Rubio Says Maduro is Terrorist-in-Chief of Venezuela’s “Cártel de los Soles.” Is It Even a Real Group?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio released this week his intention to declare the so-called C rtel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organization ratcheting up the Trump administration s pressure campaign against Venezuela In a declaration Sunday Rubio described an organized cabal of Venezuelan military officers and politicians working hand in glove with drug traffickers to oversee the shipment of massive quantities of cocaine to American shores all overseen and managed by President Nicol s Maduro Based in Venezuela the Cartel de los Soles is headed by Nicol s Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela s military intelligence legislature and judiciary Rubio noted The announcement came months after the Treasury Department issued its own sanctions against the group known in English as the Cartel of the Suns which it accused in July of using the flood of illegal narcotics as a weapon against the United States It s a troubling image a state captured by ideologically motivated drug lords hell-bent on the destruction of the American way of life Rubio s push to label Maduro and his allies as terrorists though is just the latest escalation in the Trump administration s fusion of America s two forever wars the war on drugs and the war on terror Related Secret Boat Strike Memo Justifies Killings By Claiming the Target Is Drugs Not People Since February the State Department has slapped the foreign terror organization label on more nearly a dozen street gangs and drug-trafficking networks across Latin America and Trump has used the highly fungible phrase narcoterrorists to justify a series of dubiously legal strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela There s just one giant issue There is little evidence that Cartel of the Suns exists The organized communist plot to poison Americans with drugs doesn t remotely resemble the reality of Venezuelan corruption or the country s drug bargain The idea that this is a narcoterrorist cartel and that Maduro is directing the traffic and sending drugs and dangerous criminals to the U S to undermine the U S establishment that s really wide of the mark declared Phil Gunson a Caracas-based analyst with the International Emergency Group The war on drugs is not really about drugs To critics of American drug procedures abroad the move against Cartel of the Suns is the latest display of how the U S uses anti-drug policies as a smokescreen to bully its neighbors The war on drugs is not really about drugs commented Alexander Avi a a professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University It s a way of extending the U S s geopolitical interests and a way to hit at governments deemed to be antithetical to imperial designs How Corruption Works References to the C rtel de los Soles date back to the s when local reporters used the term to refer to a handful of generals in the Venezuelan National Guard accused of collusion in the drug business according to Gunson who has lived and worked in the country since A former journalist Gunson also happens to be a co-author of a Miami Herald article that appears to be one of the earliest English-language reports to use the name It was kind of a jokey label explained Gunson The press started calling it C rtel de los Soles because of the sun insignias on their epaulets Like plenty of countries around the world corruption runs rampant in Venezuela It s pretty well known and accepted in Venezuela that the regime has been collaborating with drug traffickers and other criminal organizations in the country reported Jos De Bastos a Venezuelan journalist based in Washington That corruption took on a new intensity during the reign of Maduro who was elected in as the handpicked successor to Hugo Chavez the left-wing populist whose -year rule transformed the country When falling oil prices capital flight and U S sanctions tanked the financial market however regime involvement with criminal rackets emerged as a form of patronage revenue and control Since before the beginning of Chavismo there s been corruption in the military accepting bribes and allowing criminal groups to move in certain areas De Bastos reported Basically the authorities needed other sources of income and illicit exercises gained importance It s not just drug trafficking It s minerals it s oil you know a lot of things are moved illicitly Rubio and other authorities notion of a unified government-cartel conspiracy that can be sanctioned however is a far cry from the way these interactions function A overview by the research outlet Insight Crime describes a fluid and loose knit system of trafficking cells embedded within the Venezuelan measure forces facilitated protected and sometimes directed by political actors The administration plays a key role De Bastos noted but it s more like a patchwork of networks that take advantage of having the leadership as an ally in their illicit pursuits Gunning for Maduro The effort by the U S to position Maduro as Venezuela s drug lord-in-chief began in earnest during Trump s first term in office when in federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York unveiled an indictment naming Maduro as the leader of the Cartel of the Suns One of the prosecutors on that squad was Emil Bove a right-wing Trump loyalist who before becoming a federal judge in September served as the acting deputy attorney general During his fresh stint at the Justice Department Bove mentioned he was uninterested in arresting drug traffickers urging the U S to instead just sink the boats according to a assessment by NPR Maduro has denied any connection to drug trafficking and has cited United Nations information showing that only a tiny fraction of the global cocaine supply passes through Venezuela Related Episode Six Airborne Imperialism Venezuela has never been a major producer of cocaine the majority of which is grown and produced in Colombia Ecuador and Peru Nor does Venezuela rank as a particularly critical transshipment point for the drug about percent of which is estimated to make its way north through smuggling routes in the Pacific according to one Drug Enforcement Administration record By the mid- s after Chavez expelled the DEA U S leaders estimated that around metric tons of cocaine were smuggled through Venezuela each year small in comparison with its neighbors but enough to generate critical income for functionaries paid to protect the shipments In the years after his electoral process Maduro s rule was marked by several drug-related scandals The State Department and the Pentagon however have long been happy to look the other way when state-allied drug traffickers happen to align with their foreign plan and safeguard priorities You can t pin them down but you can accuse almost anyone of being part of it U S -backed warlords churned out record amounts of opium and heroin in Afghanistan throughout the U S war there And closer to home Honduran President Juan Orlando Hern ndez who cooperated with Trump s efforts to staunch the flow of expatriates to the U S was left largely alone as he turned Honduras into a haven of drug traffickers Hernandez was eventually convicted on drug trafficking charges in the same federal court where Maduro was indicted but the U S did not move against him until he was out of office Neither the announcement by Rubio nor the State Department sanctions against the cartel in July name specific members beyond its alleged leader Maduro That lack of a defined structure however may be exactly why it makes it useful as the latest pressure point in the Trump administration s campaign to unseat Maduro according to Gunson It s this sort of vaporous thing that floats in the ether with no domicile no email address he declared They don t have board meetings or present quarterly reports so you can t pin them down but you can accuse almost anyone of being part of it The post Rubio Says Maduro is Terrorist-in-Chief of Venezuela s C rtel de los Soles Is It Even a Real Group appeared first on The Intercept