Overview of Organized Crime on the Colombia–Venezuela Border

By Misión Verdad  –  Mar 19, 2025

Last Friday, March 14, two mayors from the state of Zulia, along with seven other people, were arrested for their alleged links to a drug trafficking network. This was announced by Diosdado Cabello, the Venezuelan interior minister, who reported that 5.4 tons of “extremely high-purity” cocaine were also seized as part of a “high-impact” operation named Catatumbo Lightning.

The top official reported on the arrests of the mayors of the Zulia municipalities of Miranda (Puertos de Altagracia) and Almirante Padilla (Isla de Toas), Jorge Nava and Alberto Sobalvarro, respectively, as well as seven other individuals. The investigation revealed the existence of a narco-paramilitary organization operating in the state.

Both municipalities—which border the shore of Lake Maracaibo and serve as an inlet and outlet for the body of water—and their officials provided logistical support to two organizations dedicated to drug trafficking to the United States.

The arrests of two other mayors were also reported a few days later: Danilo Áñez, of the Jesús Enrique Lossada municipality (La Concepción), located in the northwest of the state and bordering Colombia; and Fernando Loaiza, head of the Catatumbo municipality, located on the southwest coast of Lake Maracaibo.

On January 25, the mayor of the Colón municipality (Santa Bárbara del Zulia) in the southern part of the lake, Nervins Sarcos, was captured. Of the five mayors arrested, two are members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), two are members of the New Era party (Un Nuevo Tiempo, UNT), and one is a member of the Democratic Action (Acción Democrática, AD) party.

Cabello added that 27,200 liters of fuel, 7,000 liters of resin, 73 rolls of fiberglass, 140 galvanized sheets for boat construction, and three submersibles were also seized. Additionally, two revolvers, 25 motorboats, 25 outboard motors, 17 cell phones, and six GPS devices were seized.

The seizures were made at three logistics supply centers and four shipyards, which were later dismantled. In addition, the criminal organization trained paramilitaries between El Tibú (Colombia) and Casigua-El Cubo (Semprún municipality) to carry out acts “against Venezuelan democracy,” according to the official.

One more step towards controlling the “hot” border
The state of Zulia, bordering Colombia, has been characterized by the influence of illegal activities carried out in the neighboring country, as well as by the launching of operations associated with regime change in Venezuela. It is worth noting that smuggling routes to the other side of the border were established in this state during the opposition-led economic boycott between 2013 and 2020.

With the five arrests so far this year, the number of mayors removed from office for criminal activity since 2022 now totals 10, confirming the recruitment of local authorities as part of these criminal networks’ methods. The Catatumbo–Semprúm–Colón axis is complemented by the Lake Maracaibo navigation route, where, using rudimentary semi-submersible vessels (submarines), narco-traffickers traverse mangrove areas connecting Miranda with Padilla municipalities and, from there, through the Gulf of Venezuela to the north.

The investigation uncovered an operator leading the drug trafficking network: Luis Darlin Mora Moreira, an Ecuadorian citizen who managed to escape but left behind his mobile phones, his Ecuadorian passport, and other items that led to the collection of evidence. This evidence implicates another person named Gerson Parra, whom Mora called “boss,” and mayors Sobalvarro and Nava, who allegedly facilitated logistics in their respective municipalities.

However, the arrests and seizures are a further step in the Venezuelan government’s deployment along the entire border with Colombia, a move that has been underway since presidents Nicolás Maduro and Gustavo Petro agreed last January to strengthen security policies on both sides through a joint military operation.

Since mid-month, clashes in the Catatumbo region of Colombia between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents of the 33rd Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) have resulted in 80 deaths, 11 injuries, 12 FARC peace signatories disappeared, and more than 40,000 civilians displaced.

Catatumbo under fire
Colombia’s Catatumbo River basin gives the region its name and is shared by both countries. The municipalities of Ábrego, Convención, El Carmen, El Tarra, Hacarí, La Playa, San Calixto, Sardinata, Teorama, and Tibú, in the Norte de Santander department, Colombia, border the Semprún municipality, south of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. The former mayor of the latter, Keyrineth Fernández, was arrested in 2022, along with two female deputies and three other people, for drug trafficking-related offenses.

The ELN has also been present in the disputed area between paramilitaries and guerrillas. This insurgent group has been holding talks with the Petro administration since 2022 and is accused of fighting for complete control of more than 40,000 hectares planted with coca leaf and the production of coca base and cocaine. The talks were suspended by the Colombian president last January because of the armed clashes.

The number of displaced people rose to 54,000, while another 32,000 were confined due to the more than 35 armed actions carried out before March 7, which included massacres and targeted assassinations of leaders and their families. All of this led to displacements similar to those of 1997, making it the largest mobilization of this century in the region.

For its part, since the outbreak of the conflict, Venezuela initially welcomed more than 200 displaced families from the department of Norte de Santander, while others moved to Cúcuta, Ocaña, and other cities in that state. Last week, five people were killed in two simultaneous armed attacks in the northwestern municipality of Ocaña, indicating that the conflict continues.

Since 2019, the Colombian Ombudsman’s Office has been issuing warnings about the ELN’s territorial control and the increasing recruitment by FARC dissidents in the area. Catatumbo suffers from a historic state vacuum because it is one of the regions that, since the 2016 peace agreement, is still waiting for the agreed-upon dividends to invest in public services, security, development, and legal economies.

Binational actions for peace with social justice
The absence of the state and the failure of the drive for peace are the origins of the growth of drug trafficking activity in Colombia. Evidence shows that many media outlets and reports question the reduction in the defense budget, but few have bothered to thoroughly review the limited progress made in the commitments to provide adequate living conditions for the population.

This depends on a transformation of the region’s economic model and an increase in social investment, a debt that the current government maintains and that has existed since the 2016 peace agreements. An initial measure will be the implementation of a program based on direct payments to farmers who voluntarily eradicate crops and that ensures that the destruction of the plants includes the roots, to prevent their regeneration.

Furthermore, on March 6, from Tibú, Colombia, Petro proposed to President Nicolás Maduro the creation of a Special Economic Zone that would begin the rapid construction of a highway connecting the country and the border region, serving as a foundation for economic change. Maduro responded positively on March 11 and proposed including other municipalities in the northern part of Táchira state, throughout the Catatumbo region, to “target joint investments and productive, agricultural and agro-industrial development, tourism development, and social investments.”

The Venezuelan government has not ceased its law enforcement actions around the border. Within weeks of the activation of Operation Catatumbo Lightning, illegal camps and airstrips had already been destroyed , aircraft seized, and considerable quantities of cocaine seized. Military cooperation with Colombia includes the deployment of artillery, 5,000 troops in municipalities in the border states of Zulia and Táchira, aerial reconnaissance patterns, patrols and searches, control of highways and rivers, eradication of illicit crops, and destruction of clandestine airstrips.

On Monday, March 17, Maduro summarized the operation’s actions and accused former Colombian presidents Álvaro Uribe Vélez and Iván Duque of being behind the financing of drug trafficking in Colombia. He stated that in Colombia, “they won’t investigate them; they are hostages of imperialism to attack Venezuela and finance María Machado and Edmundo González. We have politically and economically dismantled the entire logistics of this gang.”

The regional far-right’s connection to the network of paramilitary violence and drug trafficking along the border is recurrent. From the 2004 paramilitary incursion, through Guaidó’s ties to the Los Rastrojos gang and the murder of Congressman Robert Serra, to Operation Gideon in 2020, Uribe’s hand has been implicated in threats to Venezuelan political stability.

With these arrests, the Venezuelan state seeks to stem the onslaught of transnational drug capital, whose largest sink and laundering center is in the United States. These networks seek to catalyze deregulation processes that facilitate interference under the guise of national security and the fight against terrorism. However, this does not reduce domestic drug consumption or the illegal export of weapons to Mexican cartels, key operators of the aforementioned networks.

Venezuela: 2 More Mayors Arrested for Involvement in Narco-Trafficking

Meanwhile, profound transformations in states are necessary to ensure that unsatisfactory living conditions for the region’s population are not a contributing factor to these criminal networks, much less to operations engineered by extremist groups with interests far removed from peace and social justice.

 

 

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

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