Second question: does the “supposed” Cartel de los Soles actually exist?
Before we get to the meat of this article, which is really two articles in one, a quick recap (just in case some readers have been on a news-fast for the past three weeks).
A few months ago, the US government designated the “SUPPOSED” (more on that later) “Cartel de los Soles” as a terrorist organisation, of which Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is its alleged leader — alleged as in according to the US government. In early August, the Trump Administration offered a $50 million reward, up from $25 million, for information leading to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro, accusing Venezuela of being a “narco state.”
Shortly thereafter, the US announced the deployment of a missile cruiser, a submarine, and three amphibious ships carrying 4,500 troops to the Caribbean, under the pretext of intercepting drug trafficking networks. There is no open talk of regime change though that is clearly the goal, as we noted in our post last Friday on the real reasons behind Washington’s latest show of force against Venezuela:
Anyone who believes or supports this latest pretext for war against a country the US has tried to regime change at least twice so far this century and which has been subject to more than a decade of crippling US sanctions is either exceptionally gullible or an apologist for empire.
The most important reason, of course, is oil. As the Mexican-Lebanese geopolitical analyst Alfredo Jalife says, Venezuela, once the “ranchito” of the Rockefeller family, is written with a capital “P” for “petroleo”. Indeed, even as Trump has ratcheted tensions with Venezuela, Chevron is still pumping out Venezuelan oil and shipping it back to the US.
Other possible reasons include Venezuela’s close ties to China, Russia and Iran, the US’ three most important strategic rivals. As we noted in that post, the build-up of troops could also be part of a diversionary tactic as the Trump administration continues to reel from the Epstein scandal. This being Trump, it could also be just pure bluff or bluster. But it could also be the beginnings of something far more serious: another US-led military disaster.
In recent days, the Venezuelan government has mobilised no fewer than four million army reservists to defend “la patria“. Venezuelan Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López announced plans to reinforce the country’s anti-narcotics efforts through the deployment of military vessels and 15,000 troops to patrol the country’s “territorial waters.”
President Maduro said on Monday that all branches of Venezuela’s armed forces were prepared to defend the country. Thousands of civilians joined a voluntary militia enrolment drive in public squares over the past weekend.
At the international level, Venezuela’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations called on member states to demand an end to the US’ “hostile actions”. Some countries in the region, including Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Bolivia, have expressed alarm about the US’ deployment of so much naval hardware so close to Venezuelan waters.
Russia, China and Iran have also voiced their support for Maduro in recent days. China is estimated to have poured around $67 billion into Venezuela since 2007 and has a keen interest in the country’s oil supplies, whose exports have been severely curtailed by US sanctions.
The 11 member nations of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) unanimously condemned the US threat to regional stability. However, other governments in the region have sided with Washington and even offered up their land and waters for US troop movements.
France Joins the Ruckus
France has decided to join the ruckus by sending more ships to Guadeloupe, its overseas territory in the Caribbean. The Macron government claims its naval reinforcements are part of an international cooperation effort to regime change Venezuela against criminal networks in the area, and stressed the need to protect its overseas territories, in particular Guadeloupe and Martinique, which are often used as transit points for drug trafficking to Europe.
The move comes, ironically, as fears of a French government collapse send its borrowing costs soaring. In fact, one thing that all three of Europe’s largest economies, Germany, the UK and France, have in common is their growing financial pains.
Both France and the UK now have higher yields on their ten-year bonds than Spain and Greece, and their is even talk in both countries of the possible need for an IMF bailout. Meanwhile Germany’s Chancellor (and former BlackRock board member) Friedrich Merz has warned that Germany’s welfare state model is no longer sustainable. As Yves would say, quelle surprise!
Something else that unites the three countries is their governments’ determination to expand their military spending, at US insistence, despite their rapidly deteriorating finances. While French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou plans to freeze welfare payments, reduce pensioners’ benefits and abolish two national holidays, the one area where spending will dramatically increase is the military.
As the French government deplores the state of its finances at home, it is sending military vessels to the Caribbean to join the US’ latest act of imperial misadventure. Which invites the question: will other US client and vassal states in Europe and Latin America be doing the same in the coming days and weeks? Is the US trying to build a “coalition of the willing” against Venezuela, just as it did against Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya with such disastrous consequences?
There are certainly moves in that direction. Trinidad and Tobago’s recently elected right-leaning government last week expressed its support for the US naval operation, noting that organized crime and drug trafficking pose a direct threat to the security of the entire Caribbean. Desperate to court favours in Washington, the government also offered up its waters and territory for US operations against Venezuela if Washington requests them — to defend neighbouring Guyana, of course.
The Essequibo Border Dispute
For its part, the Guyanese government has also called for the strengthening of cooperation against transnational organized crime and narco-terrorism, in direct reference to the criminal organisation Cartel of the Suns. The President of Guyana, Irfaan Ali, said last Saturday that his country is willing to take actions to defend its territory and sovereignty in the “new environment”.
This is a reference to the escalating border dispute between Guyana (formerly British Guyana) and Venezuela over the Essequibo, a 160,000 square-kilometre oil-soaked territory that is on track to become Exxon Mobil’s largest single source of revenue by the end of this decade and which the US, unsurprisingly, would like to turn into a military outpost. For Guyana, the huge oil discoveries could end up being as much as curse as a blessing, as the NYT reported last year:
The deal that made [Exxon’s success] ´possible — and which gave Exxon Mobil the bulk of the proceeds — has been a point of public outcry and even a lawsuit, with a seeming consensus that Guyana got the short end of the stick. But the deal has nonetheless generated $3.5 billion so far for the country, more money than it has ever seen, significantly more than it gained from conserving trees. It’s enough to chart a new destiny.
But that new destiny has already included escalating tensions with its much larger neighbour, Venezuela, and risks turning Guyana into another disposable pawn in the furtherance of US geostrategic interests in its direct neighbourhood. As we warned in November 2023, this centuries-old dispute in an oil-rich corner of South America has the potential to become the next geopolitical flashpoint:
Essequibo is not only rich in oil and gas; it boasts other mineral deposits, including Gold and Bauxite, as well as huge fish stocks and fresh water supplies, which a government minister even recently talked about exporting to other countries. As the Commander of US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), General Laura Richardson, said in January, Latin America is home to 31% of the world’s fresh water.
But for the moment, it is Guyana’s vast untapped energy supplies that are of prime interest to US and global corporations. According to U.S. Geological Survey estimates, Guyana’s coastal area has roughly 13.6 billion barrels of oil reserves and 32 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves waiting to be drilled. For a country with one of the lowest population densities on the planet and a GDP of slightly less than $10 billion, a bonanza awaits. But Caracas contends that the untapped energy supplies belong to Venezuela and that the arbitration panel that granted Guyana jurisdiction over Essequibo was rigged.
A Meagre Coalition So Far
So far, four countries in the region have designated the Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organisation: the United States, Ecuador, Paraguay and Argentina. My guess is that Peru will be next in line. Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has already said that she has “not the slightest doubt” that Peru, like other countries in the region, will join this latest US-led charge against the Maduro government.
However, as coalitions go, this one is pretty meagre. One country that is missing is Colombia, which has played a key role in previous regime change attempts, including Juan Guaidó’s risible coup attempt in 2019. However, since the election of left-leaning Gustavo Petro as president in 2022, Colombia has tried to replace its alignment with the US with multilateral relations, even going so far as to join the BRICS’ New Development Bank and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
When Petro took the reins as president, diplomatic ties between Colombia and Venezuela were essentially on hold. Since then relations have gradually been re-established. In recent months Petro has even proposed building a confederation of nations with neighbouring countries (Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama) based on the former Greater Colombia that existed between 1819 and 1931 and comprised the four aforementioned countries.
It will be very interesting to see how Colombia responds to developments in Venezuela. A few days ago, Maduro announced the movement of 15,000 troops to Venezuela’s border with Colombia earlier this week. Then yesterday (Aug 28), Gustavo Petro announced the movement of 25,000 Colombian troops to the other side of that border, which has been greeted positively by the Maduro government.
This border region has long been a focal point of violent clashes between government forces (on both sides), insurgency and paramilitary groups. Lest we forget, Colombia is trying to put behind it 52 years of civil war. However, political violence is once again rearing its ugly head. A few weeks ago, the opposition politician Miguel Uribe finally succumbed to the injuries he sustained in an assassination attempt in mid-June.
In addition, a car bomb was recently set off next to a military base in Cali and a police helicopter downed in the town of Amalfi. In total, 19 people were killed and 65 injured in the two attacks. The car bomb explosion in Cali has been described by local media as the “worst terrorist attack” in the country since 2019, when ELN guerrillas staged a car bomb attack against the General Santander police school, in the south of Bogotá, leaving 21 dead.
Both attacks were attributed to dissident factions of the now-extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. President Petro described what happened as “a day of death.”
One can imagine Petro spending much of his time looking over his shoulder. Colombia is home to at least seven US military bases, and was until recently considered by many, including Hugo Chávez, as the Israel of Latin America. But Petro has tried to change that — first, by building alliances with other Global South countries, and second, by severing ties with Israel over its genocide in Gaza. In the process, he will have made lots of enemies, at home and abroad.
In July, audio recordings were released in which Petro’s former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva could be heard talking about organising a coup against the Petro government. Israel is also stirring the pot, as the veteran journalist Gonzalo Guillén warned in a tweet yesterday,
Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime and the far right in general are promoting an irresponsible and fallacious narrative: that Hezbollah terrorism is hiding on the border between Colombia and Venezuela. This claim, besides being completely unsubstsantiated and absurd, clearly aims to ignite the region and destabilise both countries.
This accusation is entirely baseless and has serious geopolitical implications. They seek to generate chaos, confrontation, and destruction.
Does the Cartel de los Soles Actually Exist?
This is a question NC reader Veronius asked in a comment to our previous post on Venezuela.
According to Gustavo Petro, the answer is a definitive “no”.
“It is the fictitious excuse used by the far right to overthrow governments that do not obey them,” Petro wrote on X earlier this week. In so doing, he opened up an intriguing can of worms. According to US government agencies, there is more than sufficient evidence tying senior Venezuelan army commanders and senior members of the Maduro government to drug trafficking.
But not everyone agrees. Even the former Venezuelan presidential candidate Enrique Capriles, who is certainly no friend of the Maduro government, has said in an interview with CNN (see below) that the US government needs to back up its claims with evidence.
We, Venezuelans, don’t know who is part of the Cartel de los Soles. I don’t have any information on that. I can’t provide it and I think the United States needs to present the evidence. Such a serious accusation requires putting the proof on the table. Who are the members of the Cartel de los Soles? Who runs it, where does it operate? But not just in rhetoric, show the evidence.
La extrema derecha venezolana desplegó una campaña de acoso y derribo contra Henrique Capriles porque pide algo de sentido común: mostrar las pruebas de ese supuesto Cartel de los Soles, quiénes operan y dónde. “De una acusación tan grave, hay que poner las pruebas sobre la mesa” https://t.co/NzSUUezGiA
— Karen Méndez (@Karenmendezl) August 29, 2025
If the Cartel de los Soles does indeed exist, one thing is clear: it is not nearly as big a player in the global drugs trade as the Trump administration is making out — and certainly not as big a player as the US government itself. As we noted in our previous post, the US is arguably the largest enabler of drug trafficking organisations on the planet:
[This it does] while waging a Global War on Drugs, just as it has been arguably the largest supporter of Islamist terrorist organisations while waging a Global War on Terror. Both types of organisations have proven to be useful allies in the pursuance of US imperial ambitions (e.g. the Colombian and Mexican cartels during Nicaragua’s Contra insurgency in the 1980s, or the Al Qaeda offshoots in Syria) while also serving as handy pretexts for military intervention.
It has already been called “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history.” Armed with little more than sticks, teams of counter-narcotics brigades travel the country, doing something the US military never could, cutting down Afghanistan’s poppy fields. pic.twitter.com/LcAFqA317a
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) August 7, 2023
According to the official narrative, shaped over the past decade by US government agencies and Western media, the Cartel de los Soles is a loose-knit network of Venezuelan generals and politicians that are involved in drug trafficking, in alliance with Colombian and Mexican cartels. The organisation came into existence some time in the ’90s when army officials began taking kickbacks from Colombian cartels.
The name “Cartel of Suns” allegedly comes from the emblems that looked like suns on the generals’ uniforms. To date, the US has prosecuted two Venezuelan generals on charges related to drug trafficking. In the most recent case, Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, the former head of military intelligence in Venezuela during Hugo Chávez’s government, last month pled guilty to trafficking cocaine to the US in a narcoterrorism conspiracy.
As the journalist Antonio Maria Delgado reported in the Miami Herald, Carvajal also claims to have evidence about Venezuela’s involvement with Iran and Colombia’s FARC, espionage within the US, and Maduro’s ties with the Tren de Aragua gang, which serves as a “paramilitary arm of the state” and which has also been designated by the US as a terrorist organisation. However, Delgado notes, “Carvajal has a history of shifting loyalties and politically motivated statements”.
Of course, the idea of army generals taking kickbacks from drug trafficking organisations is totally believable. It happens all over the world. Whether in Mexico, Afghanistan, Myanmar or Colombia, wherever large volumes of drugs are being cultivated, processed, or distributed, rest assured that some (often senior) army officers are getting a cut of the action for looking the other way, or even for helping with the distribution.
A perfect case in point:
“Tim told me about basically a gang … a drug-trafficking organization within the military,” made up of “an unspoken group of soldiers that policed themselves.”
Inside Fort Bragg’s Secret Cartel and Unsolved Murders: https://t.co/ZSgmHIFaZN https://t.co/Fqfqg9RZbq pic.twitter.com/HsspVifLCv
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) July 28, 2025
As Venezuela Analysis notes, reports from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) itself state that less than 10% of US-bound cocaine flowed through Venezuela and the Eastern Caribbean corridor:
A 2020 document from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) by Venezuelan government critics Geoff Ramsey and David Smilde concluded that the country “is not a primary transit country for US-bound cocaine” and that the bulk of drug shipments reach US territory via Washington-allied countries in Central America.
In more recent years, Ecuador has become a major transit point for cocaine, with some reports suggesting that as much as 70% of the global cocaine supply passes through the country.
Curiously, the Cartel de los Soles does not merit a single mention in the DEA’s National Drug Threat Assessment from last year. Nor is it mentioned in previous editions I’ve checked. Even in the 2025 edition, which was written under the Trump administration, “Cartel de los Soles” does not appear once. If the organisation is such a threat, why doesn’t it feature once in the DEA’s threat assessment?
The European Drug Report 2025, based on real data and not on geopolitical interests, does not mention Venezuela once as an international drug trafficking route. Even more damning is an article by Pino Arlacci, the former Director of UNODC, the UN agency on drugs and crime. Here is a brief excerpt, though the article is well worth reading in its entirety (if you don’t speak Spanish, use a machine translator):
During my tenure as Director of UNODC, the UN agency on drugs and crime, I was in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, but I never visited Venezuela. There was simply no need. The Venezuelan government’s cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking was one of the best in South America; it can be compared only to Cuba’s impeccable record. This fact, in Trump’s delusional narrative of “Venezuela as a narco-state,” sounds like a geopolitically motivated slander.
But the data, published in the 2025 World Drug Report of the organization I had the honor of leading, tell an opposite story to the one spread by the Trump administration.
A story that dismantles piece by piece the geopolitical framework built around the “Cartel of the Suns”, an entity as legendary as the Loch Ness Monster, but apt to justify sanctions, embargoes and threats of military intervention against a country that, coincidentally, is located on one of the largest oil reserves on the planet…
The Fantastic Cartel of the Suns: Hollywood-style fiction
The “Cartel of the Suns” is a creation of Trump’s imagination. It is supposedly led by the president of Venezuela, but it is not mentioned in the report of the world’s main anti-drug agency, nor in the documents of any European agency or almost any other anti-crime agency in the world. Not even a footnote. A deafening silence, which should make anyone who even has a minimum of critical thinking reflect. How can such a powerful criminal organization, deserving of a $50 million bounty, be completely ignored by those working in the anti-drug field?…
Ecuador: The Real Center No One Wants to See
While Washington is stirring up the issue of Venezuela, the real centers of drug trafficking prosper almost undisturbed. In Ecuador, for example, 57% of the containers of bananas that leave Guayaquil arrive in Belgium loaded with cocaine.
European authorities seized 13 tons of cocaine from a Spanish ship coming from Ecuadorian ports, controlled by companies protected by Ecuadorian government officials. The European Union produced a detailed report on the ports of Guayaquil, which describes how “Colombian, Mexican and Albanian mafias operate extensively in Ecuador.” The homicide rate in this country has skyrocketed from 7.8 per 100 thousand inhabitants in 2020 to 45.7 in 2023. But little is said about it. Perhaps because Ecuador produces only 0.5% of the world’s oil and because its government does not have a bad habit of challenging US dominance in Latin America?
Lastly, something else that caught my eye during my research for this article was Wikipedia’s Spanish-language page on the Cartel de los Soles. On Google Search, the blurb below the title, which should match the first line or two of text on the corresponding Wikipedia page, reads as follows, or at least did so yesterday (translation and emphasis my own):
The Cartel de los Soles is a supposed criminal and terrorist organisation led, according to the President of the United States, by senior military officers…
In other words, even Wikipedia was still expressing doubts about its existence until a couple of days ago, and the claim that the “supposed” cartel is led by Venezuelan senior military officers is sourced directly from the US government.
However, if you click on the link, here’s what you now see:
Translation (emphasis my own): The Cartel of the Suns is an illicit, criminal, and terrorist organization headed by high-ranking members of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces since the 1990s, according to some media outlets,[1] whose objective is primarily cocaine trafficking,[2] fuel smuggling,[3][4] control of illegal mining activity in several states of Venezuela, with direct participation in the extraction and smuggling of gold, coltan, precious stones and other minerals. [5]
In other words, not only has the qualifier “supposed” been edited out of the text, expelling all doubt from readers’ minds, but also the reference to the president of the United States as the primary source for the claim that the “supposed” cartel is led by senior military commanders of Venezuela’s armed forces. In its place as the new source for this information is “some media outlets”.
And just like that, with a couple of minor tweaks to the text, all doubt is removed from the reader’s unsuspecting mind. And that, it seems, is one way that consent for US military operations is manufactured in today’s digital world.
