The US offensive against the Nicolás Maduro regime won a new chapter in late July, when the Treasury Department, with the Justice Department, sanctioned the so-called Los Soles cartel, classifying it as a “specially designated global terrorist entity”.
According to Washington, the group, based on Venezuela, is led by Maduro and senior Chavismo employees. The cartel operates in drug trafficking in alliance with other criminal organizations, such as Aragua’s Tren, which is also from Venezuela, and the dreaded Mexican Cartel of Sinaloa.
“Today’s measure further highlights the facilitation of narcoterrorism by the illegitimate regime of Maduro through terrorist groups such as the Los Soles cartel,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in July.
What is the Los Soles cartel
According to the INSIGHT CRIME organization, the term Los Soles was first used in 1993, when two Venezuelan National Guard generals were investigated for drug trafficking. Sun -shaped insignia used in the uniforms of these officers named the network. Since then, the expression has been serving to identify military personnel who were accused of facilitating drug transport around the country.
According to Insight Crime, the Los Soles cartel is not a structured criminal group such as Mexico or Colombia, but “a loose cell network within the main branches of Venezuela’s Armed Forces – Army, Navy, Air Force and National Guard – involved in illegal activities ranging from drug trafficking to illegal gold mining”.
How the cartel expanded
The growth of the Los Soles cartel took place in the 2000s, after the launch of the so -called US Colombian plan – US -funded security program that pressed the Colombian guerrillas FARC and Eln. With military advancement in Colombian territory, these organizations began to operate more and more at the Venezuelan border, where they found connivance of sectors of the Armed Forces.
According to a survey by the insight crime, during this period Venezuelan military, they ceased to only charge bribes to release drug shipments and began to directly control export routes, clandestine tracks and airports.
Cases that occurred in the not so distant past confirm the current involvement of forces and chavist authorities in criminal activity. In 2013, Insight Crime reported that an Air France flight came from Caracas with 1.3 ton of cocaine. In 2015, organization resembles Leamsy Salazar, former head chief of dictator Hugo Chávez, accused the current minister of justice and number 2 of Chavismo, Diosdado Cabello, of heading the cartel. In 2020, in President Donald Trump’s first term, the US Department of Justice denounced Maduro and his dome for narcoterrorism, stating that they “abused the Venezuelan people and corrupted the legitimate institutions of Venezuela – including parts of the army, the intelligence apparatus, the legislature and justice – to favor the importation of tons of cocaine to states. United. ”
For opponents, there is no doubt that the Chavista regime, currently led by dictator Maduro, is at the center of this criminal gear. Former Venezuelan attorney Zair Mundaray, now exiled in the US, classified the network as “one of the greatest perversities created by Chavismo.”
Mundaray added that the absence of violent disputes between factions in Venezuela – common in countries such as Colombia and Mexico, where rival cartels wage bloody wars by territorial control – is due to the fact that Chavista state itself centralizes the command of trafficking routes.
“This is not missing this because you have an armed force that does it, and those who work out of this control is achieved by the state’s hand,” he said.
Why does the US want to destroy the cartel
In Washington’s assessment, the Los Soles cartel has become a mechanism of financing and political support of the Chavista regime, as well as being a link between Caracas and international drug trafficking, which also affects American territory. To combat the criminal group, the Trump government reinforced the US military presence in the Caribbean with war ships and raised to $ 50 million the reward for information leading to Maduro capturing.
The American siege currently has the support of countries such as Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador and Peru, who also began to classify the Los Soles cartel as a terrorist. Colombia, under the leftist government of Gustavo Petro, denies the existence of the cartel and sees the US complaints as a “political instrument” to overthrow Maduro.
