The Dangerous Fiction of Cartel de los Soles: How Political Narrative Trumps Reality in Venezuela Policy

The Facts: Understanding the Cartel de los Soles Designation

The Trump administration’s July designation of “Cartel de Los Soles” as a global terrorist entity represents a significant escalation in U.S. rhetoric toward Venezuela, but one that appears fundamentally disconnected from factual reality. According to extensive reporting and expert analysis, “Cartel de los Soles” is not an actual criminal organization but rather a figure of speech coined by Venezuelans in the 1990s to describe military officials corrupted by drug money. The term, meaning “Cartel of the Suns,” mockingly references the sun insignia worn by Venezuelan generals, similar to how American generals wear stars.

This designation comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and Venezuela, with President Trump reportedly considering military intervention to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power. The administration’s narrative, championed by figures like Senator Marco Rubio and echoed by Secretary of State, portrays Maduro as the leader of this supposed narcoterrorist organization responsible for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe.

The Expert Consensus: A Term Versus an Organization

Multiple specialists in Latin American criminal and narcotics issues—from think tank analysts to former Drug Enforcement Administration officials—uniformly assert that no actual organization called “Cartel de los Soles” exists. Phil Gunson, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group based in Venezuela, explicitly stated that Venezuelan journalists invented the label and that “there is no such thing as a board meeting of the ‘Cartel de los Soles.’ There is no such animal.”

This expert consensus is corroborated by the absence of any mention of Cartel de los Soles in the DEA’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment or the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s “World Drug Report”—documents that meticulously detail major trafficking organizations worldwide. Jeremy McDermott, co-founder of InSight Crime, clarifies that the term serves as “a catchall phrase for state-embedded drug trafficking” rather than referring to a single integrated organization.

The Legal and Diplomatic Escalation

The designation trajectory reveals concerning patterns in the administration’s approach. The narrative gained institutional legitimacy through the March 2020 indictment of Maduro and several officials by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which framed their activities as operations of Cartel de los Soles. This indictment was overseen by Emil Bove III, who later became a defense lawyer for Trump and briefly ran the Justice Department.

Despite this legal action, the State Department’s February terrorist designations notably excluded Cartel de los Soles while including eight other Latin American cartels and gangs. The Treasury Department’s July designation thus represents a significant policy shift, one that several South American countries—including Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, and Peru—have followed despite the lack of evidence for the organization’s actual existence.

The Dangerous Implications of Narrative Over Reality

Erosion of Diplomatic Credibility

The administration’s insistence on treating a metaphorical expression as a literal organization represents a dangerous departure from evidence-based policymaking. When the world’s most powerful nation bases significant foreign policy decisions on what experts unanimously describe as a misconception, it undermines American credibility and damages our ability to lead through principled engagement. This approach cheapens the serious designation of terrorist entities and could diminish the impact of legitimate designations in the future.

Risks of Military Escalation

Perhaps most alarmingly, this fabricated narrative appears designed to justify potential military intervention in Venezuela. The article notes that since September 2, the U.S. military has struck 21 boats suspected of smuggling drugs, killing 83 people—operations that began focusing on Venezuelan suspects before expanding to Colombians. By framing the Venezuelan government itself as a narcoterrorist cartel, the administration creates a pretext for intervention that bypasses traditional diplomatic channels and congressional oversight.

Undermining Rule of Law and Institutional Integrity

The manipulation of legal and designation processes for political purposes represents a grave threat to institutional integrity. When prosecutors and Treasury officials advance narratives that contradict expert consensus and documented reality, they risk transforming vital institutions into instruments of political theater rather than guardians of law and order. This corruption of process mirrors the very corruption the administration claims to combat in Venezuela.

The Human Cost of Political Posturing

While there is no dispute that corruption and drug trafficking permeate segments of the Venezuelan military and government, addressing these issues requires precise, evidence-based approaches rather than sensationalized rhetoric. The people of Venezuela have suffered immensely under Maduro’s regime—enduring economic collapse, humanitarian crisis, and political repression. They deserve serious policy solutions grounded in reality, not political theater that risks escalating conflict and worsening their plight.

Military intervention based on fabricated premises would likely compound human suffering without addressing root causes. The administration’s approach appears more focused on creating dramatic headlines than developing sustainable strategies to support Venezuelan democracy and alleviate the humanitarian crisis.

A Principled Path Forward

True commitment to democracy, freedom, and liberty requires steadfast adherence to truth and careful deliberation—values conspicuously absent from this manufactured narrative about Cartel de los Soles. Rather than inventing criminal organizations to justify predetermined policy outcomes, the United States should:

1. Base foreign policy decisions on verified intelligence and expert analysis rather than political narratives
2. Pursue multilateral diplomatic engagement through organizations like the Organization of American States
3. Support credible international efforts to address corruption and human rights abuses in Venezuela
4. Focus humanitarian assistance on alleviating the suffering of the Venezuelan people
5. Maintain Congressional oversight of any potential military actions, as required by the Constitution

Conclusion: Truth as the Foundation of Democracy

The Cartel de los Soles designation represents more than just a factual error—it exemplifies a dangerous approach to governance that privileges political narrative over verifiable reality. Those committed to democratic principles must reject this manipulation regardless of political affiliation or opinion on Venezuela policy. When we allow truth to become collateral damage in political conflicts, we undermine the very foundations of our republic and its ability to conduct responsible foreign policy.

The Venezuelan people deserve better than to be pawns in a geopolitical game built on fiction. American citizens deserve better than a foreign policy built on fabrication. And democracy itself requires that we insist on truth as the non-negotiable foundation of political discourse and action. In the words of Jeremy McDermott, “If you are going to go to war, the language matters.” Indeed, when lives and liberty hang in the balance, truth matters most of all.