gangs in Venezuela

The boys prepare, stretch and warm up before the game.

Some bandage their shoulders, others their knees, and a few put on a mouth guard.

On this October afternoon, the Auditorium of the University City of Madrid is the setting where two rugby teams and three social projects come together through a friendly match.

The objective is to exchange knowledge and experiences on the impact of this sport as a tool for social reintegration, meeting and violence prevention.

"We play to transform lives," says José Arrieta, one of the founders of the Alcatraz project.

El Gordo, as he is called in sports, talks about the more than 200 young members of criminal gangs in the municipality of Revenga, in Venezuela, who managed to turn their lives around thanks to sports.

Although Arrieta is the first line of the Venezuelan club Alcatraz Rugby Club, this day he will defend the black and white striped shirt of the invited team, Orquídeas Negras, which brings together former players of the Venezuelan rugby team and who, affected by the crisis in their country, They have decided to emigrate to Europe.

While preparing, Arrieta reviews the origins of the Alcatraz project, in 2003, when a group of young people he himself led were captured by the police after robbing the Santa Teresa Hacienda —a rum producer—, there in Revenga.

“We had two options: go to jail or do community work.

We chose the second.

They trained me to work, but above all I learned to play rugby and I went from being a negative leader to having a virtuous leadership”, he recalls.

José Arrieta 'El Gordo' during the friendly match between the teams Orquídeas Negras and Club de Rugby Cisneros, at the University City, in Madrid, on October 30. Jaime Villanueva

The field is the space where Arrieta's gang and ten other criminal gangs found a place to meet, stop being enemies and start living as a team.

What began with two rival gangs, has managed to spread until dismantling, in 2021, the last one in the city: number 11. "We all fought for our leadership, but rugby helped us break those circles of revenge," says Arrieta .

For this reason, this initiative intervenes in all the members of each group, so that, through unpaid community work, they can restore the social damage generated in their neighborhoods.

There are three months of isolation in which each young person receives psychological assistance, training in values ​​and rugby, and preparation to enter the labor sector.

This is what is called restorative justice.

Now, Revenga differs from the rest of the country's cities, where baseball is the predominant sport, but also by reducing its homicide rates and the presence of criminal gangs.

Only during 2003, when the project was born, Venezuela was positioned as one of the countries with very high levels of violence, which exceeded up to three times the world rate, according to the World Health Organization and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. .

In the same part of the field, Luis Daniel López, the captain of Alcatraz Rugby Club, plays.

He is wide-eyed, analyzes the other team's strategy, but does not compete against them.

"Even though we don't score a single try (it's the way to score points in rugby) we've already won, because we've put the lives of those young people on the right track," he recounts.

Luis Daniel López, the captain of Alcatraz Rugby Club, at the top of the Touch (throw-in), during the friendly match between Orquídeas Negras and Club de Rugby Cisneros, at Ciudad Universitaria in Madrid, on October 30, 2022Jaime Villanueva

This change not only managed to break up gangs without a shot, but it extended to the community.

Four years after the formation of the rugby team, the Santa Teresa Foundation, which leads the project, decided to extend it to children, with a clear idea: to prevent school dropouts and prevent the appearance of new groups of delinquents.

Thus, in nearly a decade and a half of work, 2,000 children from the most remote communities have been linked to this sport.

“We encourage them to continue studying.

If they attend school in the morning, we spend rugby in the afternoon”, specifies the captain of Alcatraz Rugby Club.

And he adds: “Before they saw young people with guns, and they wanted to walk around with them;

now they see us with balls and want to play rugby”.

900 inmates and prison rugby

Suddenly, the playing field of the Auditorium of the University City of Madrid is filled with joy, shouts of support and the whistle of the referee signals the start of the game.

Another Alcatraz takes the ball, is Ramón Ruiz, former community rugby coordinator.

This national team player now dedicates his time to another of the Fundación Santa Teresa's axes: prison rugby, which currently brings together more than 900 inmates from 37 prisons in the country, 14 of which are for women.

And it is precisely this project that managed to connect the desires of the Cisneros Foundation, of Spain, and that of Santa Teresa, of Venezuela.

Ramón Ruiz, in charge of the prison rugby project at Fundación Santa Teresa, analyzes the new game strategies, during the friendly match, at Ciudad Universitaria in Madrid, on October 30, 2022. Jaime Villanueva

“We wanted to learn from the work model that the Santa Teresa Foundation has with the inmates of Venezuela and we found that this was only the tip of the iceberg,” says Manuel Sayagués, the president of the Cisneros Foundation of the Complutense University of Madrid.

This curiosity to transform lives through sport prompted 12 young people from the Complutense Cisneros Rugby Club to travel to Revenga to learn about the social projects that take place there.

“We were not aware of the true social transformation of Fundación Santa Teresa.

We only knew about the work they do in prisons and we have realized that through an idea and work the future of many people can be transformed ”, he assures.

Now Cisneros is the host that for a month has welcomed the three representatives of the Venezuelan project.

Gabriel Álvarez, manager of the Alcatraz Foundation and Project, tells, through a phone call, that this link between both organizations seeks to exchange experiences based on the strengths of each one.

On the one hand, the Santa Teresa Foundation provides training on the implementation of social projects with a global impact;

meanwhile, the Cisneros Foundation provides training on game management and techniques.

The ball falls on both sides of the field and the athletes play as one body.

And that is what they seek: unity in difference.

“Each person goes through their own problems, but we try to give these young people a second chance.

If you fall, the team picks you up.

In rugby, no one stands out on its own, they are a team and they function as such”, points out Juan Pedro Brolese, the coordinator of the joint work between the Santa Teresa and Cisneros Foundations.

Orquídeas Negras, where three representatives of the Alcatraz Rugby Club project play, and the Cisneros team face off in a friendly match at Ciudad Universitaria in Madrid on October 30, 2022.Jaime Villanueva

Both teams add points and the game concludes with very close results: 38-29, with Orquídeas Negras in the lead.

“Orquídeas Negras has made the power of its strikers stand out, while Cisneros has developed an open and fast game,” says Brolese, who has been playing since he was four years old and lives the passion for this sport.

The players shake hands, congratulate each other.

"Everyone has won because we have opened the doors of new initiatives that will continue to transform the lives of new generations," reflects Álvarez.

And he clarifies that the base is given in the values ​​of rugby: respect, teamwork, discipline, humility and sportsmanship.

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