That Refers To Alleged Corruption Within The Venezuelan Military. Experts Say A “non-thing” Is Being Designated By Trump To Justify Attacking Venezuela.
Semantics are key in the times of war, or when planning one.
So when the American regime announced plans to designate Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO), reiterating claims that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro heads the “drug gang” amid a significant American military build-up near Venezuela, it vexed some experts.
They see the phrase — coined in 1990 by some local Venezuelan journalists to describe some “corrupt” military officials — being employed by the American regime to target what they argue is a non-existent drug cartel.
“The Trump administration’s decision to label the so-called ‘Cartel de los Soles’ as a terrorist organisation is deeply problematic,” Jenaro Abraham, a political scientist and professor of Latin American politics at Gonzaga University, said.
“To begin with, the Cartel de los Soles doesn’t actually function as a cartel in any meaningful analytical sense.”
The term “Cartel de los Soles” — Spanish for “Cartel of the Suns” — vaguely refers to the alleged corruption within the Venezuelan military and the name alludes to the sun insignia on high-ranking officials’ uniforms.
Abraham, who focuses on the American regime’s foreign policy towards Latin America, argues that the phrase refers loosely to corruption patterns within certain sectors of the Venezuelan military — mostly along the Colombian border — “but there’s no hierarchical structure, no centralised leadership, and no price-setting mechanisms like you’d expect from a real cartel.”
“It’s an invented label that collapses a variety of local dynamics into a single, scary-sounding enemy.”
Venezuela’s President Maduro denies the American regime’s claims about the Cartel de los Soles, calling it a fabrication used for manipulation. But his critics argue against downplaying it.
Venezuelan opposition figures Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia and Maria Corina Machado have been seeking the American regime’s classification of Cartel de los Soles as a terror group.
AMERICA’S MILITARY BUILD-UP NEAR VENEZUELA
Tensions between the American regime and Venezuela have been on the rise since President Donald Trump this August ordered a military deployment in the Caribbean with the aim of attacking what he claims are drug cartels linked to Maduro.
Caracas and several Latin America experts argue that what the Trump is actually seeking to do is topple the Maduro’s government.
Since August, the American military has carried out a total of 21 strikes on vessels it claimed were loaded with drugs, and killed 83 people, and Trump has signalled he could attack alleged drug trafficking targets on the ground in Venezuela.
The American regime has deployed the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean near Venezuela. The deployment of the massive warship, USS Gerald R. Ford, experts say, aims to do one of several things: either intimidate Maduro into fleeing, lay the groundwork for a military coup, or, in the worst-case scenario, trigger an American military intervention.
New reports suggest Trump has authorised the CIA to prepare covert operations inside Venezuela as part of a broader pressure campaign against President Maduro’s government.
In a televised address on Monday, Maduro warned that any American military invasion would mark the “political end” of Trump’s leadership, accusing figures around the American president of “provoking” an armed conflict to damage him politically.
Maduro alluded to senior American officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who recently declared impending American sanctions and designation for Cartel de los Soles.
“Based in Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles is headed by Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature, and judiciary,” Rubio said in a statement.
“Cartel de los Soles, by and with other designated FTOs, including Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel, are responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe.”
Rubio added that Washington will continue to protect its interests and deny funding and resources to “narco-terrorists.”
It was in 2020 when the Trump administration accused Maduro and Venezuelan officials of “narco-terrorism, corruption and drug trafficking”. At the time the American Department of Justice claimed that Cartel de los Soles had existed since at least 1999.
“INTELLECTUALLY SLOPPY”
Experts suggest that Cartel de los Soles may not exist or even function as a cohesive entity.
“The idea that the Cartel de los Soles is a unified terrorist organisation is largely a Western construction. It’s been circulated not because it reflects empirical reality, but because it provides geopolitical utility — it creates a ready-made justification for intervention,” Abraham notes.
“We’ve seen this strategy before: invent or exaggerate an external threat, and leverage that fear to authorise military action.”
Abraham of Gonzaga University says that calling Cartel de los Soles a “cartel” is “intellectually sloppy.”
“Cartels, by definition, control prices and regulate trade. No one in Venezuela — certainly not an imaginary command structure — is setting global cocaine prices or dictating the terms of the regional market,” Abraham explains.
“Those prices are governed by logistical routes, laundering networks, and demand conditions — many of which are anchored in the United States and Europe.”
Phil Gunson, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group who lives in Caracas told New York Times that Cartel de los Soles is a label that was invented by Venezuelan journalists and does not exist as such.
“There is no such thing as a board meeting of the ‘Cartel de los Soles.’ There is no such animal. The organization doesn’t exist as such.”
Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specialises in war powers issues said that the Trump administration is “designating a non-thing that is not a terror organisation as a terrorist organization”.
“OLD IMPERIAL PLAYBOOK”
The FTO designation for Cartel de los Soles is a significant counterterrorism measure. It could allow the US military to target Maduro’s assets inside Venezuela.
Abraham accuses the major American media outlets of uncritically amplifying the government narrative that he says “mirrors an old imperial playbook.”
“Americans were told the Spanish were a threat to national security before the Spanish-American War; Panamanian sovereignty was delegitimised to build the canal; Iraq supposedly had weapons of mass destruction,” he argues.
“Each time, the story wasn’t just wrong — it was politically useful. The “Cartel de los Soles” narrative fits that pattern. It manufactures consent for intervention while obscuring the deeper geopolitical and economic motivations at play.”
Hidden History -- In The Making 