1 week ago
14
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Amid signs that President Trump is mulling sending U.S. troops into Venezuela to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power, the Trump administration has supercharged its public messaging by describing him as the leader of a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles.
That refrain comes from a range of critics including Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser and secretary of state, who has accused Mr. Maduro of being “the leader of the designated narcoterrorist organization Cartel de los Soles” and responsible for “trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe.”
In July, the Trump Treasury Department officially labeled Cartel de los Soles a global terrorist entity. On Sunday, Mr. Rubio announced that the State Department would essentially do the same under its own procedures.
But there’s a big catch with the impression created by the Trump administration’s narrative: Cartel de los Soles is not a literal organization, according to a range of specialists in Latin American criminal and narcotics issues, from think-tank analysts to former Drug Enforcement Administration officials.
It is instead a figure of speech in Venezuela, dating back to the 1990s, for Venezuelan military officials corrupted by drug money, they say. The term, which means “Cartel of the Suns,” is a mocking invocation of the suns Venezuelan generals wear to denote their rank, like American ones wear stars.
It is for that reason that the D.E.A.’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment, which describes major trafficking organizations in detail, has never mentioned Cartel de los Soles. Nor has the annual “World Drug Report” by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
