The U.S. government has increased its charges against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Today, they accuse him of being one of the key players in the most infamous oil producing country’s drug trafficking organization called the “Cartel de los Soles.” This designation followed on the heels of the Trump administration’s periodical listing of the organization as a terrorist group. These claims charge high-ranking figures within the Venezuelan government with aiding the transport of cocaine. Maduro himself is deeply involved in this complicated drug trafficking system. With the rhetorical temperature rising alongside tensions between Washington and Caracas, the evidence supporting these claims—or reinforcing their baselessness—is a question of justifiable debate.
Hugo Carvajal, the former chief of intelligence for socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, makes an October 29 sentencing date. Rosado-Martinez has been indicted for drug trafficking and terrorism. He had already pled guilty to wanting to import cocaine into the U.S. and narco-terrorism charges. These legal proceedings raise tricky questions about the Venezuelan government’s reported involvement in drug trafficking. In particular, they hail the Miraflores presidential palace, which may have served as a cocaine trafficking center for over a decade.
Background of the Allegations
The idea that such a Venezuelan DTO exists has broken into the mainstream in U.S. discourse. Pam Bondi, the U.S. Attorney General, announced a large reward of $50 million for information that results in Maduro being arrested. She grounded this announcement in the formal statutory drug trafficking charges brought by the Justice Department in 2020. The U.S. Treasury Department has identified the “Cartel de los Soles” as a foreign terrorist organization. This designation provides American forces with greater leeway to act against suspected members of the claimed network.
Despite these bellicose claims from U.S. spokespeople, disbelief remains about whether a military command like this really exists. Researcher Phil Gunson from the International Crisis Group stated, “Cartel de los Soles, per se, doesn’t exist. It’s a journalistic expression created to refer to the involvement of Venezuelan authorities in drug trafficking.” This claim would suggest that actors at the individual level can engage in illicit drug behavior. The theory of a single, nationwide cartel doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
Deepening this skepticism, Blanca Eekhout, a Venezuelan congresswoman, commented on the hypocrisy of suddenly designating Venezuela a drug cartel. In order for there to be a drug cartel, you either grow (the drugs), you refine it or you move it. And if there is no drug cultivation, production, or trafficking in Venezuela then how could Venezuela have a cartel? It’s unsustainable,” she argued. Yet her comments go to the heart of the complexities over what drug trafficking from Venezuela is, or more accurately, what drug trafficking from Venezuela is NOT.
Current Drug Trafficking Landscape
Taken together, the geographic scale of Latin America drug trafficking paints a complex picture. Despite this, Venezuela ranks only sixth on the Latin American leaderboard for cocaine seizures, achieving less than 2% of overall regional cocaine seizures. The current Venezuelan government has been accused of aiding in the transport of up to 250 tons of cocaine annually. This number does not hold up under scrutiny when we look at worldwide trafficking numbers. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), approximately 3,700 tons of cocaine are trafficked worldwide each year.
Today, Colombia is still the world’s largest producer of coca, which produces more than 2,500 tons a year—the key ingredient for cocaine. Curiously, Venezuela is absent from UNODC’s most recent coca cultivation maps as a notable producer. Most Colombian cocaine continues to be trafficked north along the Colombian Pacific coast, not through Venezuela. This leads to some fundamental questions on the logistics and practicality of directly linking major drug trafficking networks to Maduro’s government.
Recently, US Attorney General Bill Barr has claimed that the Venezuelan government is now responsible for cocaine transportation. Analysts and government officials have widely disputed much of this information. They contend that without a strong production base in Venezuela, declaring Maduro’s regime a drug cartel isn’t worth much.
Escalation of Tensions
As furtherance of this unfortunate series of events, military tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela have increased sharply in recent weeks. As military buildup U.S. warships In response to increased allegations of human rights abuses by Maduro’s administration, the U.S. has deployed at least seven warships to the southern Caribbean. This military posture is part of a larger strategy by Washington to continue to intensify pressure on Caracas during the decline of diplomatic relations.
These changes come at a time of deeper transformation in U.S.-Venezuelan relations, since the start of Donald Trump’s presidency. A U.S. government official noted, “Donald Trump came to the White House as a president of peace, and the drumbeat from some sectors of the Venezuelan opposition and congressmen from South Florida doesn’t fit with the president’s message.” Unfortunately, this statement reflects the overall lack of nuance in U.S. foreign policy towards Venezuela. It’s an important case study of how internal political dynamics can shape external political action.
The story behind Maduro’s purported drug trafficking connections is much more of a developing story. This is all happening as legal action against people like Carvajal persists and as geopolitical tensions escalate between Venezuela and the countries surrounding it. The debate surrounding the existence and influence of organizations like “Cartel de los Soles” will likely continue as both sides present their arguments.
