Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez during a press conference on Monday, September 8, 2025. Photo: AVN.
By Misión Verdad – Sep 9, 2025
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez’s public appearance Monday, September 8, far transcended the format of a conventional press conference. It was, in essence, an act of legal, diplomatic, and geopolitical defense of the Venezuelan state against what she described as “one of the worst lies, fabrications, and hoaxes ever hurled at Venezuela”: the accusation that it is a “narco-state” governed by “narco-terrorists.”
Her speech, meticulously structured and supported by a battery of data and quotes from international organizations and US agencies, had as its central objective to delegitimize a narrative that does not seek to combat drug trafficking but rather to justify military aggression and the appropriation of Venezuela’s vast natural resources: oil, gas, gold, bauxite, water resources, and biodiversity.
The vice president did not limit herself to denying the accusations. She launched a comprehensive counteroffensive, accusing the United States of being the financial and logistical epicenter of global drug trafficking and pointing to Ecuador as the true “narco-state” of the moment.
Her speech also explicitly denounced what she considered a “road map” designed in Washington for regime change in Caracas.
Venezuela’s absence from drug trafficking maps
The vice president’s fundamental argument is empirical and compelling: Venezuela is invisible in official statistics. To demonstrate this, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Annual Drug Reports from 1999 to 2025—a 27-year period—were examined.
“For twenty-seven consecutive years, Venezuela has not been labeled as a country of relevance in terms of illicit drugs or narcotics.”
She reiterated the point with emphasis: “Venezuela, I’ll repeat, in its international category, is not a relevant country in terms of drug trafficking or related crimes.”
This fact is not anecdotal. If Venezuela doesn’t appear in UN reports, the leading global authority on the subject, then the accusation of a “narco-state” lacks objective weight.
To provide context, she presented a geographic and logistical breakdown of cocaine trafficking, the most emblematic illicit drug in the region:
• Producing countries: Colombia (61%), Peru, and Bolivia. Venezuela, she emphasized, does not produce cocaine.
• Export routes: 87% of cocaine leaves via the Pacific Ocean–mainly from Colombia and Ecuador. Only 8% leaves via La Guajira (Colombia), and only 5% attempts to cross through Venezuelan territory.
• Effectiveness of Venezuelan control: Of the 5% that attempt to enter, Venezuelan security forces seize and destroy 70%. In other words, they neutralize most of the drugs that reach their borders.
She cited operational figures to support its effectiveness: 56 tons of drugs seized and destroyed so far this year alone. And she made a provocative claim: Venezuela’s anti-drug performance improved after the expulsion of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2005.
“We know how to do it better, the numbers say so,” said VP Rodríguez. “We seize more, we have more coordinated work.”
This fact is crucial. It suggests that cooperation with the DEA was not essential and even implies that its presence could have been counterproductive or infiltrated.
Delcy Rodríguez mentioned that more than 402 drug trafficking aircraft have been shot down by Venezuelan forces, and that any laboratory discovered is immediately destroyed: “Don’t give them a chance to even have a soft drink.”
The United States, the “world’s money laundering center” and the real problem
The vice president turned her fire on Washington, accusing it of hypocrisy, double standards, and of being the main economic beneficiary of global drug trafficking. Her counterattack was based on data from the same system that accuses Venezuela.
She cited a UN report–ratified in 2025–which states that “85% of the profits from this illicit business remain in the United States… in its financial system.”
This percentage isn’t a small detail; it’s the heart of the argument surrounding the United States as the financial epicenter of drug trafficking. She broke down how this machinery operates within the United States, describing a criminal network perfectly integrated into the legal economy:
• Financial system: where money is laundered. She mentioned emblematic cases: “Banks like HSBC, West Fargo, DT Bank… received historic fines for admitting their involvement in drug money laundering.” She criticized the fact that these fines are treated as minor infractions: “They give you a ticket as if you were speeding.”
• Brokers and drug warehouses: responsible for national distribution through transport companies.
• Drug gangs: responsible for the small-time drug trade that “has destroyed US society.”
• Drug truckers: they control the internal transportation of drugs.
• “Narco-Saxons”: the wealthy “white-collar” elite who traffic in power circles. She explicitly mentioned Jeffrey Epstein as an example of this network, with whom Trump had close ties and a well-documented friendship.
She presented shocking macroeconomic figures, all attributed to UN reports:
• Organized crime generates between US $1.6 and $2.2 trillion annually on a global scale.
• Drug trafficking represents between US $426 billion and $652 billion annually, equivalent to 0.8% of US GDP [This is similar to the total GDP of countries like New Zealand, Hungary, Greece, or Qatar].
• Money laundered through criminal and drug trafficking activities in the US amounts to 2.7% of its GDP.
“Imagine the size… it’s vast over there, because of the illegal drug trafficking activity,” she said.
She questioned the logic of US foreign policy: Why send warships to Venezuela if the problem–and the profits–are at home?
“It would be much easier for the United States to combat and prosecute money laundering … than to send ships to attack a peaceful nation… unless its intentions are different,” said VP Rodríguez.
She recalled a chilling figure: in 2024, more than 110,000 people died in the US from overdoses. For the senior Venezuelan official, this is a public health crisis that the US government ignores, preferring to blame others: “If they really care, they have many tasks in the United States of America to attend to, resolve, correct and address.”
The geopolitical “roadmap” and the instrumentalization of drug trafficking
Vice President Rodríguez framed the entire campaign against Venezuela within a long-term geopolitical strategy. She identified a turning point: President Barack Obama’s 2015 executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security.
“That’s where the story began… so that years later they could weave together all this that allows them to intervene in the country.”
She compared the current situation to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, based on the false premise of weapons of mass destruction: “Just like they said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to intervene in that country, to invade it, to steal its oil. That’s the only truth.”
She denounced the creation of fictitious enemies to justify military actions. In this case, she pointed to the reactivation of the outdated “Alien Enemies Law” in March 2024, applied against Venezuelans, as an “anachronistic” and arbitrary act.
She also criticized the designation of the Tren de Aragua [criminal organization] as a “transnational narcoterrorist organization,” a “wild card” for violating international law: “They are the wild cards for the violation of international law, because the serious problem facing humanity today is that the United States of America and its satellite governments mock and undermine international legality, respect nothing, there are no limits, lies, fanfare and roaming the planet like thugs prevail.”
Ecuador, the hidden “narco-state” and the regional conspiracy
The press conference shifted its focus to Ecuador, which she directly accused of being the “world’s leading cocaine exporter” today, according to the latest report from the World Customs Organization (WCO).
The key lies in the banana industry. Banana containers serve as the perfect cover for smuggling, said Rodríguez: “Ecuador’s president says that 70% of the cocaine distributed in the world passes through Ecuador. 70%, said by your president, who is also a partner in one of the banana companies that transports cocaine to the United States and Europe.”
She bluntly described Ecuador as a “narco-state” and linked the recent electoral fraud in that country to the control of drug trafficking. She also mentioned that Colombian President Gustavo Petro has “his life threatened by drug trafficking mafias.”
She accused the Venezuelan opposition—explicitly naming Juan Guaidó and María Corina Machado—of having agreements with Colombian drug cartels. According to her, these actors’ goal is to overthrow the legitimate government and hand over Venezuelan territory to drug trafficking and international mafias, including the “Albanian mafias” that, she said, have set up shop in Ecuador to control exports: “They need Venezuela for drug trafficking—an extraordinary business in which 85% of the dividends remain in the United States, and they need Venezuela for its energy reserves, its oil, its gas, its mineral reserves, its gold, its iron, its water reserves.”
The myth of the Cartel of the Suns
The vice president dedicated a specific segment to dismantling claims regarding the existence of the so-called “Cartel of the Suns,” a label the US has applied to high-ranking Venezuelan officials. The argument is simple: if there is no production, mass transit, or stockpiling of drugs in Venezuela, an organized cartel cannot exist.
“How can the ‘Cartel of the Suns’ exist if there are no drugs here, if they’re not organized here, if there’s no stockpiling here?” asked VP Rodríguez. “It is an operation, just another propaganda operation against Venezuela, to criminalize the legitimate government of Venezuela.”
She again cited the US DEA report (2024-2025) to affirm that neither Venezuela nor the “Cartel of the Suns” appear in it. The key routes mentioned by the US agency itself are Central America, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, and the majority of seizures on US soil occur in California, which reaffirms that the main route is the Pacific Ocean: “Calibrate and fix the GPS,” said Rodríguez. “It’s not Venezuela, it’s the Pacific.”
Thus, President Nicolás Maduro has called for the deployment of all Venezuelan security and defense forces in response to threats and aggression from Washington. The operational readiness of the Bolivarian National Armed Force has increased to more than 25,000 troops on the border, not only to repel a potential attack but also to increase pressure against drug trafficking.
And, in the long run, the accusers’ own sources, in order to dismantle their arguments, translate into a significant rhetorical advantage, positioning the US as the true culprit behind drug trafficking and Ecuador as a hidden scapegoat.
But ultimately, a broader thesis is being put forward: that drug trafficking is a pretext, a “farce,” to hide the true imperial objectives: the control of natural resources and the elimination of the Venezuelan political project that challenges US hegemony.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
