Noureldein GhanemWashington, DC — Semantics are key in the times of war, or when planning one.
So when the US 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 US 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 US 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, tells TRT World.
"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 US 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 US 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 US classification of Cartel de los Soles as a terror group.
US military build-up near Venezuela
Tensions between the US and Venezuela have been on the rise since US 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 US is actually seeking to topple Maduro’s government.
Since August, the US 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 US 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 a US 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 US military invasion would mark the "political end" of Trump’s leadership, accusing figures around the US president of "provoking" an armed conflict to damage him politically.
Maduro alluded to senior US officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who recently declared impending US 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 US 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."
Venezuela is considered a transit point for cocaine, primarily from Colombia, a top producer along with Peru and Bolivia.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Venezuela is not a cocaine-producing country and cocaine seizures in Venezuela accounted for 2.3 percent of the global total in 2020, and by 2023 – the most recent year for which data is available – that share had fallen to 1.9 percent.
As per a UNODC report, Colombia yields over 2,500 tonnes of coca out of a global production of 3,700 tonnes. Venezuela is not listed as a producer.
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 organisation doesn't exist as such."
Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specialises in war powers issues told US broadcaster CNN that the Trump administration is "designating a non-thing that is not a terror organisation as a terrorist organisation".
Another former senior US government official cited by CNN said that Cartel de los Soles was "a made-up name used to describe an ad hoc group of Venezuelan officials involved in the trafficking of drugs through Venezuela. It does not have the hierarchy or command-and-control structure of a traditional cartel."
'Old imperial playbook'
Regional countries such as Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Peru have already listed Cartel de los Soles as terrorist group.
But Colombia's President Gustavo Petro has called it a Trump administration "invention."
"The Cartel of the Suns does not exist; it is the fictitious excuse of the extreme right to overthrow governments that do not obey them. The passage of Colombian cocaine through Venezuela, is controlled by the Junta of drug trafficking and its capos [bosses] live in Europe and the Middle East," Petro claimed.
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 US 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."
