Venezuela Archives – ITSS Verona

December 11, 2025 — No Comments

The U.S. pressure and the Venezuela–Colombia Connection

By Giovanni Giacalone - Central and South America Desk

On October 24, 2025, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the President of Colombia Gustavo Petro, his wife, his son, and Petro’s close associate, Armando Benedetti, over accusations of involvement in the global drug trade.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity…President Trump is taking strong action to protect our nation and make clear that we will not tolerate the trafficking of drugs into our nation.”

Following the sanctions announcement, Petro named an attorney and stated that he will battle the measure taken by Washington. The Colombian President also praised his approach to countering narcotics: “Combating drug trafficking effectively for decades brings me this measure from the government of the society we helped so much to stop its use of cocaine…Quite a paradox, but not one step back and never on our knees.”

In September, the United States added Colombia to a list of countries failing to cooperate in the war on drugs, for the first time since the Pablo Escobar era.

Gustavo Petro, a former far-left guerrilla leader, claims that his counter-narcotics policy is utilizing a non-repressive approach that prioritises reaching agreements with coca leaf farmers in order to convince them to cultivate other types of crops while, at the same time, using law enforcement to hunt down drug dealers.

However, according to UN data from the Office on Drugs and Crime, the amount of land dedicated to coca cultivation has almost tripled in the past decade to a record 253,000 hectares (625,000 acres) in 2023. Colombia provides around 90% of the cocaine that is sold every year in the U.S.

The Cartel de los Soles

While the Colombian President is accused of failing to cooperate in the drug war, with Colombia being the primary cocaine provider, Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his close associates are accused by the U.S. of leading the drug distribution network through the Cartel de los Soles, transporting the merchandise to Mexico, the final distributor.

In July 2025, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Maduro (indicated as the leader of the Cartel), Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello Rondon. Other senior regime figures had already been blacklisted in 2020. President Trump has also placed a bounty on Maduro’s head, offering $US50 million for information leading to his arrest.

A drug trafficking organisation formed by high-ranking members of the Venezuelan state and armed forces, the Cartel de los Soles emerged in 1993, when two National Guard generals were investigated for drug trafficking. As brigade commanders, they wore a sun as their insignia, hence the name "Cartel de los Soles." Initially, the group was called "Grupo Fenix," and consisted primarily of majors, colonels, and lower-ranking military personnel. Over time, however, senior officers began to enter the fray, taking control of the trafficking ring and eliminating the lower ranks. The Cartel de los Soles was designated by the Trump administration as a “Foreign Terrorist Organisation” in November 2025.

The weak Petro-Maduro political alliance

In August 2025, after the sanctions imposed by Washington on Maduro and his associates, Colombian President Gustavo Petro expressed his support for the Venezuelan leader, claiming that “Colombia and Venezuela are the same people, the same flag, the same history” and that “any military operation that is not approved by our sister countries is an aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean.” Petro also referred to Simon Bolivar’s call “freedom or death,” further revealing his attempt to bring Colombia closer to Venezuela.

Since being elected president of Colombia in August 2022, Gustavo Petro has gradually sought to distance the country from Western alliances and position himself alongside Maduro and the Bolivarian Alliance. This shift is unsurprising given his past as a member of the M-19, a far-left armed group founded in the 1970s and inspired by the Uruguayan Tupamaros and the Argentine Montoneros. At its height in the mid-1980s, the M-19 was the second largest armed group in Colombia, after the FARC, with the number of active members estimated at between 1,500 and 2,000. The M-19 demobilised in the late 1980s and transitioned to electoral politics.

Former Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon recently urged the U.S Presidency not to cut off all counter-narcotics aid to Colombia and hike tariffs, because this would affect the Colombian population as well as the military and law enforcement still operating on the frontline against narco-terrorism.

Pinzon instead suggested implementing sanctions against specific individuals who work in support of drug trafficking. This was done a few days later with the sanctions against Petro.

Pinzon was correct in that the situations in Colombia and Venezuela are extremely different and cannot be addressed with the same approach.

Venezuela has been a Bolivarian stronghold for decades, first under Chávez and then under Maduro. U.S. authorities contend that Venezuela has taken on a larger role in regional drug trafficking and has strengthened its ties with Iran, developments that have contributing to instability in the region. Under Maduro, Hezbollah's presence has proliferated in the country, becoming the main launching pad for drug trafficking to the United States.

Colombia, for its part, has always been a staunch ally of Washington, both in the fight against drug trafficking and against terrorism. The Colombian armed forces are trained by the United States and have been working together since the war against the Medellín and Cali cartels in the 1990s.

In 2022, Gustavo Petro was elected president, but despite his efforts, he was unable to separate the country's institutions from Washington. It's no coincidence that during the recent attempted attack by far-left protesters on the US Embassy in Bogotá, Petro had no choice but to deploy riot police to repel the attack, drawing criticism from his own supporters.

Critics argue that Petro’s government could face increasing internal challenges, and sanctions will certainly help. As for Maduro, however, some debate whether increased U.S. engagement may be required in the future, assuming Trump doesn't change his mind at the last minute.

Rising Tensions in the Region

The United States has deployed a massive military force of approximately 10,000 U.S. soldiers, most of them at bases in Puerto Rico, but also a contingent of Marines on amphibious assault ships, as well as F-35 fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, eight warships, and a submarine.

US navy ships and aircrafts have been sighted just a few hundreds of miles off the coast of Venezuela, while the US has been conducting raids against more narco-speed boats leaving the coasts of Colombia and Venezuela.

Moreover, the US Navy announced the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, America’s largest warship, had arrived in the US Southern Command area of operations after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Ford to head to the Caribbean from Europe in late October.

On the other side, this past week, Venezuela has announced a large-scale mobilisation of troops, weapons, and equipment in response to what it calls a growing U.S. military presence in the Caribbean Sea. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said land, air, naval, and reserve forces will conduct exercises through Wednesday, describing the operation as a response to what he termed the “imperialist threat” posed by the United States. The maneuvers will also include participation from the Bolivarian militia, a civilian reserve force aligned with the Maduro regime.

Whether all this mobilisation by the US serves merely to pressure the leader to resign peacefully or is instead instrumental in a regime change operation is another matter.

A full-scale U.S. invasion akin to the 1989 operation in Panama is highly improbable given Venezuela’s circumstances. The country’s vast size and complex geography, characterised by mountainous regions and dense jungle, provide ideal conditions for prolonged guerrilla warfare. Moreover, Venezuela’s armed forces are significantly more organised and capable than Panama’s were at the time. In addition, the Trump administration has shown little inclination to initiate new military conflicts.

A more plausible scenario for U.S. involvement might involve indirect support for a domestic uprising against the current regime, potentially through covert operations led by the Central Intelligence Agency, which may or may not already be active within Venezuelan territory.

December 2, 2024 — No Comments

Tren de Aragua: The Threat of Transnational Crime in Chile

By Sarah Toubman - Central & South America Team

On the 15^th of November 2024, Colombian officials announced the capture of Jeison Alexander Lorca Salazar, the second-in-command of the Venezuelan criminal organisation Tren de Aragua.

Long considered the most pre-eminent and prolific Venezuelan criminal enterprise, Lorca Salazar’s arrest is representative of the increasing transnationalisation of Tren de Aragua, and crime in Latin America more broadly.

Originally founded in Venezuelan prison Tocorón in approximately 2012, the organisation has since spread across North and South America, establishing a presence in Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and the United States, among other countries.

Although the organisation began to grow its cross-border network in 2018, it has been internationalising at an increasingly rapid pace in recent years.

In October 2023, early reports from the Cook County Sheriff's Office indicated members of Tren de Aragua were present in Chicago, Illinois. Further activity from the organisation in the US in the following months prompted the US Department of the Treasury to designate Tren de Aragua a “Significant Transnational Criminal Organization,” and the US Department of State to officially call for members’ arrests.

Rise of Tren de Aragua in Chile

This year, reports of the group’s presence in Chile have been growing in particular, with Venezuela’s political and economic turmoil pinpointed as a driver of this trend. Instability in Venezuela has not only created a humanitarian crisis but also created an opening for organisations like Tren de Aragua to engage in human trafficking in and around Chile.

The kidnap and murder of Venezuelan political dissident Ronald Ojeda in Santiago by Tren de Aragua in February 2024 was one of the most prominent incidents over the course of the past year, and a clear signifier of the organisation’s increased criminal activities in the country.

In a May 2024 BBC article, Venezuelan investigative journalist Ronna Rísquez named the rise of Tren de Aragua in Chile as the first instance of a transnational organised crime group operating in the country.

Speaking to Rísquez, Mauro Mercado Andaur, National Head of Organised Crime at Chile’s Investigative Police, explained how in addition to the group’s transnational character, Tren de Aragua’s activities differ from previous organised crime in Chile due to their level of control and violence.

“It was easy for them to take over territories. They took over nearly unpopulated areas to establish their dealings, [and] began to offer services, such as getting migrants across one border to another, providing security to businesses or falsifying identity documents,” he said.

One such example of Tren de Aragua exploiting a less populated region of Chile includes the installation of Los Gallegos—a local Tren de Aragua cell—in Arica, a coastal region in the north of the country bordering Peru.

Combating another such local cell, Chilean authorities conducted a raid on 69 properties in Viña del Mar on the 29^th of August, 2024, and arrested 34 individuals suspected of working with the criminal organisation.

Growing concerns for Chile and Latin America

Rising crime, and particularly transnational crime, is clearly a growing concern for Chileans. At a June 2024 State of the Union address, President Gabriel Boric stated that “crime and organised crime are the greatest threats we face today.”

Some experts see the increasing internationalisation of organised crime across Latin America as a paradigm shift in the field, with Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign, dubbing the change the rise of “reorganised crime.”

While the exportation of Tren de Aragua abroad is only one of several significant security ramifications of Venezuelan political instability, increasing levels of transnational crime in Latin America will be crucial to monitor moving forward. With the shape of organised crime in Latin America changing more and more by the day, it is yet to be seen whether authorities can tackle the growing challenges of “reorganised crime,” or whether it will be here to stay.

April 21, 2022 — No Comments

Venezuelan Migration Crisis: What are the root causes, trends and consequences for the region?

By: Beatrice Tommasi.

The Venezuelan exodus qualifies as the largest forced displacement of people in the history of Latin America and the second one after the Syrian crisis at the global level. Since 2014, important fluxes of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers from Venezuela to other Central and Latin American countries have destabilized the region. This critical situation - aggravated by the pandemic crisis- persists despite the attempts made by various national governments to legalize migrants’ status. Indeed, the inability of receiving countries to adopt adequate and effective measures is leading to social unrest throughout the region and threatening the social cohesion of the region.

How did we get to the current situation?

The political turmoil and the socio-economic instability of Venezuela are among the root causes of the huge population outflow, the largest external displacement crisis in Latin America in recent years, according to the United Nations migration organization. Indeed, since 2014, more than 6 million migrants, asylum seekers and refugees have fled the country looking for a better life, food, and work.

In the last decade, the national economy has been in crisis and the healthcare system lacking funds: it caused an alarming increase in infectious diseases, unemployment, hunger and malnutrition, and maternal and child mortality. Since May 2016, Venezuela has been governed under a state of exception, meaning that wide and discretionary powers are in the hands of the president. As a result, armed forces and police have excessively and extensively used force and arbitrary detention during demonstrations. In May 2018, Nicolas Maduro won a heavily disputed election, followed in January 2019 by the self-proclamation of the leader of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó as president. Internationally, the United States and other fifty governments around the world have recognized Guaidó as the legitimate president; conversely, China, Russia, other countries and the Venezuelan military have stood with Maduro, who has true executive and legislative powers in his hands.

In the last years, hyperinflation, shortages in food and medical care, and violence have led to a deep humanitarian, health and economic crisis, enhanced by the ongoing leadership conflict and the government’s inability to provide adequate social services. These highly unstable conditions continue to represent relevant push factors behind Venezuelan migration.

*Image Source*: https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/venezuela-crisis-facts

What are the trends of Venezuelan migration?

Most Venezuelans are fleeing to neighboring countries, thus around 80% of them are hosted by countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. They reach their destination through diverse routes, by land, plane, or sea, in many cases crossing the borders illegally and facing the concrete risk of being victims of smuggling and human trafficking. A high number of Venezuelans has reached the coasts of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago: while hosting a smaller number of migrants in total, the island has received the most in relative terms. This results in intense competition for employment and poses an important challenge to national institutions. The island has not offered refugees a special temporary status; however, it has developed a refugee policy with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) and non-governmental organizations’ support. The highest concentration of Venezuelan migrants is in Colombia, where more than 1.8 million of them have relocated; Peru, Chile and Ecuador follow, in order.

The Venezuelan crisis consists mostly of migrants and refugees fleeing threats of violence: hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have received legal asylum in their new host countries, around 2 million people have residency permits or some other document to stay regularly in the country of destination, but over a million and a half are undocumented or at risk of being so.

How have neighboring countries reacted to the exodus?

Countries in the region have generously opened their borders, providing Venezuelans with access to healthcare, education and employment. Legally speaking, the asylum systems of the region were soon overwhelmed making the process for obtaining the refugee status long and slow: as a result, several countries of the region have opted for temporary residence permits and visas to allow Venezuelan migrants access to work and public services. Besides this effort, many Venezuelans remain undocumented.

Colombia represents a highly discussed case considered an example by the European Union and the international community. Indeed, in February 2021, the president Iván Duque presented the draft of a decree for the temporary protection of Venezuelan migrants, a measure to allow legal permanence in Colombia for almost 1 million Venezuelans who were illegally in the country.

Enlarging the focus to the whole region, various hypotheses are under discussion. Firstly, the possibility to recognize Venezuelans as a group as refugees- on the basis of the Cartagena Declaration- is considered. This legal document is non-binding and offers guidance to the states of the region to develop their refugee protection frameworks. This decision would expand protection and expedite the asylum process. Secondly, the creation of a legal document aimed at facilitating the movement of Venezuelans within the region is on the table.

The influx of Venezuelan migrants into host countries has destabilized their internal order, placing considerable strain on the health and education systems, and increasing the competition for employment. Unstable social cohesion leaves room to the concrete risk of an explosion of xenophobic sentiments among locals. Indeed, as the number of Venezuelan people in neighboring countries increased, it inflamed tensions and increased the pressure on governments to adopt restrictive migration measures, which would have a domino effect. Moreover, as the case of Colombia demonstrates, many Venezuelan minors are exposed to job and sexual exploitation and risk being involved in criminal activities by some local criminal groups. It is estimated that around 40% of Venezuelan minors living in the country are out of the formal education system and that the majority of them suffer violence and are forced to work for some local criminal groups.

Conclusion

Latin American and Caribbean countries are facing social and economic challenges due to an important influx of Venezuelan migrants, and their institutions, security and social cohesion are at stake. Hence, hosting countries need international assistance to protect Venezuelans and provide them with emergency relief, as well as a better-coordinated strategy throughout the region to face the challenges of developing and implementing far-sighted and long-term integration and inclusion policies.