Cartel of the Suns
Based on Wikipedia: Cartel of the Suns
When two Venezuelan National Guard generals were caught approving a cocaine shipment to the United States in 1993, journalists needed a name for the scandal. They looked at the generals' uniforms—specifically, the sun emblems, or "soles," that adorned their shoulders—and coined a term that would haunt Venezuelan politics for decades: the Cartel of the Suns.
But here's the twist: it's not really a cartel.
The Cartel of the Suns is what happens when drug trafficking becomes a system rather than a conspiracy. It's not a hierarchical organization with a boss at the top issuing orders. Instead, it's journalistic shorthand for something more insidious: a culture of corruption woven throughout Venezuela's military and political institutions, where officials at every level profit by facilitating the cocaine trade.
The Original Scandal
The 1993 incident that birthed the term was stranger than fiction. Two generals from Venezuela's Anti-Drug National Command—the very people supposed to stop drug trafficking—were investigated for approving a cocaine shipment. But they weren't simple criminals. They had authorized the shipment at the request of undercover CIA agents who wanted to infiltrate Colombian drug gangs.
The Venezuelan anti-drug commissioner at the time, Thor Halvorssen, actually defended one of the generals, arguing he was innocent regarding the cocaine shipment. The whole affair revealed how blurry the lines had become between law enforcement, intelligence operations, and the drug trade itself.
How Corruption Climbed the Ranks
In the late 1990s, reports emerged that Venezuelan military officers were taking payments to look the other way when drug traffickers moved their product. Nothing too organized. Just bribes here and there.
According to Héctor Landaeta, a journalist who wrote extensively about the phenomenon, it started at the Colombian border. Corrupt border units would let drugs pass through. Then, as Landaeta put it, "the rot moved its way up the ranks."
The Los Angeles Times noted something darker after Hugo Chávez's failed coup attempts in 1992. Some officers involved in those coups had allegedly formed a group called the Bolivarian Cartel. The newspaper suggested these military men might have tried to seize the government because there was "money to be made from corruption, particularly in drugs."
When you can't beat the system, take it over.
The Chávez Years: Corruption on Steroids
When Hugo Chávez finally did take power democratically in 1999, things got worse. According to Vice News, Chávez expanded military corruption to "unprecedented levels" in an already corrupt institution.
His strategy was clever and cynical. He gave military officials millions of dollars for social programs that allegedly disappeared. He granted legal immunity to drug trafficking officials to keep them loyal. And in 2005, he expelled the US Drug Enforcement Administration from Venezuela, accusing it of espionage.
Chávez claimed his anti-drug efforts became more effective without American interference. Drug seizures did increase by eighty percent that year. But they declined in the years that followed, and intelligence reports painted a different picture. Colombian intelligence heard from an arrested drug vigilante that "senior figures in President Hugo Chávez's security forces arranged drug shipments through Venezuela."
The National Guard allegedly worked directly with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—the FARC guerrillas—to move drugs. British officials claimed that planes from Colombia involved in drug trafficking would shelter at Venezuelan Air Force bases, protected by the very military that was supposed to intercept them.
Brazen Operations
By the 2010s, the trafficking had become astonishingly brazen.
In September 2013, authorities at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris made a discovery that "astonished" them: thirty-one suitcases containing 1.3 tons of cocaine on an Air France flight from Venezuela. It was the largest cocaine seizure ever recorded in mainland France. The men who loaded those suitcases were allegedly from the Venezuelan National Guard.
Five months later, in February 2014, a Venezuelan National Guard commander was arrested driving to Valencia with his family. In the vehicle: 554 kilos of cocaine.
The most politically damaging incident came in November 2015. DEA agents in Haiti arrested two relatives of Cilia Flores—the First Lady of Venezuela. They were moving 800 kilos of cocaine from Venezuela to the United States. A DEA source unofficially stated that the shipment passed through Venezuela because of government corruption. Some analysts suggested corrupt members of the Venezuelan Presidential Honor Guard might have helped.
When the First Lady's family gets caught trafficking drugs, you no longer have a few bad apples. You have a system.
How It Actually Works
Despite its name, the Cartel of the Suns doesn't function like the Medellín Cartel or the Sinaloa Cartel. It's not a pyramid with a kingpin at the top.
InSight Crime, an organization that studies organized crime in Latin America, describes it as a "loose network of cells" within the Armed Forces of Venezuela that "operate essentially as drug trafficking organizations." Robert Looney, writing in the Routledge Handbook of Caribbean Economics, calls it a "loose assembly of high-ranking retired military men."
Here's how it allegedly works on the ground: Lower-ranking National Guardsmen compete for positions at border checkpoints because those posts offer opportunities for bribes. Traffickers pay to move their product through. But the guardsmen don't keep most of that money—a large portion goes up the chain to their superiors.
The Cartel of the Suns doesn't produce drugs or set prices or restrict competition like a traditional cartel. Instead, it provides a service: safe passage. Drugs move from Colombia into Venezuela, then get shipped internationally to Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Suriname, Europe via Africa, and the United States.
It's corruption as infrastructure.
The Maduro Indictment
In March 2020, the US Department of Justice took an unprecedented step: they indicted Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, along with fourteen other Venezuelan officials on charges of narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, and drug trafficking.
The indictment alleged that since at least 1999, these officials acted as leaders and managers of the Cartel of the Suns. It claimed Maduro personally coordinated with the FARC, negotiating multi-ton cocaine shipments and providing weapons to the Colombian guerrillas.
Two of those indicted have since pleaded guilty in US federal courts. In June 2023, retired General Clíver Alcalá Cordones pleaded guilty to providing material support and firearms to the FARC. He was sentenced to twenty-one and a half years in prison. In June 2025, former military intelligence director Hugo Carvajal, extradited from Spain, pleaded guilty to all four charges including narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine.
The US increased the bounty on Maduro from fifteen million dollars to twenty-five million after his third-term inauguration in January 2025. By August 2025, under the Trump administration, they doubled it again to fifty million dollars.
The Terrorist Designation and Its Critics
In July 2025, the US Treasury Department designated the Cartel of the Suns as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. That November, the State Department went further, designating them as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The designation alleged they were "responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe." The State Department called them "narco-terrorists" and declared the Maduro regime "illegitimate."
Several Latin American governments followed suit. Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru designated the Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organization. But others disputed the allegations.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said it was the first time she'd heard such accusations and requested the US produce supporting evidence. Colombian President Gustavo Petro denounced the US actions, calling the allegations a fabricated pretext for regime change. Interestingly, the Colombian Senate defied Petro, voting thirty-three to twenty to declare the Cartel of the Suns a transnational criminal and terrorist organization.
Independent experts generally rejected the US characterization of the Cartel of the Suns as a formal organization led by Maduro. They saw the designation as providing a legal rationale for potential military action and regime change, especially given the US military buildup in the region—4,500 troops and several Navy warships deployed to the southern Caribbean in August 2025.
The Capture and the Revised Story
On January 3, 2026, US forces captured Maduro during strikes in Venezuela and flew him to the United States to face charges in the Southern District of New York.
The new indictment was telling. It abandoned the characterization of the Cartel of the Suns as a formal organization. Instead, it described Maduro's position atop a "patronage system" and "culture of corruption" funded by drug trafficking.
This was closer to what experts had been saying all along: not a cartel in the traditional sense, but a system where power and profit flow through corruption.
The indictment accused Maduro of personally working with the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, the Zetas, and Tren de Aragua. It claimed he used cocaine to "deliberately flood America with drugs."
Interestingly, former General Clíver Alcalá Cordones claimed in December 2025 that Maduro wasn't even the real head of the operation. According to Alcalá, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge were the true leaders of the Cartel of the Suns, with Maduro serving as a mere figurehead.
The Diosdado Cabello Question
If there's anyone who embodies the Cartel of the Suns, it might be Diosdado Cabello.
In January 2015, Leamsy Salazar—the former security chief for both Chávez and Cabello—fled to the United States with DEA assistance and entered witness protection. He accused Cabello of being the head of the Cartel of the Suns.
Salazar stated he personally witnessed Cabello giving orders to transport tons of cocaine out of Venezuela. These shipments allegedly went through the FARC in Colombia to the United States and Europe, possibly with Cuban assistance.
Salazar also implicated other senior Venezuelan officials, including Tarek El Aissami and José David Cabello, Diosdado's brother.
In May 2018, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Cabello, his wife, his brother, and his frontman Rafael Sarria. The sanctions statement alleged that Cabello used his power in the Venezuelan government "to personally profit from extortion, money laundering, and embezzlement."
OFAC claimed Cabello coordinated drug trafficking with Vice President Tareck El Aissami and split profits with President Maduro. Even more brazenly, they alleged Cabello would use public information to track wealthy individuals involved in trafficking, then steal their drugs and property to eliminate competition.
Imagine that: a government official robbing drug traffickers to corner the market himself.
Venezuela's Role in the Drug Trade
It's important to understand Venezuela's actual position in the global drug economy.
Venezuela doesn't produce cocaine. Colombia does—about 2,660 tons annually. Venezuela also doesn't produce or ship fentanyl, which is the main synthetic opioid plaguing the United States and comes primarily from Mexico.
Venezuela is what's called a transit country. An estimated 400 tons of cocaine pass through it yearly. Most of that cocaine is destined for Europe, not the United States.
What makes Venezuela unique, according to former US officials, is "the degree of state control and involvement in the drugs trade." Other countries have corrupt officials who take bribes from traffickers. In Venezuela, the allegation is that the state apparatus itself has become the trafficking mechanism.
The Bigger Picture
The Cartel of the Suns reveals something disturbing about how states can decay from within.
It's not a story of criminals infiltrating the government. It's a story of the government becoming criminal—a transformation so gradual that it's hard to pinpoint when things crossed the line.
First, border guards take small bribes. Then mid-level officers organize the bribes into a system. Then senior officials provide protection in exchange for a cut. Then the protection becomes so reliable that the government essentially operates the trafficking routes. Then officials start robbing other traffickers to monopolize the trade. Then the First Lady's relatives are moving 800 kilos of cocaine.
Each step seems like a small escalation from the last. But the cumulative effect is a state where drug trafficking isn't a crime the government fights—it's a revenue stream the government protects.
Whether you call it the Cartel of the Suns or simply corruption, the result is the same: institutions designed to serve the public instead serve those who control them. And the sun emblems on those generals' uniforms become not symbols of national defense, but markers of something far darker.