In recent weeks, the United States has dramatically escalated military pressure in the Caribbean, sending its most modern aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, in what Washington presents as an “anti-narcotics operation” and which is mainly directed at “terrorist organizations” based in Venezuela that are allegedly operated by the Venezuelan government. At the same time, the U.S. State Department announced the designation of Venezuela’s non-existent “Cartel of the Suns” as a Foreign Terrorist Organization as of November 24.
ircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, in what Washington presents as an “anti-narcotics operation” and which is mainly directed at “terrorist organizations” based in Venezuela that are allegedly operated by the Venezuelan government. At the same time, the U.S. State Department announced the designation of Venezuela’s non-existent “Cartel of the Suns” as a Foreign Terrorist Organization as of November 24.
According to a statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the “Cartel of the Suns” is allegedly headed by President Nicolás Maduro himself, along with senior officials of his “illegitimate regime.” This maneuver is a serious step in the escalation that attempts to set the stage for possible military operations in Venezuelan territory, under the pretext of the war on drugs. President Donald Trump himself hinted that he “has made a decision” on how to proceed in Venezuela, refusing to explicitly rule out armed intervention.
Despite Washington’s assertions, the alleged “Cartel of the Suns” did not exist until recently for specialized agencies. The term was first coined in 1993 during the investigation of two National Guard generals, whose uniforms bore golden suns, accused of diverting cocaine shipments. Paradoxically, one of those generals had authorized a shipment of cocaine to the US on the orders of the CIA, allegedly as part of a covert operation to infiltrate Colombian cartels. In other words, right from the start of this story, the hand of US intelligence appears to have been facilitating drug trafficking activities in Venezuela.
In fact, Jordan Goudreau, a former US Green Beret involved in the failed 2020 armed incursion “Operation Gideon” against President Nicolás Maduro, recently claimed that “the Cartel of the Suns was created by the CIA” in the 1990s. In an interview with The Grayzone, Goudreau claimed that the name had emerged almost “as an inside joke” based on the suns on Venezuelan uniforms, while the CIA facilitated drug trafficking through this group for its own interests, something that Goudreau describes as “well documented.”
After its initial coining in the 1990s, the term “Cartel of the Suns” was sporadically recycled in Venezuelan media and opposition circles, but without much supporting evidence. Sectors of the local press amplified stories of alleged narco-generals whenever they sought scandals against the government. Over the years, this label became part of the lexicon of the extremist opposition, used to discredit the Bolivarian National Armed Forces and portray them as a drug trafficking mafia. A notable example was the unsubstantiated accusation by a former bodyguard who had defected against the then-president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, of leading the alleged cartel.
Since then, radical figures in the Venezuelan opposition and former military deserters have lobbied in Washington to legitimize this narrative. This campaign seeks not only to discredit the government of President Maduro, but also to provoke more “sanctions” and, eventually, justify foreign intervention. During Trump’s second term, these sectors have found an audience in officials such as Marco Rubio, who has echoed the term in the State Department, officially adopting the label to accuse the Venezuelan government of “narco-terrorism.”
Ironically, it should be noted that none of the annual narcotics reports from the State Department or the DEA since 1999 mention the “Cartel de los Soles” or identify it as a specific threat. Nor have international UN reports on drugs recorded the existence of such an organization in Venezuela. On the contrary, specialized agencies identify Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia as the major cocaine producers, while Venezuela does not appear as a producing country and its drug seizures represent only 1-2% of the world total. These data reaffirm that Venezuela has been more of a limited transit country than the base of operations for any powerful global cartel.
Despite this, in March 2020, at the height of Trump’s policy of pressure against Caracas, the US Department of Justice included the words “Cartel de los Soles” for the first time in an indictment, attributing crimes of “narco-terrorism” to President Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials. That indictment alleged that this drug trafficking conspiracy had existed “since at least 1999,” marking the entry of the narrative into official U.S. documents. However, it is revealing that a few months before that indictment, the State Department’s own 2020 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report did not make a single mention of the alleged Cartel of the Suns or link the Venezuelan president to drug trafficking. Furthermore, this narrative does not meet the U.S. legal requirements for designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
Identifying a group as terrorist is not trivial; U.S. law itself establishes strict criteria in section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). To designate an FTO, the group in question must: 1.) be a real foreign organization; 2.) be engaged in “terrorist activity,” as defined in section 212(a)(3)(B) of the INA, or have the intent and capacity to do so; and 3.) such terrorist activity threatens the safety of U.S. citizens or the national security of the U.S. In the case of the alleged Cartel de los Soles, it is clear that these criteria are not met.
First, it is not an identifiable organized entity, but rather a vague concept used “to describe a decentralized network embedded in the Venezuelan state,” which does not even qualify as a designable “organization.” Second, there is no evidence that this network has perpetrated “terrorist activities” according to U.S. law, i.e., acts of deliberate violence against civilians to coerce a government or achieve political objectives. But to get around this obstacle, Washington has tried to paint the “Cartel of the Suns” as an ally of real terrorist groups, claiming that this alleged organization provides “material support” to other entities designated as foreign terrorists, including the Mexican Sinaloa cartel and the now-defunct Venezuelan gang “Tren de Aragua.” However, this claim is not supported by public evidence.
The U.S. government knows that this narrative does not reflect reality, but that it serves a geopolitical purpose: it creates a prefabricated justification for military intervention. This whole construction of the “Cartel of the Suns” is nothing more than an elaborate pretext for Washington’s real objectives: to try to overthrow the Bolivarian government and install a regime subordinate to its interests. The massive naval operation now underway, dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” and the sudden terrorist classification have made clear the U.S. government’s intention to achieve the eventual removal of President Nicolás Maduro by any means necessary.
This is not the first time the US has resorted to similar tactics; in 1989, it invaded Panama on the grounds that Manuel Noriega was a “dangerous drug trafficker”; in 2003, it constructed a narrative of “weapons of mass destruction” to invade Iraq. And now, with Venezuela, it is attempting a combination of both scenarios, drug trafficking and terrorism, adapted to demonize the Bolivarian government and thus legitimize actions of force that would otherwise be condemned, and with them, reverse Venezuela’s political course and regain influence over its vast strategic resources.
It is no coincidence that Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, in addition to gold, coltan, and other coveted resources; Sectors in the US have openly stated that they would welcome a regime change that would open up these riches to the control of US corporations, demonstrating that policy toward Venezuela is guided by an updated version of the Monroe Doctrine, seeking to contain the influence of China, Russia, and Iran in the region and ensure Washington’s control of areas of geopolitical importance and their resources, as has been reported in recent times. That is why presenting the Venezuelan government as a “narco-terrorist regime” would provide the perfect casus belli for a “legitimate” intervention in Washington’s eyes.
