Washington went ahead with the designation of Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization responsible for “violence throughout our hemisphere” and drug trafficking into the United States and Europe.
The designation, which takes effect on Monday (24), is part of a pressure campaign by the Donald Trump administration against Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, the alleged leader of the cartel.
“The Cartel de los Soles is one of the largest criminal organizations in the (Western) Hemisphere,” said Marco Rubio, Secretary of State.
Named after the small yellow suns used by senior officers in the Venezuelan armed forces to indicate their ranks, the cartel will be designated by the United States alongside major Mexican criminal groups, such as the Sinaloa Cartel.
What is Venezuela’s role in drug trafficking?
Most experts agree that the Venezuelan regime profits from cocaine production and trafficking.
Most of the cocaine goes from its largest producer – Colombia – directly to Central America and Mexico on its way to the United States, but a significant amount passes through Venezuela, with the Caracas regime and its military taking a share, former US and Venezuelan officials said.
US authorities began legal proceedings against high-ranking members of the Venezuelan armed forces in 2011. Former Caracas military intelligence chief Hugo “El Polo” Carvajal was accused of conspiring with Colombian Marxist rebels to send 5.6 tons of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico for later distribution in the United States. Carvajal later pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
The term “Cartel de los Soles” appears to have been coined by Venezuelan journalists in the early 2000s to describe the military’s involvement in drug trafficking. It was used publicly by US authorities in a 2019 indictment.
Jeremy McDermott, a Colombia-based expert whose organization InSight Crime has studied the Cartel de los Soles for 15 years, says it is not a vertically integrated organization like other cartels: “It has always been clear that it is drug trafficking rooted in the state, with an emphasis on the military, where it all started.”
The Venezuelan armed forces began profiting from drug trafficking in the early 2000s. After mass anti-Chavista protests in 2015, Maduro realized he needed new ways to maintain the loyalty of troops, whose official salaries had become nearly worthless as the economy collapsed, McDermott said.
“So it creates what we call hybrid criminal governance, where (…) it gives state elements full blessing and incentive to ally with criminal elements to access illicit income,” he said.
Who runs the cartel?
The US government says the Cartel de los Soles is run by Maduro and has offered a record reward of $50 million for information leading to his arrest.
An indictment filed in New York during Trump’s first administration accuses Maduro, his current Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, and other senior Venezuelan officials of working with Colombian rebels to send cocaine to the United States.
The Biden administration increased the rewards for the capture of Maduro and Cabello in January 2020, aiming to highlight the criminal nature of the regime and emphasize that its leaders are accused drug traffickers – a sign that Democrats approved drug trafficking charges against Caracas.
However, some experts question the cartel’s existence as an organized organization led by Maduro and his key allies.
They say that although the Venezuelan military allows cocaine to be shipped through some areas of the country, especially border areas near Colombia, and oversees some cocaine production within Venezuela, everything is more disorganized.
“The idea that Maduro, when he is not president, would go into a secret room in Miraflores (the presidential palace) to run the Cartel de los Soles seems ridiculous to me,” says Tom Shannon, a former senior US State Department official. “Venezuela is not a caricature, and it is wrong to underestimate the government’s determination and capabilities.”
Maduro dismissed accusations of links between senior Venezuelan officials and drug cartels as “the worst fake news” in a letter to Trump in early September. He said that the accusations were made “to justify the escalation of the armed conflict that would cause catastrophic damage to the entire continent.”
How big is the drug threat from Venezuela to the United States?
The main sources of illicit drugs entering the United States are Mexico, in the case of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, and Colombia, in the case of cocaine. Venezuela is not known to produce or ship fentanyl, but it is an important transit country for Colombian cocaine.
Exact numbers are difficult to come by, but McDermott says he would be surprised if less than 400 tons of cocaine pass through Venezuela annually, although most of that amount is destined for Europe. For comparison, total cocaine production in Colombia was estimated at 2,660 tons in 2023, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Former US officials say what makes Venezuela different from other Latin American countries is the degree of state control and involvement in the drug trade.
The Cartel de los Soles is a more controversial construct. It is not mentioned alongside other major Latin American drug groups in annual threat reports issued by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, but it has played a central role in the Trump administration’s rhetoric on Venezuela.
Why did the United States designate the Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization?
The State Department designation, combined with a previous executive order from the Treasury Department, allows for sweeping U.S. economic sanctions, such as confiscating the assets of alleged cartel members and imposing fines on people who do business with them.
Some analysts believe the White House wants to go further, noting that Trump has publicly said he believes Maduro is a “narco-terrorist” leading an illegitimate government — language that could be used to justify a targeted assassination or arrest.
Trump sent the largest US naval task force to the Caribbean since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, saying the move was part of his war on drugs. The fleet includes the most advanced aircraft carrier in the US Navy and ships used to deploy special forces.
The US President likened the war on drugs to the war on terrorism that Washington launched in the early 2000s. He began using similar tactics, ordering drone attacks on boats that the United States says were transporting cocaine, killing their passengers.
Trump could also order the military task force to launch strikes against targets inside Venezuela that the United States believes are being used to produce or traffic cocaine. Marxist Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas, who operate drug manufacturing facilities on the Venezuelan border, may be a potential target.