The United States has moved several navy ships and thousands of troops near the Venezuelan waters. Trump administration states that this military reinforcement aims to combat Venezuela drugs to the US.
This week, the situation took a drastic course. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday (2) that, which, he said, was carrying drugs from Venezuela. Trump posted a video that, he said, showed the attack. The Venezuelan government claimed, without presenting evidence, that the video was created with artificial intelligence.
US officials claim that Venezuelan cocaine shipments contribute to overdose deaths in the country and that cocaine is often mixed with fentanil. They accuse the autocratic leader Nicolás Maduro of commanding a narcotics cartel.
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Maduro, at a news conference on Monday in Caracas, called the naval reinforcement “the biggest threat our continent has seen in the last 100 years.”
What exactly is Venezuela’s role in drug trafficking? And Maduro has calls with this illicit trade?
Venezuela does not produce much cocaine, but helps transport it around the world
Venezuela is not a major cocaine producer, but it acts as a traffic center for the drug. The long and porous border with Colombia – the world’s largest producer – and its extensive coast give traffickers access to global markets.
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Fragile state institutions and widespread corruption have consolidated this trade. US accusations and hollow Colombian documents describe Venezuelan security forces as responsible for controlling drug shipments worth billions of dollars.
US estimates in 2020 indicated that between 200 and 250 cocaine metric tons are over the Venezuela annually – about 10% to 13% of global supply.
But other countries play a much larger role in cocaine transport. In 2018, 1,400 cocaine metric tons passed through Guatemala, show American data. And the domestic cocaine cultivation in Venezuela is insignificant, experts said.
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Unlike Mexican cartels, Venezuelan gangs depend more on local extortion than trafficking to generate money, according to David A. Smilde, a sociologist who studies violence in Venezuela at Tulane University.
Venezuela practically has no role in the fentanil trade
Fentanil is almost fully produced in Mexico with chemicals imported from China, according to the US Anti -Drug Agency (DEA), the Justice Department and the Congress Research Service. Mexico is close to the US market, and Mexican cartels already control many fentanyl smuggling routes.
There is no evidence that Fentanil is manufactured or trafficked from Venezuela or anywhere else in South America.
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Although cocaine in the US sometimes contains fentanyl features, according to DEA and academic studies, experts say that this mixture occurs in Mexico or within the US, not in South America.
Maduro was accused of drug trafficking
American prosecutors accuse the Venezuelan president of leading the Los Soles cartel (Sóis cartel), a term used to describe military elites and policies networks that profit from drug smuggling and other illicit business.
In 2020, the Justice Department accused Maduro and 14 accomplices of conspiring with Colombian armed groups to send cocaine to the US, claiming that he personally negotiated the shipments and provided weapons to traffickers.
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Maduro has not been tried, and many accusations remain without proof. But analysts say illicit recipes – corrupt contracts, drug trafficking, illegal gold mining and diversion of public funds – help ensure loyalty and support your government. These features flow to Maduro and their intimate circle, including Armed Forces and party elites – an example of how the Los Soles cartel works.
“If there is something mature can do, it is keeping the high patents fat and happy,” said Geoff Ramsey, senior researcher for Venezuela at Atlantic Council, Washington Research Institute. “He bought military leadership and party apparatus through massive clientelism schemes and a national corruption network.”
Experts say the Los Soles cartel is not a conventional cartel, but an abbreviated form for Venezuela’s criminal patronage system. The expression, used since the 1990s, refers to the sun symbol used by Venezuelan generals involved in trafficking.
“No one would say ‘I’m part of the Los Soles cartel,” said Smilde. “It’s another fiction that has become urban legend.”
Venezuelan authorities have long been calls, according to experts, with Cocaine Colombian armed groups, first with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and more recently with the National Liberation Army (ELN), which operates within Venezuela.
Several former employees who broke with the government accused high-level leaders to allow or participate directly in the trade.
Attorney General Pam Bondi recently announced a $ 50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest.
“He is one of the largest drug traffickers in the world and a threat to our national security,” she said last month.
US naval reinforcement is likely not to stop smuggling
Most of the US cocaine goes through the Pacific, not the Caribbean, according to data from Colombia, the US and the UN.
About 74% of cocaine loads in 2019 were transported by the Pacific, mainly from Colombia and Ecuador, against 24% by the Caribbean, according to DAA data.
“The Pacific corridor has established itself as the main traffic route of Cocaine for North America,” said the Colombian Navy this year.
Cocaine routes are diffuse and resilient, and the US has failed to interrupt them despite decades of efforts and billions of dollars invested.
The attack seems to have been a demonstration of strength
Analysts say military displacement was more of a power show than an anti -drug strategy. Ramsey stated that Trump, who campaigned promising the end of the wars, would hardly attack Venezuela.
“This is less an anti -drug operation and one more demonstration of strength,” said Ramsey. “It is ultimately an attempt to show power and see what happens.”
The measure also has an internal political bias, he added. Many Venezuelan and Cuban voters in southern Florida, who oppose any business relationship between Venezuela and the US, were annoyed by the Trump administration’s decision to allow Chevron to resume oil operations in Venezuela and with direct negotiations that led to the resumption of deportation flights to Caracas. Oil is an important source of recipe for Venezuela.
Both events were seen as signs of heating in relationships that confer legitimacy to mature.
Naval reinforcement offers a way to demonstrate firmness without compromising US policy, analysts said.
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